Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Ukraine long-range drone strikes defeat advanced Russian anti-air by flying low, limiting the coverage of radars and confusing them with ground structures, while also using AI to target vulnerable and important targets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRRNlXjHLZc
Russia is moving air-defense assets to Moscow for their annual Victory Day Parade, making the rest of the country more vulnerable! This makes Putin and Russia look weak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqZlQwvmPpw
The MQ-9 Reaper drone was great when the enemy didn’t have anti-air capabilities, but when they do, the slow, loud, and radar-visible drone is easily shot down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPY7CFUNW5k
An F-35 may have been hit by an Iranian anti-air missile. The plane and pilot survived, making it safely to a base in the Middle East. Stealth makes the F-35 harder to detect and hit, but not invisible. If a video given by Iran purporting to be the F-35 getting hit is real, then it looks like a smaller payload delivered by a relatively short-ranged infrared or electro-optically guided weapon, or even a shoulder fired missile. If a radar guided weapon targeted it, the plane would sense it and the pilot would be trying to avoid it. And if larger, longer-range weapons hit it, the plane would not have survived that size of payload.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEA-vXR3WgI
“High-end missile interceptors can run into the millions of dollars per shot.
Many of the drones they are designed to defeat are far cheaper and produced in large numbers — creating what defense officials have described as a growing “math problem” in modern warfare. The U.S. can end up firing expensive missiles at relatively inexpensive drones, a dynamic that becomes harder to sustain if attacks come in waves.
That imbalance is accelerating a push inside the Pentagon to expand a layered counter-drone strategy — combining short-range interceptors, electronic warfare tools and emerging technologies such as high-energy lasers.
For U.S. forces in the region, larger drone waves increase the odds that defenses are stretched, and that even one drone could reach a base or ship.
This marks the first sustained confrontation in which U.S. forces are facing large-scale, state-backed drone waves as a central feature of the battlefield — forcing commanders to adapt in real time and draw on lessons learned from Ukraine, where mass-produced Shahed drones reshaped air defense strategy.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iran-drone-swarms-challenge-us-090020438.html
One reason the US has so few defensive missiles is because while the military has said we need more, politicians have not appropriated the money.
As far as offensive munitions, the US has enough to fight Iran, but long term, the US doesn’t have what it needs in the event of a war against China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHB8x2cDKsI
Could Iran hit US Air and Naval forces?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yiv3QkQIYZs
We don’t seem to be ramping up production of missile interceptors even though we desperately need more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5C5an3nzk
‘If it flies it dies’: Why America’s ever-evolving Patriot missiles are so popular
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfdXfDJxAY
Russia’s S-400 anti-air missile batteries are good, but without being integrated into larger defense systems, are vulnerable to air power. U.S. air power out-ranges these missiles, and low flying aircraft can’t be seen because the S-400 by itself can’t see over the horizon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McJAYZfhapo