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Comment Re:China outing itself as a global agent of chaos (Score 1) 288

The so called "rules of war" are made by the strong to raise the barrier of entry and prevent smaller players from even bothering to go to war with them.
But the reality is there are no rules in war, it's a case of win at all costs. You're only going to face punishment for breaking the rules if you lose, if you win you can make up your own rules.

The US should know that well, during the war of independence they didn't play by the established rules under which Britain and France had been fighting for years, they used guerrilla tactics which proved highly effective.

Comment Re:Propaganda - de-lied (Score 1) 288

If your only air defence consists of patriot batteries then you have to use them regardless of what's incoming. UAE may well have been unprepared for this kind of attack.
Their initial effectiveness against unprepared enemies is largely down to them being low tech. Air defences were no longer geared up to contend with low speed flying targets. If you'd launched shahed drones during WW2 or even WW1 they would have been very quickly taken out by fighter aircraft of the day.

Ukraine on the other hand has been facing shahed attacks for several years, and have developed multiple significantly cheaper methods to counter them. Most of these methods would not work against a cheap missile flying at mach 5.

Comment Re:Propaganda - de-lied (Score 1) 288

2) A missile that travels at Mach 5 but cannot turn AND is made of 'cheap commercial parts' is not radar resistant and will EASILY be shot down. These are fast, cheap missiles good for attacking a significantly inferior opponent, worthless against near-peer opponents such as the US, Russia, and NATO defenses. They are clearly designed to take out Taiwan without US support.

Not worthless at all. They're cheap and can be built quickly, and while they might be easy to intercept, the interceptors are not cheap.

The shahed drones are cheap too, and yet they have done a lot of damage.
Ukraine is launching cheap drones based on converted light aircraft, these are also doing major damage.

If you can build and launch more cheap drones/missiles than the enemy is able to intercept, you can overwhelm their defences and get a few strikes through. The first missiles you send get intercepted, but also give away the launch sites of the interceptors. If you have the resources to keep lobbing cheap missiles then pretty soon the interceptors run out and you score hits.

Comment Re:Alternative to nuclear deterrent (Score 1) 288

Ships are an easy target to take out, and submarines very effective tools for doing so which cannot easily be targeted by hypersonic missiles. You'd not be able to launch missiles at the US from ships for very long, at most you'd be able to launch a one off surprise attack from some civilian cargo ships.

Comment Re: The new MAD? (Score 1) 288

Those russian hypersonics are also hugely expensive... The chinese ones are a lot cheaper.
Sure a patriot battery will almost certainly be able to take them out, but how many can it take out and at what cost? Once you run out of interceptors your patriot battery is a sitting duck and so is everything it was trying to protect.
Annual production of the pac-3 is currently around 600 and that's split among all patriot operators globally. The wars in ukraine and iran have also significantly depleted stocks.

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