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Notes -
I explained very specifically why I think this is incorrect, or at least misleading.
Since I wrote a rather large comment, I will recap:
If you're going to discuss this stuff with me on here, please do me the courtesy of reading what I write (more or less). And if you're going to disagree with me, please do me the courtesy of explaining why, so that I can learn something new.
I did read your post, and I explicitly said I was contradicting your view. I am not unaware of the contents of your post, I just disagree with it. To wit:
The kind of guns which are capable of shooting down Shaheds are not going to be standard issue for commercial shipping vessels. How, exactly, are you going to outfit the commercial shipping fleet with all the guns and rockets required to shoot down these drones while simultaneously engaging in an active fight with the Chinese navy on the other side of the country? And if it is the US intervening, remember that the US navy is going to be tied down in Iran and the Middle East as well. All that these drones need to do to finish their mission in this specific case is make commercial traffic unviable, which your proposed solution doesn't actually prevent.
Moreover, we actually have an example of a weapons system used to shoot down shahed drones in the field - the C-RAM system used to protect the US Embassy in Baghdad. The US Embassy in Baghdad has been abandoned, and the C-RAM system failed to provide adequate protection - I'm not sure due to the difficulty of getting footage, but I believe it was actually destroyed by a drone. You'll have to forgive me for not believing this was a viable answer to shahed drones when I have seen footage of it failing to defend against shahed drones in a conflict happening right now.
Ok, so how many vessels are transiting the strait right now? If the US has an economic and worthwhile answer to these drones, why haven't they used them to open the Strait of Hormuz? We have a perfect, real-life test case for this technology and what we actually see is the US navy giving up, unable to prevent the Iranians from interdicting or destroying commercial traffic. Furthermore, what are the actual economics of these cheap, laser-guided rockets? Do they rely on components or parts that have to be shipped from China? Is there a manufacturing base capable of supplying enough of them to outpace Iran, China and Russia's production of Shahed/Shahed derivatives?
It's not particularly difficult to simply strap a short-range weapons system onto a ship.
This remains to be seen!
You'll have to forgive me for believing that it is a viable answer to Shahed drones when I have seen footage of Shahed drones being shot down by guns in a conflict happening right now.
No defense is 100% effective, and I am not claiming that. I am claiming the general idea that there is no way to counter Shaheds is overblown. The Ukrainians do it on the cheap all the time.
The US transited two destroyers through the strait, so...if the drones were so scary, why did that happen? As I pointed out to you before, the Houthis did not sink any ships with Shahed-type weapons. Based on the Houthis' experience, it seems pretty clear that torpedoes ("suicide drones"), ballistic missiles, and conventional missiles are a greater threat to shipping.
The current production capacity is believed to be around 25,000 annually. This isn't more than, say, Russia's supposed production, but they are unlikely to be shooting any at the US of A for some time, while to my knowledge China hasn't produced any Shaheds. I don't claim to know what Iran's production rate is due to Recent Events.
It's also worth noting that this is just one type of interceptor – the US has a number of anti-drone programs going on right now.
This story is from 2019 - if it was so easy to defeat the Shaheds, why isn't the Strait full of US navy ships easily taking those drones out of the sky and securing freedom of navigation?
True - I actually agree with you here, though doubtless for different reasons.
And what happened to the US embassy after that? I'm not claiming that systems like the C-RAM can't destroy those drones, but that they aren't an economically sustainable way to do so. Yes, you can shoot down a bunch of shaheds - but if there are enough of them they will get through, and the cost of making enough of them is lower than the cost of the defensive weapon system. At the same time, they can provide extra targets for the kind of expensive defensive system required to deal with nastier missiles.
If the US has robust and cost-effective anti-Shahed defence systems, why are their troops working from home in hotels? Why have they abandoned so many of their military bases in the region? Why isn't the US navy proudly sailing through the strait, drones defeated? Why is petroleum infrastructure in the gulf region blowing up so frequently? If what you're claiming is true the world would look very different today.
The main issue is not that Shaheds cannot be stopped - the issue is that they cannot be stopped in an economically viable fashion. The cost of anti-Shahed deterrence weapons is significantly higher than the cost of simply making more shaheds. As for Ukraine, I'm uncertain - I don't trust much of the information coming out of that warzone, and Russia has been making a lot of alterations and changes to their Gerans (did you see that new Jet Geran they announced recently?). If there's compelling and verifiable evidence that the Ukrainians are managing to deal with Russian drone warfare, I'll believe it - but that evidence is probably going to have to come in the form of them retaking all the territory they've lost so far.
Did they? I've heard conflicting reports about that incident, and the last I heard they ran away.
I agree with this. I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was advocating for some kind of Shahed-exclusive force - I've always been thinking about them in the context of a broader military package which includes the things you've just mentioned.
They're selling them on Alibaba - if you've got a spare 50k lying around you could buy one right now. They're advertised as ideal for spraying pesticides or taking photos for land surveying (not sure if they actively advertise them as suicide attack drones).
Iran has other threats, including mines and antiship missiles, that can threaten US ships in the strait. It's also true that a sufficient mass of anything could cause a ship to run out of ammunition! It doesn't surprise me that the Navy is keeping its ships further back where they have more flexibility.
I can also turn this question on its head: if Shaheds are so good, why haven't the Iranians sunk any destroyers yet? The long-range ones are supposed to go over 1,000 miles, and the Iranians are believed to have satellite imagery from Russia to help with targeting. We have reason to believe that the carrier strike groups were close enough to launch missiles at them because Trump specifically said that the carrier battle group was targeted with and shot down 101 missiles ("missiles" which suggests not Shahed, but Shaheds are really just cruise missiles and apparently Iran said their drone units were involved, so it could have been Shaheds). Either way, why didn't the Iranians use Shaheds to sink a carrier or a destroyer?
Correct.
You are shifting your goalposts here. What I was contesting specifically was the idea of
It's true that a Shahed costs less than a CIWS, the same as an anti-tank missile costs less than a tank, or an anti-ship missile costs less than a ship. But it looks like a CIWS burst is going to be cheaper than a Shahed.
It's quite likely that the US does not have enough robust and cost-effective anti-Shahed systems! Simply because there are cheaper ways to shoot down drones does not mean they have been procured at the necessary scale. A plausible end result of US counter-drone technology is giving aim-assist technology to riflemen or machine-gunners, which obviously has not happened yet.
It certainly appears that the US Navy did do this, including the "drones defeated" part.
Yes – in which case I think they can be a powerful tool. But I think as a cheap weapon they are at their best against fixed targets. If you have assured satellite coverage, then using them as an anti-ship weapon makes more sense, because you can put a man-in-the-loop. (But ironically this arguably makes them better suited in the role for the US than for Iran.)
This was an interesting claim. On a quick look, it looks like most of these drones are copters, and Alibaba apparently doesn't consider the range worth specifying (at least for the ones I viewed), which makes evaluating their utility as a weapon troublesome. I'd be very interested if you could provide the specific product you had in mind?
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