Math War: 80,000 Iranian Drones

US offensive power is overwhelming, but the defense architecture seems problematic

The indiscriminate attacks by Iran and its proxies are making the war spread around the globe, and the economic consequences with a spike in the price of oil and gas seem to be just beginning to show their faces.

While the US and allies are striking the mullahs’ regime with ever-growing force, I wanted to write a freeform piece about what I see as a worrying aspect of the war.

Iranis is said to have 80,000 Shahed attack drones.

Each one costs $35,000, and can disable a tank or destroy pipelines, and a swarm of them can destroy entire buildings, airports or other critical targets.

In the US-Israeli anti-aircraft defense against them, the primary systems are the Patriot batteries.

Each Patriot missile costs a million dollars.

Estimates say the US and allies are using an average of 3 missiles to down a Shahed.

So, the nefarious count is: 3 million dollars to destroy 35 thousand. And Iran has 80,000 of those.

That doesn’t seem sustainable. And we’re not even talking about the missiles.

Sure enough, the US and Israel have destroyed the Iranian leadership, and will probably do so for the substitutes.

But Iranian Foreign Minister of foreign affairs Abbas Araghchi has admitted that the civilian government no longer controls the military. In fact, the military units are working independently and isolated, acting on instructions given to them in advance.

In this scenario, decapitation strikes would not solve the problem.

Is the work going to be picking up and ‘neutralizing’ each and every autonomous unit that’s shooting Shahed drones and missiles at basically everyone around them?

That may end up taking a long, long time.

Of course, it’s possible (maybe even probable) that the massive strikes by the US and allies may drive a new Iranian leadership to back down and order a stop to the drone and missile attacks.

But at this point, will the units even listen or obey?

It may seem like I m writing against the war as waged by Donald J. Trump and his allies – but the fact that the Iranian capabilities have gotten so fearsome, in my mind, validates the arguments by the US about the imminent danger posed by Tehran.