A Thought

I had another one. This one was brought to my forebrain by a Wall Street Journal article that discussed the lack of Russian military assistance to Iran during the latter’s attacks on Israel and Israel’s nearly two week response in and over Iran.

Israel’s responses to the Iranian war over those dozen days included the virtual elimination of Iran’s air defense capability; reduction of Iran’s ballistic missile capability, both missile production and launchers and launcher production; and Iran’s drone inventory and drone production capability.

It’s that last that interests me. I’ve already seen an apparent reduction in Russian missile attacks on Ukraine since the UA’s successful attacks on Russia’s LRA, at least compared to the number of drone attacks on Ukraine. Iran has been a major source of Russia’s longer-ranged and bigger payload capable drones, the Shaheds. Iran’s ability to produce these were particular targets of Israel’s anti-drone sorties. I wonder what effect the seemingly inevitable drop in exports to Russia will have on Russia’s aerial assaults on Ukraine. It’s true enough that Russia has a growing domestic capability to produce drones roughly equivalent to the Shahed, but that capability isn’t all that yet.

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