Ukraine plinking a Russian GPS-jammer with a GPS-guided bomb. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian drone-jammers. Ukraine’s cruise missiles striking Russian air-defense sites whose missions include, you guessed it, shooting down cruise missiles.
Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine has seen a lot of ironic, darkly-hilarious clashes. The latest was also one of the quickest between setup and punchline.
On Tuesday morning, Russian media announced the deployment, to Ukraine, of Russian forces’ latest high-tech counterbattery radar. A few hours later in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainians blew it up … with artillery rockets.
The irony deepens. In theory, a Russian Yastreb-AV radar would help to protect Russian troops from Ukraine’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—its HIMARS. Now guess what the Ukrainians used to destroy that first Yastreb-AV.
That’s right: HIMARS.
Huh? But the equipment that was developed by those trillions of dollars proved to be super effective. The HIMARS missiles can even handle jamming by a much less funded army.
You are spot on on point 1 though.
They seem to be saying that Russia also has a massive military budget, but ours is way way bigger. The money we spend actually is worth it. We have the best military in the world by every metric you can come up with.
Super effective to destroy another useless trillion dollar military assets. Imagine spending trillions on something which main purpose isn’t to dig a hole in the ground.
I agree with that. But that is not a conclusion that should be drawn from the article. Hence my reaction. If anything, the article shows a prime example for why we should spend all those trillions.