This act of cost-ineffective public theater by Putin is his going away present to the Western escalation managers they so desperately need to justify their failed retread of appeasement policy jobs
The cost of an IRBM/ICBM is around 10-20 times the cost of an ALCM/GLCM/SLCM 1/
It is unlikely the Putin Regime has a significant warstock of such missiles, & every RS-26 Russia fires reduces the nuclear threat to the USA.
It is military madness...but it's great for impressing dullards in media and politics like @JakeSullivan46, German Chancellor Scholz 3/
...and Western corporate media reporters talking to the arms control community at the US State Department, which are trying to keep their now excess to US Federal government needs phony baloney jobs.🙄
4/
The cost of this attack to Russia is similar to a Pershing II during the 1980s, which was around $10million USD per round.
In real 2024 dollar terms an RS-26 would cost about the same, which accounting for inflation, is more like $20M USD now. 5/
In WW2 according to US Army Medical department statistics, the US Army ground forces in NW Europe and the Mediterranean took 65% of their casualties from Artillery.
In 2025, Russia is taking 75% from drones.
2/
Drones are now more lethal in Ukraine than artillery was in the WW2, the most artillery heavy war in human history to date.
Drones have replaced, and then some, tube artillery, rockets and mortars as the indirect fire "King of Battle."
Strategypage -dot- com has a new article out on the decline of Russian that civil infrastructure that makes Frederick Lanchester smile.
Russian Civil Infrastructure Attrition🧵
1/
Text from the article:
"Russia wants to end the Ukraine War via negotiations with the United States. This will work if done from a position of strength. The current Russian situation is weak and getting weaker.
2/
...Russian forces in Ukraine are stalled and too weak to launch another offensive, even a small one.
It will get worse. The Russian economy is starting to collapse in some or many areas because of disinvestment.
3/
The semiconductor industrial base is the foundation of 21st century economic & military power.
The USSR only ever produced single detector element technology like Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) Infrared Line Scan (IRLS) or scanning infrared Search and Track (IRST) like those on the MiG-29 Fulcrum A.
2/
The USSR never produced any of the classic nodding or spinning mirror LWIR Forward Looking Infrared (FLIRs) sensors that the US introduced during the Vietnam war.
In fact there is no evidence Russia was able to sustain any of the large Soviet semiconductor industry.
3/
The vast majority of US military aid to Ukraine was in fact spent inside the USA to replace vastly overpriced by the Biden Adm. National Guard & Air Guard surplus weapons.
Spending aid money buying Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace NG surplus Humvees
...was just one of the aid grifts @JakeSullivan46 NSC crew played to pretend they were helping Ukraine while not offending Russia & buying US Defense contractor kit.
Pres. Trump is literally parroting Russian reflexive control scripts from Biden Adm.
This should not be a surprise as I've pounded on the fact for 2 years that Russia has mapped & fed to each specific US tribal & professional demographic the data to eat up messages/memes Russia wants those groups to believe.
This @sambendett thread here makes Russia seem like a poor kid looking through a candy store window at the "candy" of Ukrainian ground resupply drones.
I mean, seriously, Russia is now introducing a camel transport corps because the Russian startups and big defense contractors cannot produce supply UGV's at scale to deliver potable water to front line troops.
This 🧵by @GrandpaRoy2 demonstrating the increasing battlefield obsolescence of tube artillery in the face of fiber optic fiber guided FPV drones is a useful jumping off point the following:
66% of RuAF AFV's & equipment killed in Jan 2025 were victims of drones
Back in November 2024 I did a long thread on how drones were an "effectiveness revolution" on the battlefield and we would see drones displacing other battlefield weapons because of it.