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/
I asked around and I was pointed to Ukrainian GNSS (AKA global positioning satellite signals) Spoofing as a more likely cause of the Shaheed-136 clone failures.
Also, that would have nothing with reduced glide bomb drops.
3/
In another round of very useful translation, @sambendett points out the Russians have learned that drones are how combat power is measured in the 21st century.
The Russians didn't share drone tech with the SAA at scale.
Ukraine did with the HTS starting in June 2024. 1/
I've beaten on the drum for literally years about how Western analysts and the DC military-industrial complex types in particular don't understand small/cheap drones because it is against their interest to do so.