And they likely used hair style that requires absurd amount of maintennance. If there were women in the group, they likely used expenasive and painful body modifications on top of that. Republicans have own style, they are big on looks, after all.
For being satire, it's such a good source for perspective on the headlines
A patient observer? Any random idiot of the street that cares to watch the news occasionally could've figured that out.
> If you are an American tax payer, I would understand it if you were banging your head on the table right now
Oh I am, and my representatives hear from me very, very often. Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears. Seemingly no one around me cares, and our leaders certainly don't. I feel like I'm going insane and living in some kind of weird bizzaro world.
To the best of my knowledge, the explosives-laden lawn mowers flying over Ukraine are mostly destroyed by cannon fire from the ground, cannon / machine-gun fire from aircraft (including converted GA aircraft), and interceptor drones.
I expect the US armed forces to be testing oodles of various cheap drones by now. E.g. the US has used Shahed-lookalike drones while attacking Iran recently.
Patroits for cruise missiles and jets
Other for one way suicide drones
I'm unsure if Ukraine has used patroits against ballistics. My understanding is that is a low count in the Russian mix. Cruise missiles and jets are their primary targets in Ukraine (aiui)
Russia and Ukraine both ultimately scaled up volunteer started development and production of that "fastest drone on Youtube" for the interceptor role. Cheap, simple, and works against pretty much any prop-driven drone used there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1rigqam/oper...
Russia did start to use those hobby jet engines instead of props on the attack drones, and that made them go 600km/h instead of 200km/h. I'm yet to see the interceptor drone for that - it will also have to use, while smaller, such a hobby jet engine. Again laughably cheap - $3K Alibaba. (there are some other options too, i think we'll see them in time too (if anybody have few mils to burn - ping me :). Anyway, the guys are having wonderful time as their hobby became the eye of the global multibillion hurricane of hot military tech. Even the Blackwater guy - the one who was riding the money tsunami back in the Iraq time - got into it by just recently becoming some C-exec in a pre-IPO Ukranian drone developer)
Something like the Phalanx only not $50k/burst.
i was going to say, CRAM would be effective at a close, slow moving, predictable target. The rounds self-destruct based on a timer if they miss so you're not raining bullets all over the place. It's is also portable and can be parked almost anywhere. I'm not sure if the burst is configurable but slow moving drones are easier to hit than a missile so it seems like the burst duration could be turned down too. You'd have to figure out a way to keep them from shooting down _everything_ though.
that is the key. It is much more easy from all the aspects - logistics, cost, agility, etc... - to patrol, discover and intercept from a higher flying drone. The drone can (and will be) added with AI (already some) and can come closer for the AI to work better, to make sure and can abort the attack if there is a mistake, while AI on classic radar guided AA requires expensive optics to do that at distance.
>radar guided
FPV, in visual and IR, cost pennies and available in millions of units from Alibaba, while those military radars cost a lot and not many of them are available.
The radar guided AA is used and works where needed and there not much other options - like for cruise missiles, 850km/h. You can see videos - the window of opportunity is usually short as cruise missile is also relatively low flying.
The US deployed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon... to "cheaply" kill incoming slow munitions. It requires planes in the air but that's sort of table stakes for an operation involving the US in general.
We can make plenty of those rockets. They are cheaper than Shaheds! Though that doesn't count the plane time! $20k per hour per plane at least.
As the cat and mouse game continues, Shahed style weapons used against countries with any meaningful defense, like "drone interceptors" or helicopters or old warplanes, the munitions will continue to evolve towards "Just a guided missile at this point", where the situation again transitions back to the economics of cruise missile vs patriot.
The Hydra pods can be used against any precision weapon up to subsonic cruise missiles, so their versatility and pricetag only gets more effective, while every effort making the Shahed more survivable only makes it more expensive and harder to build.
In an interesting twist, a good air force now ends up doing good work against cruise missiles.
If cruise missiles try to go faster, supersonic, to make these Hydra pods ineffective, they end up getting more expensive rather quick, at which point the $4 million patriot missile makes sense.
The Patriot isn't even a fiscally efficient anti-missile system. The Israeli Iron Dome can intercept subsonic cruise missiles and costs about $100k an interception.
Most "Missile Defense" munitions are expensive because they have to be capable against ballistic missiles, which are much more difficult to intercept. MANPADS are sometimes effective against cruise missiles and they are often cheap and plentiful, though putting them in the right place at the right time is the hard problem there. The Hydra pods are actually better in that case because a modern jet will reposition rather quickly. Then the problem becomes noticing the incoming munitions early enough to get a plane on its tail.
All this still depends on industry to build it though. These missiles are cheap in bulk but that still requires the factory exist, and that isn't always cheap or easy or fast. In Ukraine, drones get a secondary benefit of being a very survivable industry, as it uses entirely commodity components and even 3D printed parts so it can easy disperse and scale however you can manage.
> In June 2020, BAE announced they had completed test firings of the APKWS from a ground launcher for the first time
so it seems like they've got them launching from the ground. That seems like a real possibility to defend against these kinds of drones. However, I don't think it's a problem of technology or cost right now but of availability.
Ukraine wants more Patriot air defense missiles in exchange. A reasonable deal.
Just history-textbook level gall.
Can't we get back to some form of normality soon? I'm happy to take another pandemic instead of the current state of the world.
Ukraine gets money while scaling their manufacturing and everyone else gets drones that actually work and are continually being refined in the field.
This article has a representative image: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-qatar-discuss-acquiri...
You can find videos of their use too
He perfectly understands that whatever Ukrainian military technology is sold to US, Israel, Gulf States will be shared with russia moments later.
Ukraine is well positioned to be a major arms supplier for the new drone warfare reality. No one has the experience they do.
https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2025-12-19/us-...
Congress has merely secured the financial pool; the decision on whether and how the money will be spent ultimately lies with the Secretary of War (Defense).
I'll add that trump has made clear that U.S. administrations are not beholden to previous international policy decisions and so unless congress reins in the executive or trustworthy actors hold the mantle again other nations should treat the US with short term policy decisions in mind and not rely on long term reciprocation.
and they just annouced it's likely going through September (which means until end of year)
and they are now dropping 2000 pound bombs on targets next to civilians
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/04/evacuation-middle-e...
> "U.S. Central Command, meanwhile, is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days but likely through September, according to a notification obtained by POLITICO"
(billion dollars a day and that's before replacing all the weapons)
That's not exactly how oil supply works. There's plenty of stockpiles which take months to burn through and only some places depend on Iranian oil. China is their biggest buyer and it's around 13.4% of China's oil imports.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
Gas in EU is cca 100% more expensive than a week ago.
Their plan is to bomb Iran into the stone age so it can't produce any more drones or missile launchers. It's questionable whether they can succeed though.
"I'm sorry, we must've had a bad connection there, for a second it almost sounded like you were asking me FOR HELP"
1. Neither side has been unable to stop the other from mass producing drones. Too easy to build in small facilities, whack-a-mole scenario.
2. Interceptors will become depleted, more "squeakers" will get through as time goes on.
Some graphs: https://bsky.app/search?q=ukraine+drone+graph
The latter, as they're built by Russia currently, require a decent size facility to build en mass. It's not the kind of thing Hamas could build in their tunnel system, for example.
I agree with your second point that interceptors will become depleted though and this is a serious problem.
The IRGC is significantly more resourced than Hamas, building enough to fire off 100s a week should be no issue for them. They can build ballistic missiles, they twice struck an oil refinery in Bahrain today: https://bsky.app/profile/elhamfakhro.bsky.social/post/3mgd5o...
Given the resources we are using today, while still seeing drones and ballistics get through, does not bode well for a 100% reliable system.
Do you have any specific links?
https://bsky.app/profile/cordhenning.bsky.social/post/3melao...
https://bsky.app/profile/emmanuellechaze.com/post/3lq5duclgi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike
Good thread with nuance: https://bsky.app/profile/mikeblack114.bsky.social/post/3mgbd...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
I don't think staging light infantry will be a problem but I don't think they'll successfully break out of the mountains, certainly not into any land that isn't already ethnically Kurd (or Baloch, but that's in the other corner of the country).