Cheap Killing Machines in Malevolent Hands

Russia has crippled Ukraine’s power infrastructure, taking out roughly a third of their electrical generating capacity. If Russia continues to reduce Ukraine’s power generating capacity, that latter nation may face another, exceptionally cold winter, without the ability to heat homes and businesses. Yet Ukraine’s resistance continues, even in the face of Russian imposed misery.

Russia is using under-prepared conscripts in their partial mobilization effort, an estimated 222 thousand so far, against Ukraine. Supposedly this forced enlistment is only of those with former military training, but evidence suggests that these forces are being given old, unreliable arms without sufficient instruction and practice. Russia is desperately seeking to achieve sufficient advantage – even as it evacuates Kherson and other provinces that it once controlled that Ukraine is taking back – perhaps to force Kyiv to the bargaining table to make some territorial concessions to be able to claim some semblance of victory.

Winter is their secret weapon, and with the increasing statements from GOP leaders – like House Minority Leader and Speaker-wannabe Kevin McCarthy and a growing wave of other MAGA Republicans, including Trump himself – that if they take a majority in Congress, aid to Ukraine is likely to be curtailed, Putin is envisioning a path to semi-victory. But the “here and now” is that Russia really is running out of troops, munitions, and critical weapons. Every time they fire one of their cruise missiles to strike a target, a million dollars flies out the door. Enter their not-so-secret weapons deal with fellow American-hating Iran. Despite Tehran’s pathetic denials, Iran’s relatively inexpensive drones – $20,000 a pop – are making attacking Ukraine very affordable for Russia’s depleted military.

The battlefield evidence of Iran’s Shahed 136 drones – repainted in Russian with a Geran-2 (Germaniam-2) label – is hard to hide. They are being shot down all over Ukraine, but enough of them get through to wreak havoc on the ground. As the Associated Press (October 19th) tells us: “Packed with explosives [still significantly less than a cruise missile], they are programmed with a target’s GPS coordinates. They can loiter overhead and then nosedive in for the kill. That’s reminiscent of Japan’s World War II-era kamikaze pilots who would fly their explosives-laden aircraft into U.S. warships and aircraft carriers during the war in the Pacific.

“According to the Ukrainian online publication Defense Express, which cites Iranian data, the delta-wing Shahed is 11½ feet long, 8 feet 3 inches wide and weighs approximately 440 pounds. It’s powered by a 50-horsepower engine with a top speed of 114 mph.

“The drone has previously been used in Yemen and in a deadly oil tanker attack last year, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Washington think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies… And although its range is about 621 miles, drone expert Samuel Bendett of the Center for a New American Security said the Shahed is being used in Ukraine at much shorter ranges. That’s because its GPS guidance system — which is vulnerable to jamming — isn’t very robust.

“Shaheds are known to have been controlled via radio under the Iranians. Whether Russia is capable of doing the same in Ukraine is unclear… Because they are cheap and plentiful, Russia is able to flood Ukraine with Shaheds without risking the lives of pilots or putting sophisticated aircraft at risk.” But Shaheds menacing, hovering overhead, is disconcerting to civilians on the ground below. A powerful psychological effect with the added benefit that it gives Russia a kind of inexpensive air superiority that its air force could not achieve. Iran seems unconcerned that supplying such weapons flies in the face of a United Nations ban on giving Russia such military supplies.

Shaheds are often deployed in swarms, and even in such aggregations they are vastly less expensive than using larger cruise missiles. Swarms are more difficult to shoot down, plus these weapons are usually launched from highly mobile trucks. They’re not particularly sophisticated; according to Bloomberg (October 18th), they “can be shot down using old-fashioned anti-aircraft cannons, as well as more sophisticated missile defenses, and the Ukrainians have brought down some of them. The difficulty, in a country larger than France, comes in deciding where to place limited stocks of air defenses. The Shahed can fly hundreds of kilometers. (Iran’s claim of a range in excess of 2,000 km, or 1,243 miles, is likely an exaggeration). Ukrainian officials have expressed interest in buying air defense systems from Israel, which has a near perfect record shooting down even more sophisticated Iranian drones.” Iran seems ready to send Russia a whole lot more of these drones plus a yet unspecified number of “cheap” but deadly Iran made missiles.

The underlying problem that the Western World must face is simple. Failing to contain territorial aspirations of megalomaniacal autocrats, as they attack or threaten to attack their neighbors with overwhelming force, only encourages them to seek more and more territories to intimidate and/or annex. As the world learned in the 1930s, as Hitler sequentially invaded and annexed land in Czechoslovakia, Austria and ultimately Poland, a policy of tolerating territorial expansion (usually by force or intimidation) only encourages more annexation, more violence. Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s failed policy of “appeasement” led to Hitler’s belief that he could have so much more… until a new PM, Winston Churchill, replaced Chamberlain… and WWII exploded into the horrific conflict it became.

Today, “appeasement” is what Putin believes is possible; the West is only willing to support Ukraine within limits, he hopes, and with recent elections in Italy and France showing a more isolationist trend, very reflective of a parallel MAGA movement here, Putin believes time (and his nuclear capability) are on his side. “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession, and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on October 18th. A harsh winter with exorbitant costs for natural gas for heating should be enough, particularly if the GOP dominates the American mid-terms, to give Putin what he wants… or so he believes. Is he right?

I’m Peter Dekom, and today we face two megalomaniacs with world-class military might – China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – with major annexation as their obsessive goal.