I would nudge your assessment of the missile defense capabilities of aircraft carriers up a bit. Part of the reason the Iron Dome doesn’t intercept everything is because Hamas launches a large number of rockets at the same time to overwhelm the system. This is easier to do when the rockets are cheap and the target distances are short. A comparable number of anti ship missiles are probably harder to fire simultaneously without deploying a large air fleet, in which case you are kind of meeting the carrier on its own terms. Longer range strikes also means greater time for detection and reaction. I also don’t know how that 90-95% figure counts rockets that were intentionally not shot down since their trajectories ended in empty areas.
I still think your overall assessment is correct though; it is probably much cheaper to sink an aircraft carrier than defend it, in both money and personnel. And the greatest cost to both parties would be from cyber attacks on civilian or mixed use systems.
Your points about Taiwan’s lack of preparation are interesting. Could preparing for guerrilla resistance be seen as accepting a Chinese invasion and occupation as inevitable? I don’t know much about Taiwan but I would guess proposing that to be career suicide for most politicians or military officers.
You have several good points here. I think the most important one is that shorter distances makes missiles harder to shoot down.
The 90%-95% number does not include rockets which fell short and landed in Gaza. The 95% number comes from the Israeli armed forces (the 90% came from the Associated Press) so I expect it to make them look as good as possible which means the remaining 5% probably weren’t aimed at unoccupied areas.
According to this article the cost of an Israeli interceptor missile is $40,000-$50,000. So even if they shoot down 100% of incoming missiles it still costs 50× more to shoot down a missile than to fire one. On the one hand, the attack missiles in question are unusually cheap. On the other hand, more expensive missiles are probably harder to shoot down. On the other other hand, much of that money goes things other than defense.
Tanner Greer has betteranalyses of Taiwan’s defensive capabilities than I can write. My guess is there are many reasons you wouldn’t want to train your population in guerrilla warfare. For starters, it basically amounts to training terrorists in your own country.
I would nudge your assessment of the missile defense capabilities of aircraft carriers up a bit. Part of the reason the Iron Dome doesn’t intercept everything is because Hamas launches a large number of rockets at the same time to overwhelm the system. This is easier to do when the rockets are cheap and the target distances are short. A comparable number of anti ship missiles are probably harder to fire simultaneously without deploying a large air fleet, in which case you are kind of meeting the carrier on its own terms. Longer range strikes also means greater time for detection and reaction. I also don’t know how that 90-95% figure counts rockets that were intentionally not shot down since their trajectories ended in empty areas. I still think your overall assessment is correct though; it is probably much cheaper to sink an aircraft carrier than defend it, in both money and personnel. And the greatest cost to both parties would be from cyber attacks on civilian or mixed use systems.
Your points about Taiwan’s lack of preparation are interesting. Could preparing for guerrilla resistance be seen as accepting a Chinese invasion and occupation as inevitable? I don’t know much about Taiwan but I would guess proposing that to be career suicide for most politicians or military officers.
You have several good points here. I think the most important one is that shorter distances makes missiles harder to shoot down.
The 90%-95% number does not include rockets which fell short and landed in Gaza. The 95% number comes from the Israeli armed forces (the 90% came from the Associated Press) so I expect it to make them look as good as possible which means the remaining 5% probably weren’t aimed at unoccupied areas.
According to this article the cost of an Israeli interceptor missile is $40,000-$50,000. So even if they shoot down 100% of incoming missiles it still costs 50× more to shoot down a missile than to fire one. On the one hand, the attack missiles in question are unusually cheap. On the other hand, more expensive missiles are probably harder to shoot down. On the other other hand, much of that money goes things other than defense.
Tanner Greer has better analyses of Taiwan’s defensive capabilities than I can write. My guess is there are many reasons you wouldn’t want to train your population in guerrilla warfare. For starters, it basically amounts to training terrorists in your own country.