Drones and Economic Warfare

Daniel Miessler on Twitter/X:

Something that the Ukraine and Iran wars have taught me is that for a lot of countries, including very big countries, there are a small number of buildings and infrastructure components that are required for their economy to function. . . .

You can just make a list of oil refineries and production plants and the infrastructure around their main exports, and you can just attack them and destroy them and take them off the list.

4 years ago I would have thought there are too many of these components and they're too easy to recreate, but both of these collisions have taught me that there are far fewer and that many of them will take years, if not over a decade, to rebuild.

It's very strange to me that drones can now effectively harm the economy of a country. 

According to the Kyiv Post, Russia's capacity to refine oil has fallen by 43 percent, and I have seen other serious estimates as high as 58%. This hurts, as the long lines at gas stations show.

And now attacks on Wildberries warehouses; Wildberries is sort of the Amazon of Russia, and these warehouses hold billions of dollars worth of stuff. Forbes estimates the losses in three warehouse attacks like this.

• Seller inventory losses in the Moscow region: at least 150 billion rubles ($1.91 billion) and warehouse restoration cost: up to 33 billion rubles ($420 million).
• Seller inventory losses in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk: 100–120 billion rubles ($1.27–1.53 billion).
• Total estimated damage: 283–303 billion rubles ($3.60–3.86 billion).

On the one hand, yes, it is impressive how much damage Ukraine is doing to Russia's economy, especially when you consider that Russia has enormous air defense resources compared to most other nations. On the other, the war goes on, and neither side seems interested in peace, after many months of attacks employing tens of thousands of drones. It may be possible to seriously damage a nation's economy, but it is not easy.