Missile defense is a fascinating idea — that you can shoot down arrows with other arrows — and it sorta works. Until it doesn’t, and until you get the bill. Missile defense is not some magic shield that allows you to be a total asshole and avoid all consequences. You literally pay for it. Just look at ‘Israel’, blowing nearly 10% of its yearly IDF budget in one night of ignominy.

After 'Israel' bombed their consulate, Iran threw maybe $100 million in the air and 'Israel' threw $1.3 billion after it. It was literally good money after bad. It's like if someone threw a brick at your house, and you threw your TV at the brick. It's like smashing a roach with a Rolex. It's like preventing broken windows by throwing your own glassware out the window. 'Israeli' missile defense is the definition of Pyrrhic victory. They're lighting their own money on fire and crowing about how bright it is.

A big part of attritional war is depleting the enemy's ammo, and this ammo depletes itself. If any enemy throws enough cheap munitions in the air, the ammunition will come out and destroy itself. You don't need to even target the enemy's ammo dumps, they'll target your missiles and run into them! Depleting the enemy's munitions at a 1:12 (cost) ratio is in itself is a tactical victory. If your enemy runs out of munitions in two weeks, that's strategic defeat. And if 16% of missiles breach the defenses on day one, that's just embarrassing.

This all happened to 'Israel' under the best possible conditions, with weeks of warning and all the imperial bitches (Jordan, France, UK) barking. All the kings horses and all the kings men, can't put 'Israeli' deterrence back together again. They can propagandize their own people, but the military people know what's happened on April 14th. As does anyone with a calculator and a bit of common sense. Like October 7th, it was a tactical, strategic defeat. They got hit at high cost and can't sustain this model without blowing through their entire budget in a matter of weeks.

This model of air defence is literally throwing gold at tin. The payload of a Patriot missile is worth more than its weight in gold (a 90 kg payload on a $6-10m missile), and they fling them at cheap ballistics or even drones. This obviously can't go on forever, as you could see with the IOF's air defenses buckling in one night, letting multiple hits in. Imagine how much worse it could be if these weren't just warning shots, and if the hits kept coming. Missile defense against the consequences of your own actions is very expensive, while simply not being an asshole is free. But this is of course incomprehensible to capitalists.

This is the same fate US warships faced in the Red Sea. They were shooting million dollar missiles at thousand dollar drones from Yemen and crowing about it, but now they've had to retreat and beg for peace. Their fancy missile defenses (mostly) worked at protecting their own warships, but they couldn't secure imperial shipping at all. And it's not that the Yemen couldn't damage American warships, they have superior weaponry (hypersonics) in reserve and at any point they could just swarm the Carbon Crusaders. It's just that, as Napoleon said, when your enemy is defeating themselves, why interrupt? If they want to literally explode their money, let them. The US can't reload its missile batteries at sea, so after a little battering, they have to just leave. Thus one of the poorest countries in the world has defeated the world's richest navy, by exploiting its profligacy.

This is the fate of American Empire in general. They pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002 and thought they could hide behind anti-ballistic missile defenses, bombing whoever they pleased, selling expensive 'defense' systems to the vassals they put in the firing line in the first place. But now Russia, Iran, and even Yemen have hypersonic missiles that can take fast, unpredictable paths, effectively under most missile defenses. Everybody has drones that can overwhelm defenses with sheer quantity. America has developed defenses against the ballistic missiles of last century, but anything not taking a basic parabolic arc is a diabolical problem to them.

Missile defense will undoubtably evolve in response to these new threats, but when Russia can turn old, 'dumb' bombs into glide missiles with cheap attachments, they can simply overwhelm them with quantity. When wedding drones can be weaponized (in revenge for all the weddings Empire bombed), expensive air defenses actually become a liability. The best missile defense is actually diplomacy, which is incomprehensible to Empire these days. They still believe in a technological solution to their own illogical terrorism. It's like someone who builds more and more elaborate bear-protection suits, and never once considers not poking bears in the first place.

This is the state of modern missile defense, which is really nothing new. As my historical thesis goes, same shit, different day. Offense and defense have always co-evolved in competition; a stronger sword begets a stronger shield, a longer bow begets a higher wall, missiles beget missile defence in general. Offensive weapons evolve with defensive weapons in a constant mating dance of death. The long history of humans fucking themselves is fertile ground for the reproduction of weapons. But it is all ultimately folly.

The best defense is not being offensive in the first place. This is something the White Empire simply cannot understand, having gotten away with it for so long. But now the natives have rockets and rocket launchers, and all the missile defenses in the world can't protect their hegemony. All that's left is hubris, which is not at all the same thing. They're throwing gold after tin, while slaughtering defenseless children. This is simply the pride before the fall, as the worst missile offenders become missile defenseless.