Ah yes, but then you also have to add GDP + targetting/defense radii.

Great Britian alone has 10x the GDP of Iran. So an interceptor costing 10:1 is (at first approx) breakeven just for GB, who would have to intercept much less than the total manufacturing capability of Iran anyway.

Then you have every rich nation surrounding Iran as well. Let alone the USA who cannot be reached but throws their weight behind interceptions.

And finally "total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation, but GB, western EU, USA, et al, are likely to only increase production if an engagement played out.

The math looks catastrophic on paper at 10:1, but I sincerely doubt that's the right analysis. An interceptor is worth what you're protecting, not what the attacking asset costs, so long as you can keep producing them.

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orwin 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation

That was what Russia thought about Ukraine. Effectively, they needed East European tanks and munitions for the first two years, but munitions production ramped up, and now they produce more per year that what they received over two years. A resource-rich country like the Iran that is effectively fight a death war (that's the controlling party belief) can keep up a very long time. The fact that the US tried to get the Kurds and the Baloch/Sistanni involved show that they are well aware that the way out is through a permanent civil war and the country fracturation. And imho, while Kurds accepting to be betrayed by the US for the third time in less than two decade won't have any real long term impact, an independent Baluchistan can easily destabilise Pakistan. Also, that would be a third country in the area in which the Hanafi jurisprudence is pushing hard towards Deobandi/Salafi, and personally I'd rather have any Shi'a school than that.

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DoctorOetker 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> And imho, while Kurds accepting to be betrayed by the US for the third time in less than two decade won't have any real long term impact, an independent Baluchistan can easily destabilise Pakistan.

Not to confuse my prediction from prescription, but what prevents all the neighboring (direct or indirect over a sea) nation states from deciding to divide Iran like Germany was during the cold war? Thats not an independent Balochistan, at some point they will want reparations for all the damage, terrorism and intimidation they have incurred from Iran...

At some point the people in Iran will have to be forced to teach their innocent children the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials: there is no excuse in order to stop thinking, just following orders is not a valid legal defense.

Every population has the moral responsibility to keep the local aspiring autocrats in check, because if they don't and external power deconstructs the regime, the onus will be on the population!

	▲	orwin 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Saddam was paid (in chemical weapons, but not only) by the US to invade Iran, it didn't work well for them at the time, despite the MEK helping them with hidden routes and a lot of local support they don't have anymore. The current Iraki leadership isn't stable enough to do the same anyway. Afghanistan and Pakistan are in a small war that will have some impact on Baluchistan, but official Pakistani ground troops are a no-no, because it will leave ground for the Taliban. Also India invested a lot in Baluchistan biggest port, and Pakistan threatening their investments will probably have them react (India love nothing more than helping Pakistan adversaries). Koweït is too small, Irak Kurds need to secure their autonomous region, and US promised are worth basically nothing. Azerbaijan used Iranian drones and artillery against Armenia like 2 years ago (maybe 3), and Iran apologised publicly after sending a missile to them. All of this to say: only the US have the manpower and will for a ground invasion.
	▲	maxglute 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Probably scale, a few million jews, arabs - qataris and emirates and saudi royalty is unlikely enough to deconstruct Iran, unlike Germany vs multiple comparably or larger sized regional peers. Iran is 100m large country + 100s millions more shia core / axis of resistance supressed by small regional satraps empowered by outside forces. There are simply 10x more Muslims in region suppressed for decades under same framework where arc of history would would look kindly on Iran+co for destroying US influence and the greater Israeli project and look poorly upon satraps and compradors for failing their spiritual and moral duty of reclaiming the levant. The Nuremburg trials will be reserved for those who failed Islam for secular glitz and kindly on those who protected the faith. Iran simply has the size and spiritual/historic/civilization mandate to win the regional narrative and "moral" war versus gulf monarchs that choose to coexist with Israel. Gulf monarchs who are btw also definitionally autocrats whose contract to bribe populous with petro state proceeds goes away if this war drags on, of all autocrats they are the most likely to fall and least likely to normalize against autocrat regime change. This not to say Iran is "correct/moral" just they have scale and discourse legitimacy Germany didn't.

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Thaxll 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is wrong, for example Iran have thousands of Shahed drones, they cost almost nothing to build, to intercept just one the ratio is way way higher that 1:10. A single patriot missile is in the multi millions $ range.

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jandrewrogers 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They aren't using Patriots on Shahed drones. There are much cheaper purpose-built systems for that. While not practical everywhere, helicopter gun systems have proven effective in both the Middle East and Ukraine.

APKWS is quite popular and those cost less than the drones. A single fighter jet can carry 40. The Europeans are developing equivalent systems.

While not widely deployed yet, the US has operational laser-based anti-drone systems that have been shooting down Shahed class drone for a couple years now.

Ballistic missiles are more costly to deal with but ballistic missiles also cost much more.

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jvanderbot 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, what I said is not wrong just because there exists other things to intercept, that just changes the ratio.

You still have to consider whether it's worth it to spend a patriot missile to intercept a drone, vs letting the drone hit, say, a billion dollar radar installation or a dozen troops.

On the manufacturing side, nobody said that all drones are intercepted with patriots. You have to look at the avg cost to intercept vs the average cost to attack, and if the ratio of those avg costs (across all attack/interceptions) is, say 100:1, and the combined GDP of the defending nations vs Iran is 1000:1, then what is the problem?

There are lower cost ways to intercept already on the market and being rolled out. See for example: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/09/11/uk-to-p...

This whole "cost analysis of patriot vs drone" examines the worst case scenario at a fixed point in time and ignores layered defenses, the effect of combined GDP, learning, diminishing capabilities of attackers, and improvements by defenders.

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lejalv 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But your analysis should also include what fraction of GDP diverted to arms (or what increase in gas price) is acceptable on either side.

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wat10000 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For one thing, the entire world economy is not even close to 1000x Iran’s.

	▲	hedora 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		$1M / $30 (patriot cost / drone cost) is only 33x. The US economy is about 31x larger than Iran's. So, to first order approximation, we could build enough patriots to sustainably stop their drones. However, we haven't converted our economy to just producing Patriots. We can only produce 600 / year. Drone production rates are orders of magnitude higher than that. As for second order effects, the interception probabilities are less than one, so in this world where we're producing a million patriots per year, tens of thousands of drones (at minimum) are hitting their targets. On top of that, the offensive drones are more easily transported + retargeted, so the patriots would need to be stationed pretty much everywhere, and their adversary chooses where the attacks actually happen. The only winning move is not to play.