Fast alle russischen Raketen wurden über Nacht von F-16-Piloten abgefangen

This blows my mind. A plane intercepting a missile.

>“Out of 35 cruise missiles, 34 were shot down, mainly by F-16 aircraft intercepting these missiles, for which we thank our brave pilots.“

thats seriously impressive

Cruise missles can fly for several hours at a time. I bet its the coolest target practice these pilots will ever see

Average f16 air to air missile costs 1 million dollars. Vs 20k drone vs 3-6m per cruise missile.

A few things:

That article is poorly written, and there was some clarifications issues by the AFU. They mention Kinzhal, and infer that it was 34 of 35 of them shot down. They make it seem like it was all Kinzhals, which is impossible. A F-16 is not shooting down a Ballistic missile in its terminal phase. Thats not a capability that exists, even for top of the line U.S. A2A weapons. Another article that the AFU put out says it was 38 missiles, of which 35 were cruise missiles (Kalibr) and 3 were Kinzhals. F-16’s shooting down Kalibrs is totally possible and well within the capability of what they have. My guess is other systems took down those Kinzhals, like Patriot.

So, on to math, which I always find fascinating. They launched 38 Missiles, and 678 attack drones. Back of the napkin math here..

35 Kalibrs – $1M each or so.

3 Kinzhals – $10M each

678 Attack Drones – Don’t know the models here, but assuming Geran 2, cost is around $80k or so for each drone.

35M + 30M + $54M = $119M.

Russia likely spent $100M+ in one nights worth of attacks.

The world becomes more like Ace Combat every day apparently.

I’m very happy to see our (former) F16’s are being put to good use.

Now get more missiles to Ukrain.

That’s why stealth cruise missiles gives you such advantage. Harder to detect by radars, harder to hit by heat-seeking missiles. Good attack force is a combination of cheap missiles and high-end stealth missiles.