If the United States and its allies can rush to Israel’s defense in the skies, shooting down dozens of drones and missiles fired by Iran, why can’t they do the same for Ukraine — which has suffered under Russia’s missile attacks for more than two years?
That’s the question Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his country’s staunchest backers in the West were asking on Monday, hours after the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and Jordan helped Israel shoot down some 300 drones and missiles fired by Iran in retaliation after Israel killed its senior military commanders in Syria.
“European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles," Zelenskyy wrote Monday evening in a post on X.
From what analysis I’ve read, the Iranian strike largely landed in empty desert. It was intended as a show of force, not a provocative attack.
And one thing it showed that the US and Israel genuinely struggle with is that Iran can launch a $100 missile that US/Israel needs a $10,000 defensive rocket to knock down. Yeah, they got 99% of their targets. But they exhausted a fortune to achieve it.
Ukraine has the same problem with Russia. They have to expend enormous amounts of defensive weaponry to counter an incoming Russian strike. And Russia can simply wear them down by targeting over a large border and at a long range.
Because Russia and Iran are operating as war-time at-cost economies, while the US and Israel are running their militaries as for-profit private enterprises, the scale and scope of operations they’re capable of can eclipse more advanced nations simply because they aren’t running every weapons purchase through a dozen middle men.
Ukraine tried to operate as a war-time at-cost economy, but the Russians were too good at targeting their domestic factories and munitions plants. So now they’re out of domestic weaponry and forced to rely on foreign exports.
Israel doesn’t have this problem which - paradoxically - makes them a better market for US arms sales (they’ve got more money to spend and they can afford to spend it at market rate rather than cost).
If Dems retake the House, they’ll start re-gearing the war economy to be at-cost rather than for-profit. Republicans won’t. But that’s what’s really at stake here.