Air Defense Effectiveness [i]

And some personal thoughts

Personal Thoughts

Dear community,

Today, I wanted to take the opportunity to give you an update on the blog and my personal situation. Moreover, I want to discuss a certain military topic with you.

Let’s go step by step through these topics.

The last three months were very hard for me. And I’m going to tell you why:

• Hard but very beautiful and great:

  We got our second child, our little daughter. Having one child was very easy to handle. Having two children is more demanding than if you multiply the effort of one child by two… 😊

  But it is a very beautiful time that my wife and I enjoy a lot!

• My Academic work:

  Currently, I’m teaching at two universities. In the previous weeks, I had lectures several times a week, and since I started to teach a new module, I also needed to create a new lecture concept/plan for this new module. Creating this is always very time-consuming.

  I quit at one university, and I will teach only at one university from the next semester onwards. Now, everything is quiet since I finished most of the lectures for this semester, as well as the creation of concepts.

• Starting my Business:

  I worked as a manager in an industrial enterprise until March of this year. In April, I quit and started preparations for my own business. In April, I attended the Hannover Fair (Hannover Messe) in Germany for the whole week. It is one of the biggest industrial fairs worldwide. I promoted my new business there with a lot of success.

  My new company and team are booked for more than a year now.

  So, it was a very hard time, and I invested a lot of hard work, but everything is good now. We start our first projects in June with orders worldwide.

  You can still contact me if you want to book me for events, discussions, or consultations for a single day. But I’m no longer available for projects.

What does this have to do with BMA?

I’m surprised how I managed to keep up writing with a regular schedule on BMA, but I feel obliged to deliver what I promised. And I will continue to do that. So, it was very hard, but somehow I managed it.

Nevertheless, we are going to expand next year in May. Then I will have far less time than now, which means the following: I will try to do everything I can (I might fail occasionally) to stick to a regular writing schedule, as I have done until now. But from May 1, 2025, I will officially no longer stick to any schedule. You will still be able most likely to support me, but I will openly (and publicly) communicate that I will not publish on any set schedule. It is possible that you will only read a new article from month to month or even less. On the other hand, it is also possible that nothing will change if things go smoothly depending on how the situation turns out.

But for now, until May 1, 2025, everything will be as usual. I wanted to inform you about that in advance.

I have started a new article which will be published this week.

At this point, I want to thank you all for your support during this difficult time. You helped me a lot. Especially through the few months now, when I have no main income source until my first projects start. Thank you! You are the best and I always enjoy the discussions with you!

Air Defense Effectiveness

I usually discuss this kind of topic in the free section. However, since it might be a little controversial, I decided to present my thoughts only with my paid community. It won’t be an article, but rather, I’m going to share a few thoughts with you.

In the last several months, or let’s say the last four years, we learned a lot about the capabilities of air defense assets. And we learned especially a lot about their effectiveness.

I must admit that I expected a slightly higher effectiveness of Russian and American (Western) air defenses. Following their technical specifications, one would assume a higher kill rate of attacking air assets. Nevertheless, reality taught us something different.

As is usual with other assets such as cars or cutting machines, there are indeed specifications that are entirely valid under laboratory conditions but quite wrong under field conditions. That is not unusual.

Still, I think I expected “something more” if we talk about machines that meant to ensure the protection of humans or a city or country.

In fact, I’m not surprised that some improvised drones penetrated Western air defenses across the Middle East with ease. Not because these air defenses are so bad. I don’t think that they are. But they are not world-class. No, I think there are technical and physical explanations for this phenomenon. The Russians are also struggling with drones.

I’m rather surprised about the effectiveness of cruise and ballistic missiles on both the Russian and Western sides. In other words, I’m surprised about the respective ineffectiveness of Russian and Western Air Defense assets against these types of targets. These are no new types of targets.

They should have been studied very well. And still, we see regular missile attacks on Crimea that penetrate the air defenses and destroy their targets. And no, we are not talking about mass attacks to saturate the air defenses (see the Iranian attack on Israel). No. We are talking about 10-15 missiles per strike. We are talking about one of the most secure air spaces in the world, Crimea. In theory, Crimea should be able to fend off mass attacks by NATO bombers with up to 400 missiles, in theory.

Okay, of course. These are special operations where NATO is exactly calculating the perfect time window and flight path of these missiles to increase the success rate. Nevertheless, we are still talking about Crimea.

The same goes for Western assets in the Middle East, often being penetrated by far fewer sophisticated missiles.

So, no, I’m not dooming about Russia or the West.

I just wanted to communicate some observations about “reality.”

I’d like to hear your thoughts on that. Feel free to discuss it in the comment section.

I will discuss it with our expert, Mike Mihajlovic, and when I have a conclusion, I will write an article in the free section about it. Or maybe Mike will do it. We’ll see.

THANK YOU, GUYS, FOR EVERYTHING.

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[i] Edited by Piquet (EditPiquet@gmail.com)