[Goose]

Also, whether damage is done by debris or by an intact drone is a distinction without a difference.  If Ukraine's aim is to damage the refineries, and Russia's (presumably) is to prevent such damage, then what causes the damage is an academic distinction, that is maybe important to the Russian air defense units trying to deflect blame.

BC

Yes indeed, if you break it you break it, doesn't make much difference how.

I have to disagree :-). It makes an immense and strategically significant difference. If Russia is capable of downing 100% of a 70 drone Ukraine strike without involving the VKS and without major redeployment of its SHORAD assets (which would certainly have been detected and elicited commentary) then Russia is on the verge of rendering Ukraine's drone offensive moot. If the current approach is 100% effective but destroys the drones too late so that debris cause too much damage, just re-deploy that defense over a slightly wider radius. Such a redeployment may require a few more assets, but since no "special" effort has been required so far it would be almost certain that those assets could easily be made available. Ukraine will then be totally unable to inflict damage on critical Russian infrastructure. Game over.

Of course, I don't believe that damage is from falling debris. The drones are relatively small and most of them are plastic/fiberglass/composite construction. Not much metal besides the engine. It is possible that an intact explosives package would land on the target. It isn't clear that if it did so, it would even explode. These drones aren't very fast. The also don't fly very high. Debris aren't aerodynamic, they have lots of drag. For debris to do such damage would require that the drones producing them were destroyed in very close proximity to the target. It would be impossible to not have lots of reports of such shoot-downs and we would have phone camera videos galore. I have found one such article, which links to the following  video. As the article states

Footage showing the successful interception of Ukraine’s long-range one-way attack drones by Russian ground-based air defenses is not generally common and this one reinforces the challenge posed by these relentless Ukrainian attacks against Russian infrastructure and military facilities.

The debris from this intercept are clearly too small to cause much damage and aren't going very far anyway. Russia is indeed spreading propaganda, thank goodness.

[Goose]

Also, whether damage is done by debris or by an intact drone is a distinction without a difference.  If Ukraine's aim is to damage the refineries, and Russia's (presumably) is to prevent such damage, then what causes the damage is an academic distinction, that is maybe important to the Russian air defense units trying to deflect blame.

BC

Yes indeed, if you break it you break it, doesn't make much difference how.

I have to disagree :-). It makes an immense and strategically significant difference. If Russia is capable of downing 100% of a 70 drone Ukraine strike without involving the VKS and without major redeployment of its SHORAD assets (which would certainly have been detected and elicited commentary) then Russia is on the verge of rendering Ukraine's drone offensive moot. If the current approach is 100% effective but destroys the drones too late so that debris cause too much damage, just re-deploy that defense over a slightly wider radius. Such a redeployment may require a few more assets, but since no "special" effort has been required so far it would be almost certain that those assets could easily be made available. Ukraine will then be totally unable to inflict damage on critical Russian infrastructure. Game over.

Of course, I don't believe that damage is from falling debris. The drones are relatively small and most of them are plastic/fiberglass/composite construction. Not much metal besides the engine. It is possible that an intact explosives package would land on the target. It isn't clear that if it did so, it would even explode. These drones aren't very fast. The also don't fly very high. Debris aren't aerodynamic, they have lots of drag. For debris to do such damage would require that the drones producing them were destroyed in very close proximity to the target. It would be impossible to not have lots of reports of such shoot-downs and we would have phone camera videos galore. I have found one such article, which links to the following  video. As the article states

Footage showing the successful interception of Ukraine’s long-range one-way attack drones by Russian ground-based air defenses is not generally common and this one reinforces the challenge posed by these relentless Ukrainian attacks against Russian infrastructure and military facilities.

The debris from this intercept are clearly too small to cause much damage and aren't going very far anyway. Russia is indeed spreading propaganda, thank goodness.