Link: https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/russias-once-feared-lancet-drones-are-turning-into-a-multimillion-dollar-failure-23782

"Cheap drones beat everything" is a really tired narrative

In general yes, cheap mass-produced weapon beats expensive one. But there are uses for expensive and capable loitering munitions like lancet. For a drone designed 10 years ago it works better than expected.
It's good to remeber that gubarev and the other one are in a shitting match right now, so it's not 100% reliable info.

In general yes, cheap mass-produced weapon beats expensive one.

No it depends entirely on the situation, Exhibit A russia is being forced to drive the cost of their flying bomb up into cruise missile cost territory with their jet powered ones because cheaper mass produced flying bombs powered by piston engines are worse.

Russia used to be able to get away with a $30,000 or even less drone, now they are forced to build much more expensive jet powered drones that cost $60,000+ because the cheap drone swarm tactic just isn't that effective against layered air defense that is properly set up.

Only if the air defense ammo is still cheaper than the drones. If you push the price of the attack drone below that of the interceptor you win even when it is shot down

....right and russia is being forced to do the opposite and drive up the per unit cost of their flying bombs, which means the strategy is losing.

Conversely Ukraine has been able to hunt and destroy russian air defenses sufficiently in order to keep the per unit cost of their flying bombs low.

These two contrasting points demonstrate that the cheap drone swarm is an ineffective strategy by itself and is rather better considered as a new way to leverage the ability to suppress enemy air defenses.

lol, are you kidding? Kab is the most effective weapon that they have, essentially there is nothing that can be done about them, they are cheap as dirt, the only way to kill them is to kill the carrier. Jet powered ones are made to enlarge operational distance, kometa is being enlarged to force through Lima. And they are precise - a few meters don't make a lot of difference when your main objective is terror.

Ah wait you mean geran family not flying bombs, they were extremely effective for almost 3 years, that's a lot in a war. And geran 5 is extremely effective for now, and they have banderols that seem to be even more effective. Also original shahed/geran is still in use and have it's place.

When a single middle strike drone is somewhere between $5-7k with miniscule explosive, 20+ kilos of explosive that runs for hundreds kilometers is very hard to destroy isn't a bad bargain.

Kab is the most effective weapon that they have, essentially there is nothing that can be done about them

Fighter-bomber launched glide bombs are the most effective weapon russia has for artillery pressure on the front because they have so thoroughly lost the counter battery artillery war against Ukraine and thus have been forced to lean heavily on their fragile expensive fighter-bomber fleet to apply the bulk of the artillery pressure rather than cannons and truck launched missiles.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/17/ukraine-found-russian-artillerys-weak-spot-and-destroyed-250-systems-in-two-nights/

https://united24media.com/latest-news/ukraine-developing-domestic-counter-battery-radar-modeled-on-us-antpq-36-14614

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/8/27/2265662/community/What-Russian-Artillery-Doing/

Which do you think is more cost effective, sustainable and scalable solution to apply artillery pressure? Airplanes that are essentially the high performance race cars of the sky with extraordinarily expensive components or big metal tubes lugged around by regular trucks and logistics?

This is not a sustainable strategy giving russia's degraded aviation industry but even worse for russia this strategy fails because traditional airpower doctrine relied on static airbase infrastructure seperated by vast distances for defense of the infrastructure necessaey to field high intensity bombing operations, and long range strike drones have revealed distance is no longer any safeguard against small drones.

When a single middle strike drone is somewhere between $5-7k

That is how much a single part costs on a jet powered flying bomb/jet powered middle strike drone.....

You are under impression that there are rational actor that wages a war and not r*ssia, essentially they don't care about anything as long as they can pressure Ukraine into surrender. It works fine for them they'll take 10-15-20 years and will go into another war. And KABs aren't just artillery they are extremely long range artillery.

Russia isn't special in being an irrational actor and the methods of war I am elucidating are perpendicular to how russia or putin feels about it.

Everything they use is effective, they are using tactics when deploying different weapons, e.g. mentioned KABs aren't used by themselves, they areoften preceeded by a missiles, then KABs follow after quick responderz arrive, then strike drones follow. Same with shahed type drones, and molniya, they carry explosives and they carry fpvs so they can strike with both. Idea here is make as much damage as possible, they don't care about money, lives, or expediency.

they don’t care about money, lives, or expediency.

Why do you keep falling into magical thinking about this? The factors of money, lives and expediency do not care about how russia thinks of them, not the other way around. These are undeniable aspects of reality, not abstract concepts.