once AD stops the drones, missiles and aircraft can hit Ukr. infrastructure at will and everything goes to shit.
Nah, it's not that easy. 1st, UKR has unlimited stingers, thousands of them, so RUS can't fly within stinger engagement range, ever. And there are lots of anti-drone weapons besides SAMs, so the idea that drones will ever be able to operate with impunity is just wrong.
2nd, UKR isn't going to fire all their SAMs and just sit on empty getting pounded. That's how shit works in video games, not IRL. IRL, when your ammo starts to get low, you ration it and hold your fire until you get high probability of kill shots.
What this means is that even if UKR runs low on SAMs, Russia still won't start trying to fly with impunity to run UKR out of ammo by offering UKR easy air kills, because the cost in losses of expensive aircraft will always be unacceptable to RUS. RUS might start operating a little more aggressively and take baby steps to see what they can get away with until something gets shot down, then they'll back off again.
If UKR is low on SAMs, they'll stop using them on cruise missile attacks. After all, those attacks have been ineffective anyway and UKR has been able to repair the electric grid quickly.
Nah, it's not that easy. 1st, UKR has unlimited stingers, thousands of them, so RUS can't fly within stinger engagement range, ever. And there are lots of anti-drone weapons besides SAMs, so the idea that drones will ever be able to operate with impunity is just wrong.
2nd, UKR isn't going to fire all their SAMs and just sit on empty getting pounded. That's how shit works in video games, not IRL. IRL, when your ammo starts to get low, you ration it and hold your fire until you get high probability of kill shots.
What this means is that even if UKR runs low on SAMs, Russia still won't start trying to fly with impunity to run UKR out of ammo by offering UKR easy air kills, because the cost in losses of expensive aircraft will always be unacceptable to RUS. RUS might start operating a little more aggressively and take baby steps to see what they can get away with until something gets shot down, then they'll back off again.
If UKR is low on SAMs, they'll stop using them on cruise missile attacks. After all, those attacks have been ineffective anyway and UKR has been able to repair the electric grid quickly.