Military analyst Mikhail Khodarenok believes that the current intensity of Russian strikes on Ukrainian defense industry facilities and Ukrainian Armed Forces sites cannot be called sufficient to achieve a decisive effect. He questioned assessments of such attacks as truly massive, drawing attention primarily to the total weight of the combat payload.

The expert gave a calculation based on drones. According to him, even if 500 drones are taken and each is assumed to carry 100 kilograms of combat payload, the total would be about 50 tons. Khodarenok compared this figure with two sorties by Tu-22M3 aircraft, each of which is capable of carrying approximately 24.5 tons of combat payload. Based on this, the analyst concluded that 500 drones, in such a calculation, do not look like an extremely large volume of strike assets.

He separately considered the use of ballistic missiles. According to the Ukrainian side, about 30 of them were launched. Khodarenok noted that with the warhead of one missile weighing about 400 kilograms, the total weight of explosives would be roughly 12 tons. In his assessment, this is comparable to only half the payload of one Tu-22M3.

As a result, the analyst concluded that the total amounted to about 62 tons of combat load. He questioned whether such a volume could be considered a massive strike if the task is to knock the enemy out of the war.

As a historical example, Khodarenok mentioned US actions in Vietnam. He recalled that during one of the operations, the total duration of strategic bomber takeoffs from air bases alone lasted about three hours.

In the expert’s opinion, an armed confrontation cannot be conducted «at half strength." He believes that the meaning of such a struggle comes down to who can inflict unacceptable losses on the enemy faster and force it to abandon the continuation of the war. Khodarenok said that either a powerful stream of strike assets is unleashed on the enemy, or the conflict may continue indefinitely.

At the same time, the analyst stressed that his reasoning was not criticism, but reflections on the nature of conducting combat operations. He also noted that Russia cannot fight Ukraine for «100 years.»

Based on this logic, Khodarenok believes that the intensity of Russian Armed Forces strikes on facilities on Ukrainian territory must be sharply increased.