Why mission kills matter in asymmetric warfare

Is a mission kill often the aim in asymmetric warfare?

Often. It takes less effort than sinking a ship and can be easier to disguise or deny.

Disabling a ship's mission systems can take substantially less effort than sinking it. In grey-zone operations, damage to a radar could be presented as an accident involving an ordinary civilian drone. The hypothetical example uses commercial availability and limited surviving wreckage to explain the difficulty of identifying the operator. A ship could lose an essential capability without the attack being easy to attribute.