The Crumbling Foundation of America's Military

> If there is one major lesson to be drawn from the war in Ukraine, apart from the need for an ability to produce drones, munitions, and missiles fast, it’s that small and cheap beats big and expensive

I think that's typical of the technology maturation process. Early on, the technology is immature and simple, innovation is happening rapidly, and complex, integrated, refined R&D processes and machines have little value. Later, many lessons have been learned, the technology becomes more mature and complex, and big and expensive becomes much more powerful than small and cheap.

As of todoay, small and cheap drones make sense; but small and cheap manned fighter planes would be ridiculous. Some day the drones will be like the fighter planes in maturity and complexity.