F-35 took nearly 3 decades.
As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.
As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.
The "Low accuracy, low speed, drone" concept has not changed since the V1 was invented by the Germans. Who then went ahead and built a more modern one back in the 80s. It should look very familiar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_DAR
It has all the bells and whistles you can recognize: GPS guidance, shitty small piston engine, lumbering speed, launched from a box truck using a small booster rocket.
See, the funny part is that the project was considered a failure because they were designed as anti-radar munitions, to just hang around until a radar transmitted and home in and destroy it. But that part of the project never figured out a good seeker.
It's just convergent evolution. That's what the design requirements imply.
Now, for the defense model of "western" nations (once again, not saying this is a bad thing nor wrong), a dumb warhead that just lands wherever and explodes makes no sense, no tactic would be enabled by it, so I guess the natural course of actions is you get heavier guidance requirements (case in point, radar homing), then you get operation in GPS-denied environment, then some other part of the army decides it needs to be carried on fighter jets, and another team wants it carried on frigates, and suddenly you have developed a million-€ loitering munition instead of a 10k€ V1 tactical-analogue!
In what sense do you mean that?
I think the problem is, apart from deploying nuclear weapons, air-based warfare campaigns have never really been all that effective at achieving strategic goals. Bombing stuff always seems promising, but in reality consequences are hard to predict due to complexity and results tend to be underwhelming.
For the same reason, cheap drones favor the defender IMO. A typical country can sustain quite a bit of damage on home soil, without losing will to fight and popular support. On the other hand, the attacking carrier on their coast line, becomes a singular target instrumental to the aggressor's war efforts. On the front, cheap drones freeze the contact line, which of course also benefits the defender.
Ukraine is very successful at keeping front lines relatively stable, despite man power shortages, due to drones, but neither Ukraine, nor Russia are very successful with their deep strike drone campaigns. I mean stuff is burning all over, but it changes little for ending the war so far. Train tracks are quickly back in operation, refineries repaired, stocks replenished, behavior patterns changed. Population experiencing reverse hedonistic adaptation to the new shitty normal. No models to predict resilience. Collapse may happen instantly or not at all.
Also pretty evident with the US/Israel aggression against Iran right now. It somehow always takes a lot more than expected to break your enemy in the deep.
Disagree completely 1,000,000%
For a few thousand dollars, you could attack a major highway or rail network or port a few times. The cost to defend would be astronomical compared to the cost of the attack.
Defense against cheap drones is the real drone cost, not the drone itself.
In the concrete instance of AA defense you are correct. You basically can't prevent drone damage actively, since every AA system can be easily overwhelmed and costs are very asymmetrical. However, the damage taken does not change much, strategically. Highways, rail tracks and the ports are quickly operational again. That's my point. See war in Ukraine. Nearly every refinery in Russia has been hit by drones. Complex structures, yet most of them are operational and sustained income damage is comparatively low. Of course that's expensive for Russia, but most of that economic damage is offloaded to the future. Same the other way around. Russia is successfully bombing Ukraine every day, yet the front line has hardly changed in years.
Also, the immediate AA defense perspective is a momentary picture. In the future we will see more underground/protected infrastructure immune to drones, as well as more symmetrical defense options (cheap drone on drone systems, lasers, ...). Cheap drones will not become bunker busters any time soon. Doctrines will also likely adapt more rapid initial escalation since nobody wants the prolonged attritional warfare expected with cheap drones.
Have drones drop explosives on the LA freeways for a week and see what happens.
It does a tiny amount of direct damage.
But the fallout, politically, economically, etc would be immense.
We're talking about billions spent across the country to try and harden critical industries and transportation, harden buildings, set up various types of drone point defense, funneled in as fast as it can be done least a politician not be reelected.
I'm sure somebody evil enough and creative enough could find a way to get the president to deploy the national guard across the country for an extended period. That's not at all cheap.
Just think about 9/11 for a sec. That could still happen today with a handful of drones.
Perhaps. But people forget the strategic reason, and ask why the quote is so high.
That said, of course some important components can't really be protected passively. E.g. comms and sigint will always have expensive, hard to replace antenna arrays exposed. But narrowing vulnerability down to those assets means you can focus scalable air defense and EW measures there.
Again, this benefits the country on the defense, especially against distant enemies, since you can build bunkers etc. at home, but can't really bring them along. And bunkers are one time investments, theoretically good for centuries (WWII/Soviet bunkers are still all over the place in Europe). I think, it would be viable for a peaceful country to almost entirely invest military funds in bunkers, drones, drone comms and crews/AI, and possibly nukes, to discourage any aggressor, while minimizing peacetime running costs . Additionally, highly decentralized renewable energy like solar and wind makes that sectors really hard to disrupt. Especially individual solar installations, battery storage and electric cars potentially enables quasi autarky for large portions of the population. Mighty "petrol station" Russia, got fucked by their reliance on ICE. Solar and wind will work even in nuclear wastelands, and replacing that solar panel is still cheaper than the cheap drone, which damaged it.
Tl;dr: You can restructure military doctrine and defense focus to make bunkers an easy sell to your citizens. In fact, going any other way should raise questions about aggressive ambitions.
Ukrainian yong adult in 2051: ouch!
Old Ukrainian: first time in a bunker? mind your head.
Making wars unending quagmires is an excellent form of preventing them. Had Putin known how bad it would turn out, I doubt an invasion would be his option of ensuring long term access to Sevastopol.
Then again, the US learned nothing from Ukraine and still attacked Iran - the Shahed country. Hopefully, China is a bit more considerate about Taiwan.