This is a video mostly about the evolution of drone technology. He actually goes over the history of drone starting at the relatively unsuccessful attempt to use balloons to drift bombs over a target.
What I found disquieting was the rapid evolution of warfare, so rapid that the USA has not adapted. More troubling is the Ukrainian method of munitions development and production. They have distributed production and distributed engineering and it is by competitive grants and contracts.
I have been trying to put my finger on it, maybe it is the twin ideas of “move fast and break things” and “real multiparty competition” Whatever it is, it has radically changed warfare, wartime production and maybe all industrial production.
As I am writing this, I am recalling the WW II America transformed its production in the war to some monster sized machine compared the industry before WW II. I am also remembering just how badly the European Allied nations were unprepared for the mechanized nature of the war that was unleashed on them.
I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel like the ant who as been hanging out on top of a tire and now the tire is moving.
What is probably most troubling for the American defense industry is that the drones are low cost items compared to things like the Patriot missiles.
Google AI:
The core concern for the American defense industry regarding low-cost drones is the fundamentally unsustainable cost-exchange ratio. Adversaries can deploy $20,000–$50,000 drones to overwhelm defenses, forcing the U.S. to expend Interceptor missiles that cost roughly $4 million per shot.
This, among other factors, creates several major challenges:
1. The Asymmetric “Cost War”
Economic Strain: The cost of protection far exceeds the cost of the threat, turning modern air defense into a losing economic battle.
Weaponized Cost: Adversaries use cheap, expendable drones, such as the Iranian-made Shahed-136, specifically to drive up the cost of conflict for the U.S. and its partners.
2. Supply Chain and Inventory Exhaustion
Lack of Magazine Depth: The U.S. has a limited number of high-end interceptors (e.g., Patriot, THAAD) in the region.
Production Bottlenecks: These specialized interceptors have long production lead times and are difficult to replace quickly compared to mass-produced, off-the-shelf components used in cheap drones.
Saturation Risks: Mass drone attacks are designed to exhaust missile defenses, leaving high-value assets exposed to subsequent strikes.
3. Shift in Operational Strategy
Obsolete Defense Tactics: Traditional, high-cost air defense systems were designed to counter manned aircraft and ballistic missiles, not swarms of low-cost drones.
Urgency for Alternatives: The high cost per interception is forcing the defense industry to rapidly pivot toward cheaper counter-drone technologies, such as lasers (e.g., the U.S. Army’s $3 laser tests) and electronic warfare, to avoid exhausting stocks.
The situation has created a “new economics of warfare,” where the ability to produce cheap, expendable weapons offers a strategic advantage over traditional, highly expensive defense technologies
The Captain
PS: Volodymyr Zelenskyy has cards and is making deals with the Gulf States!
Actually it is more interesting than that. The Ukrainians has flipped the equation so the cheap Russian Drones are being taken out by even cheaper Ukrainian drones. The really scary part is that Ukraine has developed a distributed manufacturing network that can iterate and ramp production up very quickly. It was only a few months ago that the design for the interceptor drone pictured, was an Australian (I think Australian) drone used to break a speed record, not designed for warfare.
Ideas that reorganize manufacturing cannot be isolated to a country or society. They can be adopted by anyone. The pro China channels I listen to talk about China’s advantage due to tight and physically close supply chain integration. This may be a next innovation on that.
Ukrainian culture has amongst its unique cultural roots the Cossacks, who were extremely oriented to non-hierarchical mobile warfare. see Cossacks - Wikipedia
the Ukrainian army has lots of skilled techies at the front fully empowered (internet connections,underground tech workshops with computers) and nicely incentivized to create both by desire to survive and by rewards and prizes. The Russians have next to zippo.
Yes. You have put your finger on a longer term issue that parallels the ai issue people keep talking about. Ukraine has achieved a stalemate in a war of attrition against a numerically superior Russia with its development of increasingly efficient affordable and deadly unmanned vehicles - drones and tanks. But Russia is hanging on and desperately copying those increasingly efficient and affordable weapons of war.
And in their desperate fight for survival ukraine is sharing their technology and growing battlefield expertise with Europe and the Middle East.
What are the long term consequences of a world full of affordable and deadly unmanned drones and vehicles in the hands of countries, super wealthy people and repressive police forces all over the world?
