The trip underscored what they already knew: America was vulnerable. Russia and China produced millions of drones annually, while the United States barely made 100,000.
It almost feels as if the US need(s|ed) to be a bit more involved in the Ukraine war in order to keep their finger on the pulse of how conflicts are evolving, especially in regards to Russia's capabilities (and vulnerabilities).
Related:
Monroe-Anderson didn’t just read about Ukraine’s drone revolution—he flew to Kyiv to learn from it. That’s the critical insight here: battlefield necessity drove innovation cycles that lapped Western procurement systems entirely. Ukrainian operators testing drones under live fire generated iterative feedback loops traditional defense contractors couldn’t match.
This has nothing to do with keeping up with the intel from the conflict. This is entirely the product of our manufacturing issues. Manufacturing drove our success in WW2. Now we can't even manufacture low cost low(ish) tech drones at 1/10th the volume of potential adversaries.
Our military manufacturing volume was not very high before WW2. It wasn't until the potential adversaries became actual adversaries that we ramped it up.
If a similar sort of nation-uniting threat arose, to the extent that we'd be willing to take extreme measures like halting all manufacturing of civilian automobiles, drone production could be massively increased.
Of course, the problem is that the willingness is unlikely to be there until a serious war breaks out, and then we may not have the luxury of taking a couple of years to ramp up.
> “Vendors in the United States would laugh at us,” Hichwa said. American-made radios could cost $10,000 when he needed something for $30. The founders realized they’d have to build components themselves and seek suppliers outside the defense industry. Instead of using computer chips common in military equipment that cost hundreds of dollars, Neros used chips designed for parking meters at $1 each.
By the time your certification process represents 99.7%+ of your total costs, there's a chance it's hurting you more than it's helping.
Lots of Ukrainian commanders would happily trade FPV drones with grenades attached for mortar teams with lots of ammo and effective aircover.
Modern militaries need drones, but the swarms that everyone gushes over aren't that effective when a 1000 pound gorilla like the US Army turns up to play.
An F-16 costs US$200 million and can be destroyed by a US$500 FPV drone with a grenade attached, as Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force.
Surely you are correct that commanders would happily trade one FPV drone for one properly equipped F-16, even without the mortars. But it isn't clear that they would trade 400,000 FPV drones for the F-16, and that's the trade actually on offer.
The US Army has never fought drone swarms, because they have never been fielded in any war, probably because they don't work very well yet; that's why the Ukrainians are dinking around with FPV. The US Army has never faced even the kind of FPV drone war we're seeing in Ukraine. Their materiel has, though, since they shipped a lot of it to the Ukrainians, and it doesn't seem to be doing very well. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are trying to keep their tanks off the front lines when they can, and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones.
It's tough to imagine a scenario where the US is so bogged down on a front line that a few miles of range on a Ukraine style FPV drone is going to be a critical weapon, especially if this scenario also requires that the US not be able to perform SEAD, destroy GPS jamming, or hit the target with JDAM/Hellfires/ETC.
Having a Mavic or Mini drone that can perform recon, a small drone capable of delivering a grenade sized payload to hit entrenched targets, a larger drone that can offer BDA and recon for artillery/MLRS, or the "Loyal Wingman" airforce drones are all reasonable ideas. But I just don't see the US standing up a dedicated FPV regiment - it doesn't align with the rest of the force's composition or likely missions.
Essentially it's this dichotomy: If we need to project force overseas, it's existing at the end of a massive chain of logistics, air/sea power and lift capability, and a lot of dollars. Whether the drone costs 500, 1000, or 10,000 doesn't really matter at that point because the soldier operating it and the logistics to get him there has already cost hundreds of thousands, and even a $50K drone-bomb is cheaper than the cost of the JDAM, F-35 flight time, pilot, and carrier that would otherwise be used to hit the target.
If instead we are fighting on the homefront, battling over tens of miles of heartland and building drones from parts scavenged from a bombed out Best Buy or imported from some imaginary, untouched part of the world (because what would the world's supply chain look like in this scenario??), all assumptions go out the window and the idea of mass-producing any armament at all is impossible.
A disparate drone swarm taking out power distribution stations (I don't know what they're officially called) all over the country would be devastating. Lessons from https://cybersquirrel1.com/.
(I think there's an 'imagination' and/or 'perspective' limitation when you're already the gorilla. You think like a gorilla, you're unable to think like a parasite)
It's the same reason why US military doctrine worries very little about jamming.
If something is jamming, the tactical response is to destroy the jammer.
If someone is drone attacking you, the tactical response is to destroy the drone launches.
Apparently, air defense is good enough to make the aviation use too expensive too quickly. It's possible that the US can saturate the air defense by the sheer number of airplanes, accepting heavy casualties in return. But what if it fails?
Afghanistan proves your point.
... maybe. maybe not. the same army lost against stubborn Afghan shepherds. and before that against Vietnamese farmers.
This grates a little after the utter debacle of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya ...
I'd go 180 degrees the other way. The US needs to be less involved so it can focus on the cancerous legal corruption of all the rackets. Without dealing with that the wrong things will always be built for the wrong reasons at huge cost.
No relation!
An artillery shell is like $800. THAT's the competition for an FPV drone. Drones have an advantage that they are cheap precision, which makes for great propaganda videos when you fly one into someone's face, but the cheap drones have limited effectiveness, and there's tons of downsides like needing dirt cheap parts (IE dependence on China) and needing trained operators and iffy effectiveness.
Those drones you see made out of cheap 3D printed parts are mostly about harassment and both Ukraine and Russia know they are easy to jam and not particularly effective as weapons (great for ISR though). They've only been useful on very soft targets.
No, $800 drones are not taking out tanks, not in a meaningful quantity. The war in Ukraine is still showing that the majority of tanks (and people) still die to mines and artillery. Things like a cheap BONUS round would be a real killer.
By the time you harden a drone against EM warfare and get it big enough to carry a warhead actually able to take out a hardened target, you have a shitty cruise missile, and it costs as much as other options. There is something to the drones running fiber optic cables, but it might also just be the next tick in the tick-tock of warfare evolution. Everything you do in war, every new system or trick or action causes a reaction.
Russia's Lancet, which is an actual somewhat cheap loitering munition that actually can harm a tank (sometimes?) is tens of thousands of dollars.
Tiny drones are not a revolution. They are an iteration on the concept of a hand grenade. Just like hand grenades, they do not revolutionize warfare.
And that's in an airspace that neither Russia nor Ukraine has strong control over. China and the USA do not intend to have "contested" airspace in any war, and are building thousand strong air fleets to that end. Consider that China is still investing in the same kind of war theory that the US insisted the past 40 years: Stealth, battlespace management, air power. If they had good evidence any of those things were bad plans, why would they do that? China seems to think that say, stealth is not defeated by cheap cameras and AI. If you don't understand how they came to that conclusion, you should consider you might not know as much about Stealth plane doctrine as you think.
There's already been failures trying to do things "Cheap", because of normal and expected battlefield conditions. The Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb program was about taking dirt cheap iron bombs and slapping commodity electronics on it for cheap precision, and it utterly failed because Russia has respectable Electronic warfare capabilities. Jamming is primarily physics, so overcoming it is either a big fuck off transmitter and reciever setup, or trying to pretend to not be doing anything by being spread spectrum and bouncing around enough that it's hard to keep up or even know you are there. Both options are expensive. Meanwhile, anything GPS guided is doomed to fail. By pure physics reasons, it's really hard to make something resistant to GPS jamming.
Again, we haven't even seen the first major tock to the tick of deploying drones at scale. You can expect SPAAG to be cool again! Maybe US will build https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M163_VADS again; Anything with a dirt cheap weapon and whatever off the shelf radar we have. Right now Ukraine and Russia are still in the "No real defense" spectrum, but nobody else intends to be there.
Russia uses plenty of artillery shells daily even today. Its own production easily outpaces NATO countries and they buy a lot from NK in addition to that.
Though they try to increase amount of "smart" munitions like Krasnopol, since they can be more cost effective than "dumb" shelling when you have guidance from drones.
>both Ukraine and Russia know they are easy to jam
Tell that to fiber drones. They are used in such large amounts that entire fields get covered in fiber. Even radio controlled drones quickly evolve with wing-based drones acting as re-translators and carriers.
And in the near future (year or two) we will see mass adoption of drones which are able to fly autonomously with on-board computer vision. Initially it will be just guidance during final stages after the target is locked, but later we will see drone swarms launched into the enemy's direction which autonomously search and destroy everything what moves.
>They've only been useful on very soft targets.
Sure. And this is why on both sides shiny tanks and MRAPs from parades and military exercises now look like Mad Max vehicles.
>The Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb program was about taking dirt cheap iron bombs and slapping commodity electronics on it for cheap precision
Meanwhile Russia found a huge success with its UPMK-modified FABs.
The situation may change significantly if an effective and cheap (kinetic or laser) anti-drone defense is developed and mass-deployed, but for now the sword is much stronger than the shield.
By the time it hits the ground target already moved, drone on the other hand will follow and allow you to aim at weak spots/soft targets of opportunity. That <$1000 drone IS your cheap Bonus round.
>mostly about harassment and both Ukraine and Russia know they are easy to jam and not particularly effective
30K dead russians every month is quite the harassment
>China and the USA do not intend to have "contested" airspace
everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. How many Reaper shot down by Houthis? 7? 9?
I've emailed the mods to ask them to replace the post's URL.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/business/neros-military-d... ("The 20-Somethings Who Raised $121 Million to Build Military Drones" by Farah Stockman)
