This is an interesting analysis but it ignores the fact that although a cheap drone can destroy an $11MM tank, 2, 000 cheap drones do not give the possessor of the drones the same power as having a tank.
Even if Iran or whoever can produce $800 rockets that cost $50k to destroy, we are able to outspend them by such a gigantic margin that it still won’t matter. They could never bankrupt us this way. They will go bankrupt first.
We spend double Irans entire GDP just on defense. Even if they switched to 100% wartime production, we could outspend them forever. Who cares if a tank costs $11MM? We spend nearly $1T per year on defense. Good luck beating that with cheap rockets.
War doesn’t really work this way - we spend $1T on defense but the economic advantage to the US by being the de facto world power is so far in excess of that the cost would be worth it at 10x the price. We could “lose” a million dollars per missile and it still wouldn’t matter.
This article seems to be missing the point. Perhaps slow and expensive armored vehicles as well as vulnerable soldiers on foot should now be relegated strictly to behind-the-wire defense, and that the only "safe" front-line forces are cheap and expendable drones and killer robots that will rapidly evolve to combat each other. The era of castles, knights, and trenches has passed, and so has heavy combined arms leading the charge.
Even if Iran or whoever can produce $800 rockets that cost $50k to destroy, we are able to outspend them by such a gigantic margin that it still won’t matter. They could never bankrupt us this way. They will go bankrupt first.
We spend double Irans entire GDP just on defense. Even if they switched to 100% wartime production, we could outspend them forever. Who cares if a tank costs $11MM? We spend nearly $1T per year on defense. Good luck beating that with cheap rockets.
War doesn’t really work this way - we spend $1T on defense but the economic advantage to the US by being the de facto world power is so far in excess of that the cost would be worth it at 10x the price. We could “lose” a million dollars per missile and it still wouldn’t matter.