Comment by mc32
14 days ago
Single-use means $20K - $50K, not $2K. What militaries are competing against with the Houthis and in Ukraine, is 20 - 50K drones and right now taking them down with $2MM missiles or a 50K drone taking out a 2MM tank. Dial those numbers up and you can see how the imbalance in cost is unsustainable. They don't need drones to be 2K.
I think the military perspective at this point is that they want drones at all price points. Those 20-50k drones, I assume you mean like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZALA_Lancet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136?
The cost estimates for those are quite wide, but in terms of raw materials even those low-cost prices are kind of absurd right? $20,000 for a few motors, batteries, basically a modern smartphone and 20-40 pounds of explosive? The military expects that they will get a lot cheaper, which means you need to be able to counter them at least as cheaply.
I don't understand why every estimate assumes Russian and Iranian engineers work for free and only include the raw material/components cost of these weapons systems.
R&D costs makes up the vast majority of the cost of Western weapons systems.
They don't. The estimates are typically 3x-4x the cost of the raw materials. Besides, for these weapons it's the marginal cost that counts.
> I think the military perspective at this point is that they want drones at all price points.
I think you're 100% right here.
It may seem absurd, but something that can take out a main battle tank would be well worth $20,000. An M1A2 Abrams costs $24 million. The latest model Russian T-90 is around $4 million. A Chinese Type 99 is around $2.5 million. The asymmetry is clear.
Some of that $20,000 is making sure it works reliably under any conceivable weather conditions, after it's been stuck in a storage container at +50 C/-30C for weeks or months, etc.
On the other hand, if you're just doing reconnaissance, maybe you'd rather send a swarm of 20 $1,000 drones instead (in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy's countermeasures).
UA is showing the world what can be done with <$1k drones. China has that market locked down right now, presumably this legislation is aiming at that market. This isn't about Reaper-scale drones.