Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel
11 days ago
I assume one of the goals of this is to change that by making it feasible for US companies to compete at least on the domestic market.
Ukraine has shown that having domestic at-scale consumer drone production is a critical military capability. I bet part of the motivation behind this is protectionism to make sure this capability can be built up. Otherwise any war against China starts with China being able to make many thousands of recon aircraft / precision guided projectiles per day, likely with mostly or entirely domestic supply chains, without even going to a war economy, while the US cannot manufacture the same class of weapon at any comparable scale.
>China being able to make many thousands of recon aircraft / precision guided projectiles per day
The US might be able to stop an invasion of Taiwan with just naval and air assets. My guess is that battery-powered drones don't have enough range to be a significant threat against naval assets (even for recon) and don't have enough speed to be relevant against air assets that are not themselves battery-powered drones.
It's scary to think about what China could do with the $100 million-$150 million the US spends on a single F-35.