Comment by janalsncm
13 days ago
Frankly, the DoD likely spent something like 5-8 trillion dollars over the last 10 years.
If we establish that drone manufacturing is a matter of national security, it seems critically important to understand why domestic production keeps failing and fix those problems rather than just giving up.
If it's a matter of national security, why would it be made available to the American consumer? They'd have more than enough business from the DoD, and wouldn't have to compete on price.
I guess there’s two possibly related questions. One, should military drones be available to consumers and two, why does price matter. On the first, you don’t have to make them available to consumers and probably shouldn’t for the highest end drones.
But B2C is a forcing function that pushes costs down. Military budgets aren’t infinite, and better manufacturing techniques mean more drones in a shorter period of time independent of cost.