[pekk]

The cost of drones, including associated equipment and personnel, will be much higher than just paying locals to move goods in the normal ways (truck, boat, donkey, wheelbarrow, etc.) Less risk that you will squash houses and children or litter the landscape with containers. Even so, international operations are expensive. You'll probably have to grease some palms. Then there's the fact that this kind of major cash influx attracts attention from men who are very shrewd and skilled at diverting cash flows. Watch as your dollars line pockets and pay for things you never imagined.

The computers that aren't simply sold for profit will become e-waste with nowhere to plug them in, no local use for them, nobody to maintain them. Your water purifiers will break down, requiring expensive parts to fix, and they may not have been useful to begin with. Your seeds will typically fail to grow, and do nothing about all the other barriers to farming. Medicines without medical care are typically not very useful either. The kind of stuff that is usually dumped like this is cheap trash that the donors would never use, and the locals know it. They could infer it, from the way it is being dumped like worthless trash, and they undervalue it accordingly. When you dump shipping containers full of (say) cheap shoes and t-shirts, you put all the local cobblers and tailors out of business.

When all of this fails or is even seen to do harm, despite costing astronomical sums of money, that will do severe long-term damage to the cause of foreign aid.

[DanBC]

> Less risk that you will squash houses and children or litter the landscape with containers.

Sadly, some drops of food aid used similar colours as cluster munitions. About 10% of cluster bomblets don't explode. This has, obviously, caused some death and maiming.

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/arms/cluster-bck1031...

> A key United Nations clearance expert has expressed concern about the similarity of the coloring of the yellow BLU-97/B cluster bomblets and the small yellow food aid parcels being airdropped in Afghanistan, noting that people are being encouraged to pick up the food parcels, but that picking up a bomblet would be lethal. He said, "Our experience in Kosovo showed us that children and youths were highly susceptible to the submunitions…. It is highly likely that many in Afghanistan will not know the difference between aerially delivered food aid and aerially delivered munitions." BBC Worldwide Monitoring reported that U.S. Psychological Operations units broadcast a radio message warning Afghan civilians of the similar yellow color of the cluster bomblets and the food packages, noting that cluster bombs will not be dropped in areas where food is air-dropped but stating, "[W]e do not wish to see an innocent civilian mistake the bombs for food bags and take it away believing that it might contain food."

[mnbcvx]

I do realize that drones are not the optimum delivery method for something like this. A big C-130 would probably be better for most all cases.

You already argued why handing out big sums of cash is a bad idea. As you said, shrewd people will be quick to take it. Foreign aid is already little more than a bribe, usually entirely siphoned off by the country's elite. Centralizing the goods in a warehouse or truck makes them easier for a bad actor to steal as well. And as you said, you'd have to grease some palms to get anything happening at all.

As for the rest of what you said, I don't agree at all. A water purifier (or perhaps I should have said a water filter) can be the size of a straw, with no electrical component or moving pieces, and will last for decades[1]. The medical care to accompany the medicines will come with education, and foreign doctors will no longer fear their hospital being blown to pieces. Your cobbler example makes no sense -- as far as I know Afghanistan does not have a thriving computer manufacturing economy. Obviously seeds will be chosen appropriately for the climate of the region they are delivered to.

[1] https://trendguardian.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/lifestraw_...

So, I didn't necessarily mean my initial comment literally. The core of the idea is that direct aid is a much better solution than bombs and military occupation.