i don't think the officers in charge of protecting the ship generally factor the material costs of doing so in to their decisions. they've got standing orders from above, and somewhere far up the chain, somebody traded off costs, lives, reputation, etc, etc. dude at the bottom has a set of rules.
Well they should factor in strategic loss by attrition. If you shoot a $1 million dollar missile at every $100 dollar drone, that’s a good way to lose a war.
Not sure about mid ranking officers, but captains who are in charge of ships think about such things.
HN conveniently forgets that a $100 dollar drone has a $100 performance. Smaller range, smaller payload, worse navigation electronics. You can probably kill unprotected civilians and protected soldiers if the explosives reach the head. That's scary for civilians but for the military? It's only as bad as bullets and missiles.
But does the 1 million dollar missile cost 1 million to build a second one?
Often times military cost per unit factors in a fixed R&D cost. It doesn't necessarily mean it literally cost 1 million in parts and labor to assemble the single missile.
All the Destroyers listed in the article definitely have 1 or 2 CIWS on board. I'm confident that would do the trick -- having seen them in action.
Additionally, each of those Destroyers have 7 (if I recall correctly) .50 caliber machine gun mounts around the perimeter of the ship, which could also probably handle the drones.
i don't think the officers in charge of protecting the ship generally factor the material costs of doing so in to their decisions. they've got standing orders from above, and somewhere far up the chain, somebody traded off costs, lives, reputation, etc, etc. dude at the bottom has a set of rules.