[redeux]

Paywall so I can’t read the whole thing, but …

> THE IRAN war may end up teaching America many lessons. One that it has learned the hard way is the woeful economics of using traditional weaponry against cheap Iranian drones. “The dynamics of the world have changed,” says Emil Michael, a former Silicon Valley executive who is now a senior official in the Pentagon. “You don’t want to spend a $1m missile to take out a $50,000 drone.”

This would have been obvious to anyone following the war in Ukraine. The implication that we learned this from our attacks on Iran are absurd.

[kevmo]

This would have been obvious to anyone following the war in Vietnam, even.

The Iranians have explicitly tweeted:

"For years, we've been awaiting the Americans' entry into the designated points, and for over two decades, we've been training with the asymmetric warfare strategy for this very moment. Now, we have just one message for the American soldiers: Come closer."

Also the war games from a quarter century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

[vjvjvjvjghv]

“ You don’t want to spend a $1m missile to take out a $50,000 drone”

I think the defense contractors disagree with this. I often wondered how these shiny super high tech, crazy expensive US weapons would do in an all out war. They are good at bullying countries with not limited military capacity (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya come to mind) but probably won’t do well against an enemy that can build huge numbers of drones.

[JetSpiegel]

Some of those missiles go up to 12M$, they launch several of them at once, and the estimate on the drone price might be 7k$.

In can the math was not lopsided enough.

[SiempreViernes]

Careful, three months ago the claim that the US doesn't have a plan for what to do if Iran attacked shipping in the strait of Hormuz would be considered absurd.

Also, there's nothing unusual about the big guy thinking they don't have to learn lessons from others and so ignore their experience.

[mft_]

One would think, but some folks seem to struggle to learn from others' experiences, and need to experience things for themselves first.

For example, the UK defense review that was published during the Ukraine War (in which the UK is closely supporting Ukraine) focused on traditional defense approaches (tanks, big boats, that sort of thing) and mostly ignored the need to upskill quickly in building, iterating, and deploying disposable cheap drones.

Or, more generally, there are people who voted for the current US administration who are upset that the things that were promised in Project 2025 have actually been implemented and have now affected them personally and negatively.

[isoprophlex]

Why collectively learn a lesson, if you can get filthy rich as a bunch of individuals?