US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the release build hash, we had to go through a full acceptance test. As you can imagine that incentivized only fixing important bugs, and even those we had to consider whether it was worth it or not. As a result there were a hole pile of bugs that we (and customers) ended up just living with.

On a separate note, I'm curious as to whether AI is making an inroads in that space. I would imagine very minimal, if at all, but very curious.

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability.

These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

there's a better way for 100% savings

just completely exit like Afghanistan

and remember all this military hardware eventually ends up in the hands of police departments domestically, next decade is going to be wild

$21 TRILLION spent on militarization 2001-2021

* https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...

imagine how much by 2031, at least double

ps. they are still executing fishermen without trial off Venezuela at a million dollars a pop