DoD forgot how to make things for pennies, and the institutional wall[1] against commodity is too high and too thick. It'll take a sizeable and strategic US defeat to overturn the applecart.

Best case, we manage to get a few decent drones for $10m a pop, but we still risk getting shanked by a frickin' mob of Chinese crap, because they don't need to go that far to get into theatre. I dig what Anduril's trying[2] to do with Roadrunner, but it's still too damn expensive - the hard kill mechanism still results in a total loss-of-vehicle.

[1] I.e., quivering mass of overpaid box checkers getting salaried as Analyst IIIs.

[2] There's some whispers, too, that Anduril isn't actually able to operationalize any of their widgets at any sort of scale, but I don't have any inside eyes on this. I DO see, though, that their fab capacity is . . not amazing.

> Bulk build and just overwhelm the manufacturing capacities of your enemies for pennies on the dollar.

Why would China not win this arms race?