alt Hacker NewsI don't see how drones don't make all conflicts into WW1. 100 Billion dollars buys about 3.3 million Shaheds assuming the manufacturing is not made more efficient. There are many questions on whether its possible to spend 100 billion dollars on Shaheds, or launch all of them. But this is more than enough to destroy any logistics and transportation infrastructure necessary for a ground invasion.
There are many many countries who can afford 100 billion dollars for stored military equipment that has a long shelf life. The US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.
Replies
From my extremely uneducated point of view it seems like that is true and probably what is already happening in Ukraine. However, at some point robots might be able to take and hold ground, and maybe they can be designed to require only decentralized, automated infrastructure to operate that is hard to strike economically even with drones. At that point, may the side with the most robots win.
> US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.
50000 * 10000 * 12 is 6B/year. I was surprised, but I suppose that passes the smell test for a ~1T/year defense budget.
I think that what makes it not WWI is that not even trenches really save you from precision munitions.