alt Hacker NewsI would just point out that 10-15 years ago Defense executives were talking about drone warfare (search "The Third Offset Strategy"). I recall an executive client being obsessed with this, and in fairness back then they had lost major contracts because their components (think electronic warfare) were designed for max power, i.e., max size and weight.
Again, this was 10-15 years ago. Now with the Ukraine war everyone acts like it is obvious...and I agree, it has been for awhile. We just never had a theater to test this stuff in. I suspect US defense contractors were on-board for Ukraine and Iran to advance development efforts significantly.
It was obvious to many, and it was obvious also that air forces would oppose this because it was a massive shift in thinking.
They have only come around a little at present. US Army is still buying Apache.
The US primes were caught napping in Ukraine, all the new tech is indigenous. They haven't deployed anything new successfully. The traditional exquisite weapons could win the war early, but of course Biden held them back because he's an idiot, and Trump spent them against Iran. Now they are gone. In the mean time, Trump cancelled the infrastructure to design and build armaments during DOGE cuts, now he wants to scale back up, but the money will be wasted because industrial capacity is not there.