> Defense capabilities and straight up cost and looks to be that way for a good while.

You are correct, that today, we (USA) lack the capability to defend against this threat in a meaningful way.

> Multi billion dollar spend to “see” $2,000 aircraft

Look at how we deploy SOCOM assets today: smaller teams in the field far from fixed detection, a satellite to do this job, allows it to be tasked rather than having to deploy more, fixed detection equipment.

As part of a larger system it would be integrated by software: see the "Lattice" project from Anduril.

> and try to shoot it down with multi million dollar equipment.

DAWG, (Defense Autonomous Warfare Group ) has requested a billion dollar base budget and 54 billion of flexible spending (More than the USMC per year) for 2027.

There is also the "Replicator" program (I think headed for phase two) to get unit costs back down, and volume up. Facets of this are bleeding into other spend. Andurill openly talks about unit costs, and how few tools are needed to put together their low cost missiles (still more expensive than drones but... headed in the right direction).

As for the astronomical size of that budget: it's cheap to build an idea, what is hard is testing. The Ukrainians have a massive advantage here, in that they ship these things to the front line. It's much cheaper to trial things when you don't have to buy something to blow up, repeatedly.

The US military has been falling behind for 25 years now (especially the navy: if you want to understand why it has become schrodinger's straight read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 ) and I think what is going on in Ukraine has been eye opening for them.

Apples != oranges