The technical novelty of modern drones has been matched by a simpler arithmetic: relative cheapness. Small, improvised quadcopters and commercially inspired loitering munitions have collapsed the cost of putting explosive effects into the air. Estimates gathered from open reporting and technical analysis since 2022 place common Shahed-type loitering munitions in the tens of thousands of dollars per unit, while hobbyist and FPV strike rigs can be put together for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
That price collapse is not merely a trivia of engineering. It has produced what analysts call a cost-exchange problem: defenders are too often forced to expend high-value interceptors, manned sorties, or complex integrated-shield resources against very low-cost attackers. In Ukraine and in other recent theatres, examples abound where legacy air-defence assets or fighter sorties are used against inexpensive loitering munitions, a pattern that rapidly depletes expensive stocks and stresses logistics. The arithmetic here is blunt: routinely using multi-hundred-thousand or multi-million dollar interceptors to stop threats that cost a few thousand dollars each is unsustainable over time.
Proliferation amplifies the problem. Over the past several years the global market for armed and one-way unmanned systems has diversified beyond its old suppliers. New suppliers, commercial off-the-shelf components, and small producers mean that many more state and nonstate actors can field armed UAS at scale. Datasets tracking transfers and use show a step change in availability and variety of systems since 2020, with loitering munitions now a standard category of transfer and employment.
On the tactical edge the result is predictable. Cheap, small attackers invite either wasteful responses or doctrinal adaptation. When the only options are a million-dollar missile or inaction, commanders face uncomfortable choices: waste precious interceptors, accept occasional strikes on infrastructure, or improvise. Adaptive responses already visible in the field range from layered “jam then gun” doctrines to the improvised use of low-cost kinetic interceptors themselves. More sophisticated thinking, however, moves beyond one-for-one exchanges and asks what combination of sensors, electronic warfare, cheap attritable effectors, and doctrine can minimize both strikes and expense.
The economics also reshapes production and procurement logic. Where attrition warfare is possible, mass-producible, low-cost effectors and attritable counters make strategic sense. This is visible in the rapid emergence of small domestic drone makers and civil‑military small firms that scale production quickly. Procurement cycles optimized for expensive, exquisite systems are ill-suited to sustain high-volume exchanges of attritable robotics. The paradox for advanced militaries is that superior technology does not automatically translate into the optimal buying choice when the adversary industrializes low-cost weapons.
Yet money is not the only ledger. Cheap offensive systems lower the barrier to deniable or proxy operations, complicating escalation control and accountability. They also raise ethical and legal pressures: low-cost means wide access, and wide access invites use by actors with little institutional discipline. Democracies that accept attritable swarms as doctrine must confront questions about who decides expendability, how civilians and noncombatants are protected in higher-density battlespaces, and what thresholds for attribution and retaliation will persist. These are moral costs that do not appear on procurement spreadsheets but they shape strategy as surely as budgets do.
What should policy and practice change, given this unfolding economics? First, defence planning must assume abundance of attritable airborne threats and invest in layered, match-priced counters. That means more sensors, more electronic warfare and soft-kill capabilities, and more inexpensive kinetic interceptors that can be expended without strategic embarrassment. Second, stockpiles of premium interceptors should be conserved for high-value, high-speed threats; doctrine needs clear decision rules to avoid reflexive expenditure. Third, sustainment thinking must shift from long‑life capital goods toward continuous production capacity for low-cost effectors and countermeasures. Finally, arms control thinking must wake up to the reality that inexpensive offensive systems are proliferating and that cost asymmetries change both deterrence and escalation calculus. Evidence-based export controls, transparency measures, and negotiated norms for autonomous lethal systems will not be easy, but they are necessary complements to purely technical fixes.
The essential insight is uncomfortable but simple: the spread of cheap aerial effectors forces a reconsideration of what affordability means in war. Cheap kills do not make war cheap. They transform logistics, doctrine, procurement, and ethics. The successful response will not be a single silver-bullet system but a shift in thinking that aligns cost, capacity, and moral responsibility. Our purpose as scholars, engineers, and citizens must be to insist that economics not blind us to the deeper questions of control, accountability, and the kind of conflicts we are willing to accept.