rewrite this title How Cheap Drones Are Rewriting the Rules of War

Last night, Israel launched a major pre‑emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

While details are still coming in, early reports suggest that drones and precision munitions played a key role in the operation.

No matter the location, autonomous weapons have become a defining feature of modern warfare.

Case in point: early Tuesday morning, the sky over Ukraine lit up with orange tracers as drones and missiles rained down on that war-torn country.

Russia is estimated to have launched seven missiles and 315 drones across Ukraine that night.

Some were low-flying, GPS-guided Shahed variants, purchased from Iran and retrofitted for longer range and precision.

Some were decoys, designed to overwhelm air defenses with sheer volume.

Others were meant to punch holes in Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and damage the morale of its citizens.

It was a horrific attack, one of the largest in months. It was another escalation in a war that has gone on for far too long.

And it also represents a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare…

Modern Warfare

For decades, the U.S. and its NATO allies have invested in cutting-edge weapons systems. This kind of advanced tech usually costs tens of millions of dollars per unit and takes years to develop and deploy.

But Tuesday morning’s attack shows you how warfare in the modern era is changing.

Russia’s Shahed drones have a 2,000 kilometer range and carry a 40 kilogram high explosive payload.

But their range and firepower aren’t the most important factors here.

It’s their price tag.

Each Shahed drone is estimated to cost $35,000. That’s surprisingly cheap for modern weaponry.

It means that even though these Shahed drones hit their target less than 10 percent of the time, Russia can keep launching them by the dozens.

And that’s a big lesson the war in Ukraine is teaching the world.

In modern warfare, good enough and ready now often beats high-end and slow to arrive. This suggests the future of war will be one of both autonomy and affordability.

Ukraine has learned this lesson the hard way.

With the country facing a recruitment shortfall, it has responded with the only resource it has to combat Russia…

Its own army of inexpensive drones.

Many of these drones are handmade, built in garages or small industrial spaces in cities like Kyiv and Dnipro.

Some are advanced first-person view (FPV) models capable of navigating Russian jamming systems using on-board AI and real-time path correction.

But others are little more than hobby-grade quadcopters retrofitted with explosives.

The point is that many of these drones are cheap to produce, fast to build and easy to deploy at scale.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Ukrainian officials say they aim to produce over 1 million drones this year in an attempt to meet Russia’s record number of drone attacks.

So far they’ve experienced some major successes with them.

Swarms of Ukrainian drones have struck oil refineries deep inside Russia. They’ve hunted down tanks, artillery and mobile missile launchers. And they’ve taken out radar installations with $500 quadcopters instead of $100,000 cruise missiles.

The success of drones on both sides of this war is creating a radically different cost curve for warfare.

It’s also forcing the West to rethink its military-industrial strategy.

We’ve talked about Trump’s Golden Dome project, and how privatization should speed up the development of defense systems for a military that is perpetually in procurement.

But this proposed missile defense system would be a massive, expensive undertaking.

Still, there are plenty of signs that the West is learning you don’t necessarily need 10 perfect weapons to win a battle when 1,000 “good enough” weapons can get the job done.

For example, the Pentagon’s Replicator 1 initiative is a program aimed at deploying thousands of low-cost autonomous systems to counter Chinese military growth.

And in Europe, defense ministries are working with automakers like Renault to convert commercial manufacturing lines into drone assembly plants.

This shift to cheaper autonomous weaponry is one of the reasons Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) was my top stock recommendation of 2024…

Because it builds the software backbone for autonomous defense.

Modern warfare is all about understanding the battlefield faster than the enemy, and allocating autonomous systems accordingly.

Drones, loitering munitions, ground robots and autonomous logistics vehicles all require coordination.

Palantir is becoming the brain for that coordination.

The company’s technology is already helping Ukraine integrate intelligence from hundreds of sensors, satellites and battlefield devices. Palantir’s AI systems fuse this data into actionable targeting and response recommendations within seconds.

This kind of command-and-control advantage is precisely what’s needed when a war zone becomes a swarm environment.

And I believe it’s only going to become more relevant in the years ahead.

Here’s My Take

Earlier this year, Palantir secured a $480 million contract with the U.S. Army in part to deploy its TITAN battlefield intelligence system.

It also signed a separate deal with the U.K. Ministry of Defense for AI-driven operational planning tools.

And the company is expected to be a major player in developing Trump’s proposed Golden Dome defense system.

But I don’t want my excitement about Palantir’s technology — or its investment potential — to be mistaken for cheerleading.

War is a horror. And what is happening in Ukraine is nothing short of tragic.

But it’s important to understand that we’re witnessing the end of one military era and the beginning of another.

This new era is being defined by speed, adaptability and software.

That’s bound to create a new class of defense companies. And the winners will likely be the ones who make autonomous weapons smarter, cheaper and more deployable in massive quantities.

Let’s just hope the machines we build today ultimately serve to deter war instead of prolonging it.

Regards,

Ian KingChief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing

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