The Drone Gap Is a Manufacturing Gap
Designing an effective system is the easy part. Producing a hundred thousand of them a month is a different discipline entirely.
The lesson of recent conflicts is not that small uncrewed systems are decisive. It is that quantity is, and quantity is a manufacturing question.
Western defense industry is built to produce small numbers of extremely capable platforms, on long timelines, to exacting standards. That model is well suited to a carrier and poorly suited to an item that is expended by the thousand.
The constraint is components. Motors, batteries, optics, and control boards come from a supply base concentrated in a few places, and standing up alternatives takes years even with money committed.
Programs exist and are funded. What remains unresolved is whether a procurement system designed around certification and oversight can buy something disposable, which is a bureaucratic problem rather than an industrial one.
Gregor Vance writes for The 13th Bell on security. This piece was edited and fact checked before publication.
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