Defence procurement bungles and wins

[LP]

In the event of a hostile amphibious invasion taking advantage of remote coastline areas, you'd think UAVs would be very effective in disrupting advances on populated areas. And they'd be a lot cheaper than F35s.

It's interesting, they are certainly effective, but maybe not as cheap as people think. A military grade drone, one that is comms secure and hardened against hacking, EMP, laser, etc., etc., can cost million$ For every F35 there would be dozens or even hundreds of drones required to do the same job, modern fighter aircraft are really a platform, so a simple comparison is not really valid.

Also, I note that launching drones is not simple either, not from the technical perspective but from a tactical perspective, the smaller drones do not have ranges measured in thousands of kilometres. As you launch a drone it comes up on / over the horizon as a bright RF source, launch too many from one location and it's like putting a pin on the map for your enemy to reference. So generally they have to be transported and launched from diverse locations.