#defense-cost-curve

#defense-cost-curve

The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.

Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'

"According to my calculations, those first few days cost at least $16 billion. We are spending down munitions at an extraordinarily fast pace-to put it in perspective, we fired more Patriot missiles in the first four days of the Iran war than we have given to Ukraine over the past four years."

Sen. Rick Scott insisted on spending cuts to offset the new enforcement funding, while Sen. Tommy Tuberville emphasized the need for military funding and other GOP priorities.

The U.S. has discovered that air superiority and missile defense systems designed to counter tens/hundreds of aircraft and missiles is insufficient against asymmetric attacks of thousands of drones.

"To accelerate current weapons development timelines, DARPA is considering an alternative development paradigm to increase the nation's magazine depth and breadth."

The White House is seeking a 10 percent cut to nondefense spending, proposing a reduction of $73 billion from federal programs outside the military, targeting environmental initiatives.

Hegseth's actions reflect a broader agenda to reshape the military's leadership, prioritizing loyalty to his political beliefs over military experience and competence.

"Damage to critical energy infrastructure is another factor that has risen considerably and, in Qatar's case, will be costly both in terms of the cost of repair and foregone revenues from the planned expansion of LNG output, which was set to come onstream later this year and next year."

Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.

The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better. He added that the US has a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons, insisting, Wars can be fought forever,' and very successfully, using just these supplies.

China accounts for roughly 90% of global NdPr production, yet even there, most of that output comes from just 2 hard rock mines and refineries. Outside China, only Mountain Pass and Australia's Mount Weld operate at meaningful scale. That structural scarcity is MP's most durable competitive advantage.

But logistical consistency, like coherence and gravitas, does not characterize the new NDS. It is a document that supposedly nests within the National Security Strategy, explaining at greater length the implications of overall policy for the armed forces. The 2026 version does not do that. Rather, it restates some of the basic priorities of the Trump administration but for the most part confines itself to flattery of the president, insults, and bombast.