Mass production no longer guarantees lasting military value
Imagine the Pentagon buying 100,000 drones at $1,000 each and placing them in storage for future combat operations. On paper, such a purchase would represent an impressive achievement in mass production — precisely the kind of industrial effort increasingly demanded by the wars in Ukraine and the Gulf region.
The calculation changes dramatically, however, if only 30,000 drones are used before an adversary develops a countermeasure capable of neutralizing the remaining 70,000. At that point, the real cost of each drone that retains operational value rises sharply. The military would either have to discard the systems or spend additional money upgrading them.
This scenario challenges a long-standing assumption: that a lower unit price automatically produces greater combat power for every dollar spent. With small drones becoming increasingly central to military operations, the cost of technological obsolescence must be considered from the beginning.
Four principles shaped the industrial age
The Industrial Revolution enabled large-scale production through four core concepts: standardization, specialization, synchronization and certification.
Standardization made it easier to replace individual components and was later extended to equipment, processes and personnel. Specialization led to the development of tools and methods designed for specific parts or tasks. Synchronization ensured that components, equipment and processes operated in sequence and at the right time. Certification created confidence that parts, personnel and procedures met established requirements, reducing the need for constant oversight.
Together, these principles increased repeatability and made it possible to produce large quantities of goods. Establishing standards, developing specialized tools and certifying processes required major investments. Once those systems were established, however, producing another identical unit became relatively inexpensive.
The industrial-age model is losing its battlefield advantage
Throughout most of the Industrial Age, lower unit costs made it possible to purchase more tanks, bombs, trucks and aircraft. As a result, unit price became a proxy for the amount of combat power obtained for each dollar spent.
That relationship is no longer reliable. An inexpensive system produced in large numbers can become irrelevant before it is used if an adversary rapidly changes its tactics or introduces an effective countermeasure.
A new manufacturing revolution is accelerating design and production
A new manufacturing revolution is being driven by artificial intelligence, design-independent production tools, modelling and simulation, and digital engineering.
AI-assisted systems can help design small aircraft in a matter of minutes. Three-dimensional printers, robotic arms and computer numerical control machines no longer need to be configured for one specific design. They can produce an almost unlimited range of shapes and rapidly turn digitally generated concepts into physical systems.
Digital engineering helps synchronize rapid design changes with the rest of the engineering and manufacturing process.
Together, these technologies can reduce the time between design, construction, testing and field deployment from years to days or weeks. In the next major conflict, the ability to change and adapt quickly could become a decisive warfighting capability in its own right.
The speed advantage is also available to adversaries
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that these technologies do not accelerate only one side’s ability to adapt. They also allow adversaries to evolve at a similar pace.
As countermeasures appear more quickly, the operational lifespan of a fixed design becomes shorter. This creates a new strategic question: how can military forces avoid fielding equipment that is already obsolete, while forcing adversary systems into obsolescence before they can respond?
Drone experiments are testing rapid technology integration
Events such as Game of Drones are exploring how speed can be transformed into an operational advantage. In these competition-style events, airframe manufacturers, payload developers and algorithm specialists work together to address practical battlefield problems.
One recent experiment paired a company that produces sensors for Nintendo controllers with an aircraft design firm. The teams demonstrated that they could map the Earth’s magnetic field and use that information to create a new navigation tool for environments where GPS is unavailable.
At the same time, international operational exercises such as RIMPAC 2026 are testing the rapid manufacture of drones inside a theater of operations. The US Navy has described the effort as the largest advanced manufacturing demonstration in the history of the Department of War.
The tools required for adaptive manufacturing are already beginning to appear in military planning and concepts of operations.
Obsolescence involves more than abandoned hardware
Operational obsolescence occurs when changes in threats, technology or tactics reduce the combat value of a system.
In the 100,000-drone scenario, the remaining 70,000 aircraft might still be capable of flying. But if they can no longer perform the missions for which they were purchased, the military has paid for combat capability it can no longer use.
The losses extend beyond the price of the unusable drones. They also include logistics, storage, manufacturing capacity and the opportunity cost of tying up resources in systems that no longer meet operational requirements.
The key question should no longer be, “How cheaply can we build the next drone?” It should be, “How much combat value will this production lot deliver before its design has to change?”
Mass production must be combined with flexibility
Large-scale production will remain essential for components where repeatability offers the greatest advantages, including microelectronics and advanced sensors.
New manufacturing technologies can nevertheless preserve flexibility in a system’s structure and interfaces, allowing new components to be integrated quickly. Adaptation without scale would be insufficient, while mass production without flexibility could produce large inventories of obsolete systems.
The strategic goal is to outpace the adversary
The new operational objective should be to adapt faster than an adversary can develop and deploy countermeasures. If one military can modify, test and field new capabilities before its opponent can respond, manufacturing becomes a strategic weapon.
An industrial system that combines rapid adaptation with large-scale production could become as important as the weapons it produces.
Unit cost is no longer enough for acquisition decisions
Acquisition leaders should evaluate rapidly evolving systems on more than their price per unit.
They must also measure the risk of obsolescence by asking what share of an inventory is likely to deliver useful combat value before the design must be changed. Contracts with industry should reward flexibility, upgradeability and the ability to insert new technologies at speed.
Manufacturing must become part of the operational plan
In the future, manufacturing should no longer be treated as separate from military operations. Exercises such as RIMPAC should test more than whether forces can produce equipment close to the battlefield. They should examine the entire adaptation cycle.
That cycle includes identifying a new battlefield problem, integrating a new technology, redesigning the weapon system, manufacturing the revised version and delivering it to forces in combat.
Future stockpiles should contain components, not finished drones
Military forces will still need drones in quantities comparable to munitions. However, those systems cannot be stored for long periods in the same way as traditional ammunition because technology, threats and tactics are changing too quickly.
A better approach may be to stockpile components, materials, software and flexible manufacturing capacity. These resources would allow forces to build, integrate and adapt drones rapidly as battlefield conditions evolve.
Otherwise, military inventories may accumulate not combat power, but obsolete equipment.
Colonel Dustin Thomas leads the Unmanned Systems – Experimental Command, which oversees contracts for unmanned systems of all sizes and across all operational domains. He also manages the Blue List. He previously led Black Phoenix, an innovation team focused on designing, building and flying small unmanned systems in less than 24 hours, and founded Game of Drones, an experimentation event dedicated to rapidly integrating emerging technologies into autonomous systems.
