F-35 took nearly 3 decades.

As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.

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mandevil 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_Uncrewed_Combat_Attac... is almost a straight copy of the infamous Iranian Shahed for ~$35,000 USD. (Perhaps the US sourced their Shahed from Ukraine, though that, like many things about this program, has not been officially discussed.)

	▲	tatjam an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder, at the point of such a simple thing as the Saheed (there are videos online of some of its electronics, not saying it's bad, indeed it's cheap and effective, but it's dirt simple), does the USA really need to reverse engineer it? Is it just a way to prevent project management turning the thing into a million dollar per unit thing?

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junofan 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean looking at the state of that conflict… the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great. Maybe other countries will want to go with this kind of attritable aircraft concept instead.

	▲	krisoft 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great In what sense do you mean that?
	▲	esseph 37 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Drones are the number one killer between all weapons deployed in Ukraine. More than artillery or airstrikes.