Sometimes I write a post where I don’t know the topic well enough to discuss it expertly but I understand it enough to point to the outlines of the debate and where it find more information. This is one of those posts. Here I want to discuss drones and missiles deployed by Iran and the expensive and high tech weapons the US and its allies use to shoot them down. This applies right now in the Persian Gulf where Iran is using a strategy of ‘asymmetric attrition’. But it would apply in even more complicated and hard to address ways if and when the US got into a major conflict with, say, China over Taiwan. It’s that basic challenge of asymmetric warfare for a Great Power like the United States: the US relies on often quite effective but very expensive and hard to replace weaponry. Iran’s clunky but effective drones cost in the low 5-figures to produce and the US missile defense tech which can costs millions for a single shot.
