Drone numbers need control capacity and replacement stocks

A drone force needs enough operators, communications bandwidth and coordination capacity to use the vehicles it builds. An inventory of 10,000 drones offers little immediate mass if only ten can be controlled at once. Increasing simultaneous control capacity creates a further stockpile requirement. In the illustrative calculation, expending 10,000 drones in one salvo would exhaust an inventory of that size immediately. A million drones would provide 100 such salvos, showing why production totals and sustained combat capacity need separate consideration.