A simple interceptor-versus-drone price comparison misses the value of the tanker, cargo, crew, or warship that a successful defence preserves. Cheap attack methods can also lose their advantage once defenders identify communications dependencies and field countermeasures. The harder problem in the Red Sea example is scarcity, because too few warships are available to cover every route continuously. That shortfall grew from post-Cold-War assumptions that future conflicts would be discretionary and from shipbuilding rates too low to sustain affordable production throughput. Defensive technology therefore cannot be separated from fleet size, industrial continuity, and political willingness to deploy force.
Notable Point · 2:51:44-2:56:33
Why cheap drones do not make naval defence uneconomic
Defensive cost should be compared with the ship or cargo saved, while small post-Cold-War fleets make even effective countermeasures hard to position everywhere.