As Watling himself puts it: “Unhardened UAVs are disposable tools like munitions and get consumed very rapidly. You need them in your force and you need them to be cheap.”
For decades, Western armies have relied on a few expensive, ‘exquisite’ high-tech platforms, and that includes drones. This conflict of disposable drones may lead to a radical change in military procurement towards the many and the cheap.
They’re not going to be in a pile, though. They’re still going to be individual drones lying in ditches in no-man’s land. Hardly a compelling photo-op.
We have reports that russia is running out of materials, surely if the drones are flying around they would be closer to their front lines, so easier opportunity to recover.
I mean just logically, russia is not doing so well in the information war, so I assumed they would use any opportunity to showcase their achievements, like they have done with the several bradleys/leos destroyed. They were milking that footage for a week at least.
So to me its weird that they have not tried to improve morale with such statistics. But I obviously have no clue on combat morale.