Cost of a Predator Drone: $4,500,000 million
Cost of “Skygrabber” program, which could up until earlier this year, hack into the Predator drone live feed: $25.95
Seeing the US military’s killer robots rendered useless by Islamist script-kiddies: Priceless
There is actually a serious point here, all snark aside. The cost of offensive warfare is sky-rocketing, while at the same time, the cost of defensive warfare is dropping. For example, the drones mentioned are actually considered a cheap option by the United States, and this is certainly the case when compared to, say, an F-15 (especially if you include the cost of training and looking after the pilot). Meanwhile, insurgencies that are keeping the USA bogged down in two countries are being fought with Kalashnikovs, RPGs, car-bombs, cell phones and off-the-shelf software and computers.
And what do all these things have in common? As Nolan’s Joker would say, they’re cheap. Furthermore, because they are cheap, such groups can raise the money through methods like drug trafficking, instead of relying on vastly more expensive methods to gain the sums needed to support larger armed forces.
At what point does the cost of warfare become more than can possibly be gained from it? The suggestion is that the United States has already begun to reach this point. And when a broken, inefficient system goes up against more efficient, faster acting systems…well, it doesn’t really need to be elaborated on, does it?
Alamut 