Michael: Defending against cheap drones requires affordable mass-attritable systems
Emil Michael · The Pentagon's AI Plan + Behind the Anthropic Fight — With Under Secretary of War Emil Michael · Apr 15, 2026 · at 23:15
Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, discusses the military lessons learned from cost imbalances in recent drone warfare in the Middle East.
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“And to protect your exquisite targets on your side against a very cheap drone, you have to use expensive countermeasures. And so the lesson there is how do you turn the dial from, maybe we should have more mass attritable, Weapons like drones or counter drones that are affordable so that the cost ratios are similar as opposed to a country that can afford cheaper stuff being able to threaten you know, expensive assets on our side.”
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