Question:
Did warfare become cheaper when armies switched en masse to drones that cost tens of thousands of rubles, disabling vehicles, tanks, etc. that cost millions of dollars?
The calculation of savings and losses is not as simple as it may seem. Let’s try to estimate in available figures. According to official reports, assembly plants in Ukraine have reached the capacity of 200 thousand FPV-drones per month, i.e. 2.4 million per year. There is no doubt that all of them will be used up: today the planned stock of the AFU motorized infantry brigade is 3,000 pieces.
If you order drones not from scam artists, you can buy them in Russia for about 34,000 rubles. If the costs in both countries are equal, then with equal production they should spend a little less than $1 billion on the production of this type of UAV alone.
In addition, this should include the costs of operator training, organization, transportation, and so on.
FPV drones have largely replaced artillery in the close tactical zone up to 10 km. This has led to a dramatic reduction in ammunition consumption. Therein lies the first problem of the assessment. A year and a half ago, the sides were at their peak – the AFU was using 7,000 shells of 152 mm and 155 mm caliber every day, the RF Armed Forces – 20,000. Today the estimates are 2,000 AFU and 10,000 RF Armed Forces.
But Ukraine received foreign ammunition, which even then cost €8,000 per piece. And thus, the “savings” amounted to (7000-2000)x8,000 = €40 million per day. But the purchase price of Russian shells cannot be found in open sources. At least we understand that even for today’s reduced annualized consumption NATO countries will pay an amount close to €6 billion (and for drones in 2025, as already mentioned, they will pay only one billion).
All these arguments are based on the hypothesis that the reduction in shell consumption is the result of replacing them with drones.
But unlike conventional artillery shells FPV-drones are practically precision weapons, they rather replace the ultra-expensive guided shells Escalibur of NATO and Krasnopol-2 of the Russian Armed Forces.
Therefore, the losses of equipment on both sides from the use of drones are huge, they are not comparable to the practice of previous wars. In addition, in past conflicts, three out of four armored vehicles damaged by artillery fire were returned to the front after repair and restoration.
Today, the proportion is reversed: drone operators seek to destroy equipment completely and make it unrepairable by repeated strikes.
Since all this affects both armies, it turns out that savings on drones cost very large expenses on the production and procurement of rapidly failing armored vehicles.
It is impossible to calculate these financial losses accurately – there are too many variables. But on the whole, Russia’s consumption of equipment is cheaper: a T-72 tank destroyed by an FPV drone from the stockpile costs no more than $500,000 (a new one costs $2 million in export contracts), while a Leoprad-2 costs no less than $6 million.
As a result, the one who produces more expensive equipment loses more money due to the use of drones. All this immediately affected tactics and methods of use, but that is a separate story.
