NPR.
This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Adrian Ma.
And I'm Paddy Hirsch.
Over the course of history, key advances in technology have made fundamental changes in the way human beings wage war.
The longbow, gunpowder, the airplane, the tank, the nuke, and now the drone.
Drones that can fly in swarms over hundreds of miles.
Sea drones that can attack targets underwater or on the surface.
And land drones that can move across terrain and hold positions for days, as long as they have ammunition.
Drones were around before the wars in Ukraine and Iran,
but those conflicts have driven the proliferation of drone technology and made a fundamental change in the way we fight.
Drones are now embedded in warfare.
We reported earlier this year that combating small, cheap drones used by Iran has drained the U.S.
Military arsenal of expensive, high-tech weapons systems.
So you'd think the US, being the world's biggest arms maker and exporter, would be right on top of this, right?
Yeah, you would.
You'd think our defense businesses would be dominating the development and production of drones
and the weapons we need to fight them, but they're not.
And there are a lot of reasons for this.
On today's show, we're going to focus on just three.