Drones are going to revolutionize how nations and nonstate actors threaten the use of violence. First, they will make low-cost, high-credibility threats possible. Military planners have long assumed that high-cost actions risking blood, treasure and national reputation make the most credible threats. The classic example is U.S. Cold War “tripwire” forces in Germany. Risking 200,000 American lives signaled to the Soviets and to NATO allies that any Soviet invasion would kill many Americans, inevitably drawing the U.S. and its nuclear forces into war. Putting lives on the line proved that U.S. leaders meant it when they said the nuclear umbrella covered Europe.
Lethal drones, by comparison, are low-cost weapons They are remotely piloted (U.S. drones in Afghanistan have been piloted from Nevada), so they pose no risk of a pilot being shot down over enemy airspace. Each MQ-9 Reaper, one of the mainstays of the U.S. unmanned arsenal, costs about $14 million. By contrast, the Air Force’s newest manned aircraft, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is expected to cost between $148 million and $337 million per jet.
Boots on the ground aren’t cheap, either: According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the estimated all-in cost of a single deployed service member in Afghanistan in 2014 was $2.1 million.
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