I've been watching Ukraine's war effort like the Zapruder film. Fascinating stuff. The Ukraine war has turned into a financial war, of sorts. The cheapest guided bomb costs roughly $50K. That is a Russian bomb. Americans can't fill a balloon with water for $50K. The most expensive drone Ukraine uses costs less than $1000. They use several models. They strap grenades to suicide drones using zip-ties and then pilot them into the target. It is brutally simple, comically cheap, and astonishingly effective. They use suicide drones on basically any moving target. Stationary targets don't merit a suicide drone. They have drones with release mechanisms to drop grenades on stationary targets. They can reliably target an open hatch from 10M above the asset. They have developed highly effective drone production facilities, in country. They have also developed special purpose bombs and grenades. When personnel flee a targeted asset and take cover in nearby fox hole or building, they have incendiary bombs that can be dropped into the location to cleanse the location of personnel. As I understand, they can take out essentially any Russian asset using a cheap drone. They have taken out Migs with drones, although it appears to be uncommon. Helicopters, tanks, APCs, MLRS, etc. are all vulnerable to drone attack. Ukraine can destroy a $5M tank or $16M helicopter for around $1000. What's more, they don't waste a lot of drones on missed targets. Misses are rare, as far as I understand.
The key to winning future wars will surely involve speeding up drone attacks. I expect that will be done with AI targeting. AI targeting will cost a lot of money in compute and software for the current generation but I suspect it will be sufficiently simple to allow a grass roots development for the generation that follows. NPUs should be able to do this on a single, consumer, device in the extreme near future (perhaps this year). Software won't be that difficult, either. Most of the vision / labeling software is already in place and I'm sure a bunch of groups are working on the rest. The conclusion is: I'm less bullish on armament companies than I used to be. There will always be money in war but I expect it to go down drastically.
I hope you're right. It's one of the industries I don't invest in and wouldn't. It would feel a bridge too far to me to benefit financially on weapons of destruction.
