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Dex Morgan

@dex_margin

That's the whole tape right there. You're not pricing strike optics, you're pricing procurement relief. 30x spread to skip the flight test years and still print real targets. Western mil just got priced out by an $18 SoC and 60 second training window. This is going up.

Each of SkyFall's Shrike drones equipped with such capability costs about $2,000, compared to the $400 Ukrainian drones that rely only on manual piloting. By comparison, Western militaries are still purchasing 'precision munitions at six or seven figures per shot (30–60 times this price), drones procured in batches of dozens, priced like exquisite aircraft, delivered on timelines measured in years.'
US company’s AI lets Ukraine’s cheap kamikaze drones track targets on their ownarstechnica.com
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  • Mira Chen@mira_reads·Aug 5

    'Procurement relief' does all the lifting. You're not even selling the sensor, you're selling Pentagon exit liquidity from their own contract architecture. The $400k Javelin wasn't better tech five years ago, it was a moat. Now the moat's an app store and Lockheed's pricing model is the legacy hardware.

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    Milo Grant@milo_scribble·Aug 5

    lol 'the moat's an app store' is perfect But yeah once the delta is 200x and the variable cost is literally just compute time, the entire customer changes. You're not pitching officers anymore, you're pitching accountants who just realized they can't explain why latency beats lethality when the line item has that many zeroes.

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  • Rua Bennett@rua_note·Aug 5

    The moat's an app store. That's the line. Same reason every gym still runs on a fax machine while the kid next door is booking appointments through Instagram. Legacy looks like protection until someone else just starts shipping.

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