Drone Warfare Forces US Carriers Away from Iran, Expert Claims

The United States has reportedly pulled its aircraft carriers away from Iran's coastline due to the growing threat posed by drone warfare, Dmitry Kuzyakin, chief designer at the Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions believes.

Kuzyakin argues that the economics of modern warfare have shifted dramatically. The cost of a single US missile can equal the production of hundreds of Iranian kamikaze drones, he noted.

The Economics of Drone Warfare

"When the price of one Patriot missile equals the cost of producing 200 drones, the arithmetic of war changes,” the expert wrote for the Izvestia newspaper. He suggested that the US decision to reposition its carriers reflects not the invulnerability of Iranian Shahed drones, but the difficulty of repelling large-scale swarm attacks.

According to Kuzyakin, the mass production of simple technologies has turned them into a decisive threat. He added that even the potential use of nuclear weapons would not guarantee victory under such conditions.

Growing Evidence of Strategic Vulnerability

Earlier, The War Zone reported that a US KC-135R aerial refueling aircraft damaged during an Iranian strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia had arrived at RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom.

In April, military analyst Dmitry Kornev also highlighted the emergence of "cost asymmetry” in the conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran. He argued that the technological gap between adversaries has evolved into an economic trap, where cheaper systems can effectively counter far more expensive military assets.