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That's true, but when things get cheaper you can afford to lose a lot of them. Suddenly every container vessel is suspect. That trick has a lot of potential and harbors are relatively soft targets and easily accessible from just outside international waters. You could do a shitload of damage to most countries by just targeting a few key locations well within the reach of a basic drone and what sub $1000 drones can do is changing by the day.

Armor and artillery are basically useless against a fleet of seaborne drones.

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you don't have to do a lot of damage to have a dramatic effect either. Imagine an airport near the coast, you don't have to destroy the airport but if one drone flattens the tires on one out of ever 50 planes on a runway the airport might as well be a smoldering crater. It's like a ddos attack and similar to what's happening in Iran today. All it takes is one drone to hit one tanker and a > 0% of it happening again and no one is sailing because their payload is uninsurable. In the same way, all it takes is one drone to disable one airliner and a credible threat it could happen again and no plane is taking off from that airport ever again.
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