{"id":81358,"date":"2026-03-14T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=81358"},"modified":"2026-03-14T08:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T12:00:10","slug":"the-drone-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/the-drone-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"The Drone Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\"><em>From Fox News:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">As\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/world\/conflicts\/iran\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Iranian-designed Shahed drones<\/a> proliferate across battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East, relatively cheap unmanned aircraft are forcing the use of some of the world&#8217;s most expensive air defense systems, raising questions about the long-term sustainability of that approach.\u00a0The issue has taken on new urgency in the wake of Operation Epic Fury, as Iranian drones \u2014 widely estimated to cost $20,000 to $50,000 to manufacture \u2014 target U.S. forces and allied Gulf states across the region.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. and partner forces have relied on a mix of Patriot missiles, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense batteries, naval interceptors and other systems to blunt the attacks.<\/p>\n<div class=\"gsp_post_data\" \r\n\t            data-post_type=\"post\" \r\n\t            data-cat=\"news\" \r\n\t            data-modified=\"120\"\r\n\t            data-created=\"1773475210\"\r\n\t            data-title=\"The Drone Dilemma\" \r\n\t            data-home=\"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Fox News: As\u00a0Iranian-designed Shahed drones proliferate across battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East, relatively cheap unmanned aircraft are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-81358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}