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NPR.

The U.S. and Israel war with Iran has exposed a fascinating economic imbalance.

The US has been launching big, multi-million dollar missiles at Iranian targets.

Iran has fired back with wave upon wave of inexpensive drones, costing only thousands of dollars. And these drones don't

look anything like your hobby drone that you might use to take photos on a hike. In the language of

the military, the word drone basically means an unmanned aircraft. Iran Shah had 136s are typical

of these low-cost drones. Picture a short missile with wide wings and a propeller

at the end. It's about the size of a go-cart and buzzes like a moped scooter. It uses GPS to find a

target and fly into it, blowing it up. Jerry McGinn is an expert on military supply, and he says

this wave of drones is a deliberate strategy by Iran.

They launch a lot of drones to try to have the U.S. kind of use their more exquisite weapons to

knock them down and deplete our stores. Last year, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth was

already concerned about the pace of the U.S. producing new munitions. This asymmetry in battlefield spending risks worsening the weapon supply further.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Darian Woods. Today on the show, drone warfare economics. We learn about why the US spends so much on munitions

and how it's starting to learn from Iran. There is a mismatch between the US and Iran and how

they're fighting. It involves drones. The US has a lot more firepower, yes, but Iran has figured out how to make the war expensive for the U.S.

Now, the estimates vary, but it appears Iran has fired more than 2,000 traditional missiles in the current war.

Most have been intercepted, according to Israel and Gulf countries. But what sets Iran apart is its intensive drone

...