Comment by jandrewrogers

Cheap drones are extremely limited in the kinds of targets they can reach and damage while evading air defenses. I understand this domain well.

Upgrading drones so that they have sufficient range and carry a sufficiently capable warhead and have a decent probability of surviving a modern air defense environment has been done many times by many countries. The price always comes in ~$1M/drone. It doesn't matter who builds it. Those economics get expensive fast for a weapon system you can't reuse. Much cheaper drones either have no useful range or are susceptible to even cheaper defenses; in either case they don't do any meaningful damage. That point on the price-performance curve wasn't picked at random by competent weapon designers.

Even the Ukrainian FP-5 is ~$0.5M, and it is significantly less capable than some western weapons with a similar profile.

The US has assumed drone swarm attacks would be a thing for decades and has both tested and fielded many systems purpose-built for those scenarios.