Yemen’s Houthi armed group has shot down seven US Reaper drones worth more than $200m in recent weeks, marking the most significant material loss yet in Washington’s campaign against the fighters.

Three of the drones were lost in the past week alone, suggesting an improvement in the Houthis’ ability to strike high-altitude US aircraft.

The drones – each costing about $30m – were conducting surveillance or attack missions when they crashed into water or land.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    24 hours ago

    It costs $30m to build a drone and another $1-3m to actually send it to a war zone on the other side of the world. Then each mission involves firing a $150k piece of ordinance at targets that may or may not be a valid military target. All that so you can kill a few dozen Houthis, or perhaps the family or friends of those Houthis. Perhaps a parent or an infant child. And what are these people worth? Nothing.

    The important thing to remember when doing all this back-of-the-envelop math is to always remember human life - particularly human life in a country as remote and foreign as Yemen - HAS. NO. VALUE. That’s why we’re gleefully obliterating it at every opportunity. We render their limbs from their bodies with some of the most technologically advanced killing machines in existence to prove once and for all that they are not people. They should not exist. They all must die.

    Same with Palestine. A country of roughly 5M people, but the lives of these people are worthless. Same with Haiti. Same with Iraq and Afghanistan. Same with Somali and Sudan and Syria and Libya. They are expendable. They are disposable. They are, if anything, a tax on the well-being of the better, brighter, more noble, more fundamentally human population of English-speaking and Western-aligned peoples dedicated to sending us mineral resources at below the market clearing rate.

    What we are buying with that $30m drone is a beautiful perfect world expunged of the evil rebellious creatures keeping us from all those wonderful minerals. And they have the fucking nerve to knock seven of our Wunderwaffe from the skies? This only further justifies the genocide.

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Armed with $300 of temu armor and society era weapons. They’re business monsters so maybe they should analyze that return on investment.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        23 hours ago

        Well, this is all someone’s profit at some point. Killing brown people is just a fringe benefit. Every rocket we fire and bomb we drop is ultimately counted as points on GDP and revenue for the DOW.