Have Drones Narrowed the Military Power Gap Between Small and Medium-Sized Countries and Great Powers?

Drones are a gift from great powers to small countries.
Today, you see various small countries using drones to hammer great powers.
The fundamental reason is that one major Eastern power does not completely ban the export of critical drone components,
while another major Western power does not completely prohibit the export of chips that can be used in drones.

The biggest misconception many people have about drones is that they are cheap, low-end gadgets.
In fact, the exact opposite is true: drones are the culmination of modern high technology.
The only reason you can now buy a drone on Taobao for a few thousand yuan
is that the Eastern power’s technological boom, combined with economies of scale,
has driven the price down.

There are now large numbers of fiber-optic drones on the Russia–Ukraine battlefield.
The reason they have access to fiber-optic cable
is the Eastern power’s enormous fiber-optic production capacity.
And the reason the Eastern power possesses such vast production capacity
is that it has mastered the technology across the entire fiber-optic industry chain,
while its population of more than a billion people provides an immense domestic market for fiber optics.

It was this combination of technological breakthroughs and a vast market
that gave the Eastern power its enormous fiber-optic industrial chain.
Part of its surplus capacity became exports,
and that is what made fiber-optic drones possible in the Russia–Ukraine war.

It would be fundamentally impossible for a small country such as Ukraine to produce fiber optics independently.
The greatest technological barrier in fiber-optic manufacturing is the fiber preform,
which requires considerable technical expertise to produce.
A small country such as Ukraine simply lacks the capacity to develop such technology.

Even if a great power transferred the necessary technology,
building, operating, and maintaining a fiber-optic factory
would still require an investment starting in the billions of dollars—
a burden that the economy of a small country simply could not bear.

And fiber optics are only one component. As for everything else:

• Chips require semiconductor equipment and materials, including lithography and etching machines,
  as well as wafer fabs that require billions of dollars just to get started.
• Permanent magnets require a complete rare-earth industrial chain.
• Engineering-plastic housings require a petrochemical industrial chain.
• Batteries require extensive organic and inorganic chemical industries.

Do you really think it is realistic to expect a small country to develop all of these capabilities?

Moreover, drone flight—especially long-range flight—depends heavily on satellite navigation systems.
Today, the only truly competitive satellite navigation systems are GPS and BeiDou.
Do you think it would be possible for a small country to build an entire system of its own?

Drones, therefore, have not narrowed the gap between great powers and small countries.
Instead, they have widened it from 1 to 50 into 1 to 1,000.

The only reason small countries can now use drones to such great effect
is that their opponent is not the Eastern power.
If the Eastern power were to impose a comprehensive export ban,
how many small countries do you think would still be capable of assembling drones?