‍The future of conflict demands a shift towards scalable asymmetric deterrence systems that complement traditional defense strategies, leveraging innovative manufacturing, cross-platform compatibility, and flexible autonomy to enhance presence, responsiveness, and resilience in confronting evolving threats.

In our previous post, we argued that the future of conflict demands a shift in mindset — one that embraces asymmetric deterrence as a necessary complement to traditional defense and deterrence strategies. In this context, asymmetry refers to a power, resource, or capability disparity between two adversaries, regardless of whether one is a state or non-state actor while deterrence, in a broad sense, is the ability to discourage or complicate an adversary’s future actions through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences. While non-state actors have long exploited asymmetric warfare to challenge stronger adversaries, deterrence — particularly the kind that operates at scale and with persistent effect — refers here not to strategic deterrence, but to persistent, distributed capabilities that generate pressure and impose costs. That form of deterrence has remained largely in the hands of state actors with significant resources. That imbalance is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

Whether confronting dispersed attacks from irregular groups or navigating gray-zone pressure from near-peer competitors, the United States now requires innovative defense systems that are affordable, scalable, and capable of operating alongside legacy and high-end platforms.

These low-cost, high-scale, low-effect systems do not replace traditional assets — they enhance them, filling critical gaps in presence, responsiveness, and resilience. While this piece focuses on the physical systems that underpin scalable deterrence, it's important to acknowledge that asymmetric approaches also include non-kinetic methods such as military information support operations (MISO), military deception (MILDEC), sabotage, and subversion — tools routinely used by adversaries to offset conventional capability and resource disparities. These approaches must both deter an adversary with fewer means and capitalize on non-traditional systems and approaches to effect that deterrence.

The term “low-cost, high-volume, low-effect” warrants some clarification. While the low-cost and high-volume elements are relatively intuitive — referring to systems built for thousands of dollars and produced in the hundreds or thousands — the notion of low-effect is more nuanced. It does not simply refer to small payloads or limited destructive capacity. Instead, it captures a broader trade space: systems that individually have modest expected mission success or impact, but which achieve outsized collective effects when deployed at scale or when intended to influence an adversary’s perceptions.

For example, consider a platform that has a 95% probability of success and delivers a high-value effect (e.g., a precision strike targeting a mobile air defense node) but is only affordable in the hundreds. Compare that to a system with a 70–75% success rate, lower per-instance effect (e.g., ISR or soft disruption), but which can be fielded in the thousands. Viewed probabilistically, these systems exist along a cost–effectiveness–scalability frontier: one that balances per-unit lethality and reliability against aggregate system-level impact. The power of “low-effect” platforms lies not in any single instance, but in the compounding pressure, persistence, and unpredictability they generate at scale and over time.

A striking recent illustration of this concept is Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, a coordinated UAV campaign that penetrated deep into Russian territory and destroyed long range bomber aircraft. More than 100 low-cost FPV drones, launched covertly from inside Russian territory, successfully struck five separate air bases and destroyed or disabled over 40 aircraft, including strategic bombers like the Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3. These attacks, succeeded not through platform survivability or kinetic force alone, but by generating friction and confusion through scale, timing, and unpredictability. The drones themselves were unlikely to succeed individually, but in concert, they highlighted vulnerabilities in centralized defense infrastructure. The lesson is not about the failure of one actor, but about the rising salience of scalable, asymmetric deterrence: where effect is created not just through payload, but through persistence, volume, and system-level resilience and reliance on non-kinetic enabling functions to support access and placement for these unique capabilities.

Within the United States, high-end defense systems have largely been developed through prime contractors. But the scalable, lower-cost systems that underpin asymmetric deterrence represent a market that non-traditional companies are just beginning to address.

At IQT, our position at the intersection of the venture, startup, and government ecosystems gives us visibility into what’s being built, what technology is just over the horizon, and where the critical subsystem challenges still lie.

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Manufacturing: The Cornerstone of Scalable Deterrence

Building low-cost systems at volume demands a robust manufacturing base capable of producing critical subsystems — batteries, power systems, communications modules, propulsion units, and structural components — at commercial pace and mission appropriate reliability. Although many of these technologies were first developed in the United States, today’s manufacturing production capability, especially in drone-related components, resides overseas. To be sure, efforts to “reshore” U.S. manufacturing are growing, but they are still nascent and have decades of outsourcing and off-shoring to make up for.

This challenge extends beyond final assembly. U.S. industry has a lot of ground to make up throughout the entire manufacturing lifecycle. It begins with improving the sourcing of refined feedstocks and extends through high-throughput fabrication methods such as automated composite layup, precision casting for structural parts, and surface-mount technology for printed circuit board (PCB)-level electronics integration.

Other near-peer participants in the world economy have starkly different approaches to human rights and protection of the environment allowing them to implement more exploitative manufacturing strategies. This, coupled with a command economy which dictates that companies must operate at the sole behest of the government, means fundamentally different manufacturing cost structures that are difficult for the United States to compete against. With the field tilted against it so dramatically, this is not a game that the United States has been willing to play, let alone win.

So, forget leveling the playing field — let’s play a different game. To compete, the United States must energize its smaller, more expensive workforce and capitalize on innovation force multipliers from AI-enabled design and test tools to full automation and roboticization from the mines through deployment.

All the while, incentivizing systems which cooperate and interoperate throughout the manufacturing supply chain and into the field. 

Startups can contribute by designing systems for manufacturability from day one — using digital part optimization, automated mold generation, and robotic assembly techniques to minimize manual labor. Critical subsystems like power management boards, brushless motor controllers, and high-bandwidth radio modules can benefit from design approaches that favor low tooling cost, high repeatability, and plug-and-play integration.

Cross-platform compatibility is key. A communications module built for UAVs should also interface with USVs. Battery formats should be standardized and swappable. Mechanical components — like folding airframes or modular hulls — must support rapid packaging and field assembly. These characteristics don’t just lower cost — they improve readiness and resilience. Additive manufacturing for field-replaceable parts could further cut sustainment costs.  Redundancy becomes a feature, not a luxury — ensuring persistent capability even under attrition.

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Reliability at Scale: Rethinking Success Metrics

Perhaps the most counterintuitive principle in this domain is that 100% success (as measured per system/unit) is neither achievable nor necessary. When systems cost thousands — not millions — designing for attrition becomes both a strategic advantage and a manufacturing enabler.

Traditional defense platforms are engineered to minimize failure at any cost, often requiring extensive redundancy, environmental hardening, and bespoke integration. But in asymmetric deterrence, effectiveness is measured in aggregate, not per-unit performance.

Failure modes such as GPS dropout, motor stall, or sensor degradation are acceptable at scale, provided they are bounded and non-catastrophic. This allows for the use of lower-cost Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Inertial Measurement Unit (MEMS IMUs), edge-processed navigation logic instead of continuous comms, and more aggressive thermal profiles on PCBs. It also permits Quality Assurance processes to shift away from full manual inspection to in-line functional test rigs or AI-driven visual inspection.

The result is a platform ecosystem that optimizes for throughput, agility, and scalability over perfection. Systems must be good enough to persist, swarm, or distract — not individually dominate. This tradeoff is what unlocks deterrence at scale.

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Logistics: The Hidden Scaling Layer

Once systems are built, they must be transported, staged, and activated — quickly and in large numbers. This layer often receives less attention, yet it’s where operational tempo is won or lost.

Every stage — from packaging, to power management, to on-site deployment — introduces friction. For example: charging thousands of batteries in forward environments requires power distribution planning, thermal management, and charge cycle coordination. Transporting modular systems means packaging that supports flat-pack designs and quick unfold-assemble procedures. Even tasks like mounting propellers or uploading mission files must be streamlined.

Technology can address these frictions. Edge logistics software that syncs fleet readiness status, automated battery swap systems, or embedded QR-based configuration loading are all in play. Startups can add value here by designing not just the system, but the logistics infrastructure around it — minimizing the time from unboxing to operational readiness.

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C2 and Autonomy: Enabling Effect Through Coordination

Mass deployment only matters if it can be controlled. Command and control (C2) and autonomy are core to translating hardware into strategic effect.

Traditional C2 architectures are ill-suited for managing hundreds of autonomous agents in contested environments, particularly across the air, land, maritime, and space domains. What’s needed are flexible autonomy stacks with onboard decision-making, paired with resilient communications architectures that support intermittent connectivity. This includes distributed compute, secure mesh networking, and fault-tolerant swarm coordination protocols.

Areas where startups are advancing the state-of-the-art include multi-agent autonomy algorithms, real-time spectrum-aware networking stacks, and low-SWaP control modules that can operate across UAV and USV platforms. Human-machine teaming interfaces that allow one operator to supervise many, and autonomy layers that can re-task units dynamically based on mission outcomes, are critical for achieving mass without incurring unsustainable cognitive load.

Beyond coordination, these systems can also project capability or intent — through electronic presence, radio frequency (RF) signature flooding, or decoy maneuvers. Operating effectively in jammed, spoofed, or denied environments must be a baseline requirement, with platforms relying on visual-inertial navigation, opportunistic RF signals, and onboard autonomy to complete tasks even under active electronic warfare (EW) attack.

Importantly, the term "swarm" need not imply full autonomy. Systems can range from semi-autonomous with operator oversight, to self-directed with collaborative sensing and adaptation. Regardless of architecture, the enabling technologies—software-defined radios, containerized autonomy runtimes, and modular payload APIs—must support this range of operation.

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Mission Agility: Designing for What’s Next

Finally, systems must remain relevant in the face of evolving missions. That requires agility not just in software, but in the physical design and integration of the platform itself.

Payload modularity is a clear area of opportunity. A system that can swap an electro-optical / infrared sensor for a radar or EW jammer without tool-based disassembly is inherently more adaptable. Similarly, compute modules that allow remote software updates and behavior tuning — without re-certification — help systems adapt faster than adversaries can respond.

This is where open interfaces, reconfigurable software stacks, and field-serviceable enclosures play an outsized role. It also suggests that digital twin infrastructure, pre-deployment simulation, and automated diagnostics are not luxuries — they’re requirements for responsiveness.

Startups can design these flexibilities at the board layout stage, at the enclosure design stage, and in the runtime orchestration layer. Those that do will position themselves not just as vendors of hardware, but enablers of persistent and asymmetric deterrence.

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A Startup-Led Asymmetric Future

Large primes will continue to develop high-end, integrated systems. But the scale, adaptability, and velocity demanded by asymmetric deterrence will increasingly depend on a different kind of industrial base — one led by startups.

Startups can:

• Develop dual-use subsystems with standardized mechanical and data interfaces.
• Accelerate design-to-manufacture lifecycles through generative tools, automation, and Design for Manufacturing principles.
• Advance autonomy and C2 innovations to match the complexity of operating en masse.
• Deliver software-defined behaviors that adapt in real time to shifting threats.

Traditional deterrence platforms remain foundational, but they must evolve to integrate scalable, adaptable systems capable of responding to a rapidly changing threat landscape.

Asymmetric deterrence turns the idea of exquisite systems on its head — it’s about creating effect through scale, adaptability, and persistence. When cost, probability, and redundancy are treated as variables — not constraints — deterrence becomes not only more credible, but more durable in the face of evolving threats. Ultimately, the goal isn’t for every platform to succeed —but for enough of them to succeed, together, to achieve strategic effect. The value is in the aggregate. And when the aggregate can be produced, deployed, and adapted faster than the threat, deterrence becomes not just credible — but inevitable.