won't happen for now, drones are generally too slow for that. Unless it's stationary/on the ground. Ukrainians did manage to shoot down 2 russian KA-52 helicopters mid-flight last week though.
Ukraine is currently building 4.5 million drones per year. That's one drone every 30 seconds. Lockheed Martin delivered a record 191 F35s in 2025. That's less than one F35 every 1.91 days.
Iran has thrice the population of Ukraine and 1.5x (nominal) to 3x (PPP) the GDP. With Ukraine building 23560 drones for every F35 the US is building, it would be quite reasonable to expect Iran to be able to build a few thousand per F35 ass well. Iran already has a fairly mature drone industry supplying the Russian side of the UA-RU, after all.
In other words: If it were to come to a race of attrition, the US can't afford to lose a single one. Even ignoring the massive cost difference, F35s simply cannot be constructed fast enough.
This assume that all F35 are sitting on unprotected fields waiting for all those drones to come. Which is utter BS. Sure the US can loose few in unfortunate circumstances and it wont matter much.
A squadron of F-35s is worth more than the Moskva. Russia had to fight hard to regain the title of biggest loser and it could lose that in a single incident. But more than the financial loss the loss of having invested in something stupid is felt when you can't use any of the related blunders as you intended and have to keep them at a distance from the cheap practical warfare.
It's even worse, actually. This attack seems to be done by a regular quadcopter, so suddenly you have to be worried about your $100M aircraft being destroyed by a $500 drone if your base security isn't absolutely perfect.
The US has plenty of bases in the area, but considering the ease of an attack and the general anti-US sentiment of the region, projecting power into the Middle East is going to become an awful lot more difficult...
V-weapons were also an encounterable weapon which could strike from beyond range. Massive boondoggle though, just a very expensive expensive way to deliver very few explosives; waste of industrial output.
Look into how much current war costs already. And there is no end in sight yet. Loosing one F35 is insignificant (well maybe it will hurt someone's ego but that is about it).
