The Ukrainian company General Cherry has unveiled its latest drone - the Khmarinka. Price around 1,000 dollars. Range up to 50 kilometres. Flight time up to 60 minutes. Top speed 140 km/h. Payload 5 to 8 kilos of explosive. Wingspan 196 centimetres. To anyone outside the industry these numbers say little - but to military analysts they say one thing: war is no longer expensive.

The Khmarinka is inspired by the Russian „Molnia" drone, which Ukrainian forces have got to know on the battlefield. That's one of the interesting aspects of this war - both sides keep copying each other. The Russians have Iran and China for the engineering. The Ukrainians have Western technology plus their own improvisation. And every season a new model arrives, cheaper than the last but more effective in the field.

The comparison with classic military hardware is brutal. One American Hellfire missile costs 150,000 dollars, and you need a helicopter or a Reaper drone to deliver it. The Khmarinka costs 1,000 dollars and arrives by itself. For the price of one Hellfire you can buy 150 Khmarinkas. Even if only 10% of them hit their target, it's still more cost-effective than the traditional option. Not in every mission, but in many.

The promise Cherry is making - the first 150 drones will be delivered free of charge to Ukraine's defence forces. That's a standard playbook in Ukraine's new drone industry. The first serial prototype for the front - free. It's both field-testing and a marketing campaign. If the drone works, the next hundreds and thousands are sold to the Ukrainian army and foreign allies. If it doesn't - it goes to scrap and a new model is built.

What's changing in these years isn't just the price. Who builds the drones is changing too. Giant defence firms like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon can't find a way to build a combat system for 1,000 dollars - their structure makes it impossible. Smaller startups, garage labs and engineering teams of 20 people are now writing the rules of the new industry. And Ukraine's example shows it works.

For the Balkans, again, a simple question. How many years do we need to see a similar drone? We have engineers. We have universities. We have defence needs. What we lack is political will and industrial infrastructure. Bulgaria is taking some steps. Croatia has its own startups. Serbia is thinking about it. Macedonia - almost nothing. And every year we keep thinking about it, the technology advances, the prices drop, and the market fills up with others ahead of us. The question is when we will decide - or whether we will decide far too late?