Some ideas in Israel’s defense debates grab me instantly. Others take a little while to sink in. The latest one buzzing through think-tanks and defense forums is something called the Moneyball Military.

At first I thought it was a gimmick – a catchy phrase borrowed from baseball to make war sound like a numbers game. But the more I have dug into it, the more I see why smart people are paying attention. The idea is simple but powerful: in an era when cheap drones, AI software, and off-the-shelf electronics can tip the battlefield, quantity matters as much as quality. That means fielding large numbers of small, affordable, data-driven systems instead of relying solely on a handful of exquisite, expensive platforms.

Think about Ukraine. The Russians had more tanks and more planes. Yet what rattled Moscow most were not just NATO’s advanced weapons but Ukraine’s ability to churn out drones, plug into satellite networks, and fuse battlefield data in real time. In many ways, this was Moneyball in uniform – low-cost tech acting as a force multiplier against a giant.

Israel has lived with this reality for decades. Hezbollah and Hamas figured out long ago that cheap rockets and low-end drones can overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome batteries. Iran has industrialized the model, flooding proxies with arsenals built on “cheap and plentiful.” And Israel’s response has been an extraordinary track record of intercepting swarms, often at success rates that amaze the world. But even so, every Tamir interceptor costs the country tens of thousands of dollars. Every drone they launch costs them a few........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)