Swarm attrition models do not exist so commanders cannot predict how many drones survive to target

Conventional military planning uses well-established attrition models (Lanchester equations, Monte Carlo simulations) calibrated against decades of weapons effectiveness data. No equivalent model exists for drone swarm attrition because there is insufficient combat data on how swarms degrade under fire -- do they lose effectiveness linearly with losses, or is there a critical threshold below which the swarm collapses? Commanders cannot plan swarm size requirements without knowing expected attrition rates, leading to either massive over-provisioning (waste) or under-provisioning (mission failure). This persists because swarm-scale combat is too new for empirical data collection, and simulated attrition models have not been validated against real-world swarm engagements.