{"id":33762,"date":"2026-07-28T19:36:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=33762"},"modified":"2026-07-29T19:39:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:39:19","slug":"muffulettas-missiles-and-daily-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/muffulettas-missiles-and-daily-drones\/","title":{"rendered":"Muffulettas, Missiles and Daily Drones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nYou can imagine the confusion in the Conference Room this morning.<\/p>\n

Miles had Vic and Pastor Frank giving a quick briefing on what was happening overseas while I was trying to organize lunch. Then Miles disappeared, muttering something about taking a swim over at the old headquarters before his afternoon session in Pentagon City.<\/p>\n

That left me with a room full of hungry people, a table covered with models of missiles and drones, and everything I needed to demonstrate why the New Orleans Muffuletta may be one of civilization’s greatest achievements.<\/p>\n

With operations expected to continue through the week, Miles suggested we shift the menu toward things people could eat with one hand while reading briefing papers\u2014or with two hands if the discussion became animated.<\/p>\n

My answer was immediate.<\/p>\n

The Muffuletta.
\n\"\"
\nIt was created in 1906 by Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant who opened Central Grocery on Decatur Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter. More than a century later, the little grocery is still famous for the sandwich that bears the name of the round Sicilian sesame loaf it is built upon.<\/p>\n

A traditional Muffuletta is a magnificent piece of logistics.<\/p>\n

Layers of Genoa salami, ham, mortadella, Swiss cheese and provolone are stacked beneath the famous olive salad and pressed into Gambino’s soft sesame bread. A whole sandwich sells for around thirty dollars today and is traditionally quartered to feed four hungry people.<\/p>\n

That makes a few of them- three or maybe four are just about perfect for a Crowd of twenty.<\/p>\n

ArroWine & Cheese over on Lee Highway has become accustomed to Miles stopping in almost daily since the latest round of fighting began. They had the meats and cheeses waiting, and I already had jars of Central Grocery olive salad standing by.<\/p>\n

Which somehow led us to something that looked less like a weapons briefing than an old 1966 automobile showroom.<\/p>\n

One of the displays on the conference table was the new SpektreWorks FLM-136, an American-produced loitering munition inspired by the Iranian Shahed-136 design that has become familiar in recent conflicts.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nWhat caught everyone’s attention wasn’t simply the airplane.<\/p>\n

It was the price tag.<\/p>\n

At roughly $35,000, the FLM-136 represents a completely different way of thinking about modern warfare. It is inexpensive enough to be produced in large numbers while still carrying a useful 40-lb. payload hundreds of miles.<\/p>\n

That naturally brought up the other model on the table.<\/p>\n

The Patriot missile system remains one of the finest air-defense weapons ever built. It is designed to destroy fast, sophisticated threats under extraordinarily demanding conditions. But capability comes with a price. A PAC-3 interceptor costs on the order of $4 million each, and a complete Patriot battery represents an investment measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

The comparison isn’t about which system is “better.”<\/p>\n

They perform very different missions.<\/p>\n

It is about the economics of modern conflict, where relatively inexpensive drones can force defenders to make extraordinarily expensive decisions.<\/p>\n

Those are the numbers quietly changing the battlefield.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Naturally, my thoughts drifted back to lunch.<\/p>\n

I asked the folks at Central Grocery how much a traditional whole Muffuletta actually weighs before it is quartered.<\/p>\n

Their answer?<\/p>\n

Between two and four pounds, depending on exactly how generously it is assembled.<\/p>\n

That got me thinking.<\/p>\n

The suicide drone can also be configured to land, instead of just blowing up. If Buck over in Finance could somehow be persuaded that Socotra House needed an Air Delivery Division, a four-pound Muffuletta would fit quite nicely in a hypothetical cargo compartment. At ten sandwiches per sortie, we could probably feed a production meeting almost anywhere between Fairfax and Cleveland.
\nI suspect the FAA\u2014and our insurance carrier\u2014might have a few questions before approving the concept.<\/p>\n

Probably for the best.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we’ll stick with the conference table instead of autonomous food delivery.<\/p>\n

More coming this afternoon, I’m afraid.<\/p>\n

But whatever else happens…<\/p>\n

Nobody around here is going to miss lunch.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n

www.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can imagine the confusion in the Conference Room this morning. Miles had Vic and Pastor Frank giving a quick briefing on what was happening overseas while I was trying to organize lunch. Then Miles disappeared, muttering something about taking a swim over at the old headquarters before his afternoon session in Pentagon City. That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33762"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33768,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33762\/revisions\/33768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}