Fair point on "impressive" — that was lazy of me. What I actually mean is narrower: the engineering does what it was designed to do in a live combat environment. Maven presenting 1,000 strike options in a day is "working." That's not a value judgment, it's a functional one.
The Ukraine angle is interesting though, and you're right that the drone production flow goes the other direction. I'd push back a little on the implication that means the startups aren't contributing — Anduril's counter-drone stuff is specifically a response to the threat environment Ukraine revealed, not an attempt to export into it. Different problem. But your broader frame of "cheap and attritable vs. impressive" is genuinely useful and I wish I'd thought of it when I was writing. That tension probably deserves its own piece at some point.