I will not say that I will go out and buy a drum brake.
I will say that I think that a disk brake is better.
But I am an engineer and I know that drum brakes are cheaper.
Huge transports use them to stop.
I work on an off shore supply vessel with huge winches that use drums to haul ships around. Alot of kinetic energy so they need a lot of surface area to get rid of the heat.
Drums have more surface area and therefore more heat disipation.
Drum brake setups are lighter in weight.
Cheaper and lighter??
Bargin basement bikes having brake designs like transports.
Think of the possibilities.
I am sure that when the disk came out that people laughed at it also.
The first airplane (Kittyhawk) of the Wright Brothers was fuel injection.
They went to carburetors because it was cheaper and easier then to figure out all the problems that the system had.
later on after some playing around they overcame the problems and now everyone has fuel injection.
In theory I am interested in drum brakes.
It is known that drums have thier problems though
But cheap and lite are two words that manufacturing have to allways consider.