We're undeniably in the age of the drone, modern militaries have very little cost effective counters to small mass produced drones, but that wont last, better detection and interception technology like interceptor drones, lazars, specialized ammunition, better EW are being developed and slowly rolled out, the Ukraine war will be viewed like how we view world war one, a strange inflection point of bad and outdated strategy meeting new more powerful weapons. the drone will eventually be just another tool in the arsenal instead of a wonder weapon,
>>65033255yes but as ww1 aviation is in its retarded phase, we will get ww2 aviation tier drones soon with entires cities terrorized by massive armadas of drones instead of random singular terror attacks of today. it will keep improving as the counter measures, exactly like aviation, its not that revolutionary though, already had drones in the form of missiles or guided munitions
>>65033269the better drone counters get the bigger drones will have to get in order to withstand better EW, fly higher to avoid interceptors and specialized ammunition,, as the drones get bigger they will lose effectiveness, we're already seeing this in ukraine
The whole strength of drones is that they're cheap. If you have to start investing in all sorts of crazy tech to keep them viable you might as well just use a missile.
Drones like prop planes are ultimately going to be COIN assets or theyll be unmanned aerial craft that are already in use
>>65033255Drones, from quadcopter FPVs to plane-sized UAVs will remain a part of warfare.UGVs, too.
>>65033269>>65033255I think the limitations of missiles themselves reflect on drones; they can cause flashy explosions and wipe out units, but neither are decisive weapons unto themselves.
>>65033483Isn't the warhead to fuel(battery) ratio also better?And higher loiter time enables mission profiles missiles don't cover.
>>65033483you can have cheap drones and expensive drones at the same time.Its extremely valuable to have swarms to terrorize infantry and then have an advanced loitering drone ready to attack something important when opportunities reveal themselves. drone technology will also only get cheaper over time so what may be wasteful today will be disposable tomorrow
>>65033532they work hand in hand. missiles deliver payloads that drones can't at speeds that you can't take cover from.drones can change targets at will and choose the most opportunistic time to strike while being able to pick out individual soldiers
>>65033593It's not a binary better/worse thing, it's different and has both benefits and downsides:- electric power allows to use multi-rotor designs with a fucked up level of maneuverability and rapid acceleration;- basic bitch internal combustion engines with propellers elevate a drone to a cheap cruise missile, which is too costly to counter with conventional AA, and also harder to even lock on because no jet stream of heat exists;- and so onThis doesn't mean that missiles are bad or anything though. A missile is obviously harder to shoot down by a guy in a pickup truck with a machine gun. A missile can bring 1000+ lbs warhead to the target, reach it faster and so on.
