Reply to post: Re: This is something that needs paying attention

Russian military uses Chinese drones and bots in combat, over manufacturers' protests

Peter2 Silver badge

Re: This is something that needs paying attention

"Fighter jets" are designed to gain control of the sky by shooting down opposing fighters and tactical bombers.

A small drone with a pistol or hand grenade glued to them can't take on a fighter jet. My prediction is that eventually you'll just get a new hierarchy of drones.

Small drones for surveillance/artillery spotting with just a camera.

Slightly larger drones with a laser designator for laser guidance of artillery shells.

Larger drones than this, armed with small bombs or similar.

Larger drones than this, equipped with sensors to detect drones and armed with a handful of anti drone weapons.

The anti drone weapons will probably be short range (ie; a < 1 mile range going at speeds only marginally faster than the drone can fly with a small warhead suitable to down a small drone.

When this happens then inevitably over time scope creep will kick in, and eventually the larger drones will end up humping around larger and larger weapons until they are able to damage attack helicopters, which will probably be the new top end of the "drone" hierarchy..

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