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Originally Posted by Sea Demon
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Originally Posted by Zachstar
What US drones? You mean the toys with a tiny payload that takes oogles of stuffz to work?
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The Reaper program so far has been highly successful for example. And yeah, the US UAV's right now are pretty much setting the standard in the use of these systems for battlefield surveillance, and are most capable in carrying Hellfires for surface atttack. I don't see anybody truly surpassing the U.S. in UAV operations in the near term with the amount of effort we're putting into them. |
They are still complicated, Expensive, and without large numbers (There was a small panic when a hawk was downed by an Iraqi Mig-25)
What I fear is that standard tech is getting to a point where large numbers of COTS drones can flood an airspace and cause damage that advanced fighters can't.
Then you are using a half a million dollar missile to down a 5000 dollar worth drone and you have 50 behind that. Using cheap russian heaters to eventually drive away even our 22s and 35s (Hard to get into gun range when you got heaters coming from all directions if even one drone detects you) And forget AAA when they will surely have anti-rad weaponry. It will be WW2 flak carpeting all over again.
That is today. What about in the future when they can be even more advanced? What if they were equipped with advanced visual detection or radar?
The more I think about it. The more it is dawning on me that the 35 will not be effective past 2020 except in some dirt poor country.