What stops drones just killing everything and whoever has the most winning every battle? How are they being defeated? What limits their use? Why aren’t infantry utterly terrified going into battle when drones seem able to blow them up without warning, dropping bombs out of nowhere? Can they be detected being small and flying low? Do they do air-to-air combat?
In: Technology
Well, larger drones, such as the [RQ-4](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk), are basically just full-sized aircraft without a pilot aboard. This means that they’re limited by the same thing that limits conventional aircraft: air defenses such as surface-to-air missiles or fighters. If you’re talking about much smaller drones such as we’ve seen being used by Ukraine against Russian soldiers, these are more difficult to detect, but they can’t carry much more than maybe a few grenades or a mortar round. Deadly, to be sure, but very small and short-range. It’s more a dagger than a machine-gun.
The size range in between these extremes is an area that’s seeing a lot of experimentation and research, but everything is a trade-off. More range and speed demands something bigger that’s easier to detect. And modern radar and sensors can detect even “toy” drones just fine, it’s just a matter of not getting taken by surprise.
So really, while drones can be very useful, they’re not revolutionary so much as evolutionary. Small drones can be thought of as much more accurate mortars. Large drones can be thought of as much cheaper spy satellites, or less politically risky recon teams, or much more cost-effective and discriminative cruise missiles.
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