[lambda_obrien]

There's no marines onboard a destroyer, and no one is shooting anything that hasn't shot first when you're in that area, it's full of Navy training platforms and civilians.

[vl]

On the other hand if you allow drone to get to the ship, it might be too late.

[tyxodiwktis]

Not really - you need thousands of pounds of ordinance to sink a destroyer and no small UAV is carrying that.

[mikewarot]

The UAV could be the first part of a coordinated attack... it could do something to foul the sensors on the ship, for example.

[hcurtiss]

Did you see some representation of size?

[NaturalPhallacy]

Based on the flight times and 100 mile flights ~100 miles off the coast and the investigated boats in the area...they couldn't be small. At least not with current consumer battery technology. Maybe if they were launched by a sub?

There's a youtuber that has a multi-hour autonomous drone, but it's solar powered and this was at night.

[bigiain]

Hybris electric/gas drones are commercially available these days.

https://dronelife.com/2021/03/18/skyfront-gas-electric-hybri...

That could almost had done what’s reported from land, and easily from a small boat 50 miles away from the ships (which is well over the horizon).