[Grambo]

There was a recent story about the Air Force trying to kill off one of their most cost effective aircraft, whether that's evidence of a "fighter mafia" or not is debatable, but it does show the USAF's proclivity for expensive high-tech over cost effective platforms.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-reaper-drone-retir...

[nradov]

The MQ-9 Reaper is cost effective for counter insurgency missions but it requires reliable high-bandwidth remote control data links to operate. In any conflict with a peer adversary they will shoot down the communications satellites and jam other links, making such drones mostly useless.

[cnlevy]

They have enough rockets equipped with ASAT weapons to destroy the Starlink satellites ? All 40 000 of them (planned, about 2500 already in orbit)?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/12/spacex-prepares-for-air-forc...

[ClumsyPilot]

Shooting down just a few dozen satellites will produce kessler syndrome, there will be no satellites or spacecraft for anyone for decades.

Also, you don't even have to shoot them, there is jamming

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

[sroussey]

Which is why they will become autonomous…

[nradov]

Perhaps someday, but for now that's science fiction. Autonomous vehicles can only perform a very narrow range of missions.

[ClumsyPilot]

Autonomous drones will be either useless, or equally dangerous to everyone. FoF is gonna be a crapshoot