[RF_Savage]

Extremely vulnerable to jamming and other electrical warfare and thus not usable at the frontlines.

Ome can find out from public sources that Switchblades run their video and control 900MHz + 2.4GHz bands. Which makes sense for a disposable product and likely worked fine in Afganistan. But against an adversary with jammers and other EW it will fare much worse. Still usable in the rear, as we have seen.

[ge96]

Wonder if you could do point to point laser comms.

[kragen]

US military radios use FHSS spanning 225-420 MHz. I don't know details but I bet they're hard to jam or even detect.

[bob1029]

DSSS/FHSS schemes are almost magical in LPI and resilience when applied aggressively in a military setting.

Operating below the noise floor shouldn't be possible at first glance, but through the power of statistics it absolutely is feasible.

[kragen]

Hmm, I notice you mention LPI and resilience but not LPD (low probability of detection). Is DSSS maybe easier than FHSS for an adversary to detect on a waterfall plot and localize with phase correlation if they have a phased array? Or is it also suitable for LPD?

[RF_Savage]

Or 36-87MHz. And plenty of others.

[sleepybrett]

nothing stopping them from running different radio infrastructure

[RF_Savage]

The hardware is stopping then.

Can't exactly re-engineer all the RF parts in the drone and the groundstation.

[sleepybrett]

you probably actually can. On the hobbiest side I swapped out my 2.4ghz control radio w/ 900mhz in about 10 minutes, honestly the hardest part was zip tieing it in place. In most drones the actual radios are discrete components even many of the very tiny 'tiny woop' style drones. Snap the transmitter side into my rc controller's module slot, rebind and I'm back flying.

Now I'm not sure how a switchblade goes together, but I imagine it's even easier a field expedient way to swap frequencies seems pretty useful in a situation where jammers are in play.