With these specs, I wonder if some countries military wouldn't be willing to offer them more money than they could ever make with deliveries... (At least on a per-drone basis)
Spend 5-10 minutes on twitter watching drone footage out of the Ukrainian war, both sides are getting a lot of work done with less accurate, smaller payloads.
The traditional M18A1 Claymore mine weighs about 1.6 kg total and has optimal effect to 50m in a 60 degree arc (potentially lethal to 250m I think - Ed: "moderately effective up to a range of 100m ... fragments can travel up to 250m").
Most of the time if you've decided to go the 'air superiority' route, then you're in a traditional war. So I feel that the cost-value factors will still favor dropping larger ordinance from much larger drones.
Have you watched any of the drone footage from Ukraine? They are dropping hand grenades and modified mortar shells into tanks from drones. Mortar shells have about 500g of HE. Highly effective.
I guess I was thinking about it from the point of view of a large industrial power fighting its equal.
Ukraine vs Russia seems more asymmetric. For instance, Russia can be an existential threat to Ukraine, but the positions can not be easily reversed since Russia has nuclear weapons. While they wouldn't want to deploy them, they'd rather do that than lose Moscow.
Asymmetric warfare makes use of a great number of things, which wouldn't be very cost-effective in a battle of equals. For instance all the insurgents that use IEDs to harass checkpoints, would probably rather use factory made air-craft delivered ordinance.
> I guess I was thinking about it from the point of view of a large industrial power fighting its equal
Human-in-the-loop ethical concerns aside: a highly industrial power can fully automate the entire process and massively scale up from individual-pilot controlled prosumer drones.
Imagine a high-altitude loitering spotter-drone that autonomously identifies any tanks with open hatches and tasks smaller multirotor drones to precisely drop small munitions. You may take out an entire tank battalion for less than the cost of a couple of traditional air-to-surface missile without putting your personnel in harm's way. Future wars will be horrifying for infantry and ground vehicles.
And yet Ukraine is stopped by old school mine fields... Well, slowed down considerably. It is almost as if everything is a trafe off with benefits and downsides.
Drones work until drone-specific AA is developed, and then it will be the same race we see between tanks and anti-tank weapons.
The drones don’t interact with the the mine fields, and in fact, are extra useful in this in this situation as they can fly over them. I’m not sure I see the trade off here.
It’s not an ultimate weapon. I don’t know why you judge it as if someone said it was. It’s just that small drones can be extremely effective against personnel and light armored vehicles. That’s why both sides have to use them.
This doesn't negate the comment that you are responding to at all. Drones have been most effective in defensive operations, often in concert with mine fields.
Offensive is much more difficult, as it needs to be coordinated with ground forces that can be impeded by mine fields. It is also easier for prepared defense lines to stop drones than it is for an offensive operation in the open to defend against them.