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by saidinesh5 755 days ago
> it takes a long time to train, and they have to be relatively close to the drone, so they're vulnerable to counter attacks.

You'd think so. I mean to fly a quad properly, you'd need like 20-30 hours. To just crash a drone into a large enough target, 6-7 hours is more than enough.

As for having to be relatively close to the drone, range extenders these days seem to go a long way.. or even having a receiver outside a safe bunker - that seems to be how the Ukrainians/Russians fly these days.
1 comments
kqr 755 days ago
> To just crash a drone into a large enough target, 6-7 hours is more than enough.

I know nothing about this but this makes it sound like the target is cooperative. Isn't it harder to crash into a target that actively tries to avoid you?

(E.g. listening for propeller whine, shooting at objects in sky, ducking into small openings, having signal jammers, moving/arranging personnel to limit the impact of drone damage, running counter-drone efforts, etc.)

I remember reading that book about the Predator drone and being surprised how much of Predator effectiveness came down to pilot skill, rather than technology. The predator was just a slow, small prop plane, after all. What made it powerful was that the pilots knew exactly how to use those properties (along with knowledge of the enemies' technology limitations) to evade detection and interception.

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swaginator 755 days ago
There's plenty of footage you can see of how the FPV drones are used.

> to evade detection and interception.

I was under the impression that the Reaper was typically used where US has air superiority. There is an international combat guy on Youtube who fought with the YPG in Rojava and has been hunted by that type of loitering drone, he said they are easy enough to hide from, but the main thing is that they are almost always around-- and eventually lead to complacency. To quote the IRA: "we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."

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saidinesh5 755 days ago
With the predator, you're controlling a large, expensive aircraft flying at higher altitudes. But with these cheap $250 flying bricks, you're directly controlling the bullet.

You don't have to worry about stalling, latency, accuracy etc.. they are also harder to shoot down because of their size and speed.

So they simply select targets like a moving vehicle or a bunker or even a group of moving people, and go kamikaze.

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