[tonyarkles]

I don’t have a link handy but one of the videos I saw on Twitter looked like there was pretty bad latency. Once they got to the target aircraft they went into a hover and very slowly set it down on the wing before the FPV feed froze.

Edit: https://x.com/jimmysecuk/status/1929164382061092952

[mrheosuper]

they were using ardupilot, so the control they gave is "move to this point then descend", latency does not matter much as long as it's reasonable.

[tonyarkles]

In most of the videos I've seen there are failsafe warnings on the screen indicating a loss of GPS, which I'm not surprised at all about. Russia's well-known for having GPS jammers, and having them on-site at an airforce base when the enemy they've been fighting is using drones is just common sense. The video I linked to really looks to me like it's being stick flown with IMU stabilization but probably without Pos Hold.

[mmooss]

Why land slowly if the plan is to blow up the drone?

[hagbard_c]

Because you want it to explode at the right location, not get blown off course by a gust of wind or bounce off the wing and explode in the air.

[mmooss]

Exploding on impact seems like a very mature, well-established technology.

[hollerith]

Exploding on impact is a mature tech for things like shells, but it requires building a mechanism into the shell so that it won't explode before it is fired.

If the drone will be controlled by a human operator till the end, then it might win for the drone design to avoid the complexity of a sensor to detect impacts and of the aforementioned mechanism.

Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact.

[hagbard_c]

> Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact.

...and more importantly it is also easier to automate, i.e. autoland on wing spar, detonate, mission complete.