Using drones: principles, tactics and results (amended title)
Isn't it remarkable how much this thread is focused on assassination?


Drone tactics are so much more.

For example: It's tricky to keep them from getting shot down when you face a somewhat capable enemy. The French were dumb enough to fly their Cerecelle (?) type UAVs on a predictable schedule and course in 1999 and lost several of them to Yugoslav ManPADS.

Another aspect of drone tactics are the interesting games played with decoy drones, such as MALD (?) or the Ryan models over North Vietnam.

There's also a huge tactical problem associated with the use of loiter munitions - kamikaze drones that cannot be recovered and should thus not be launched without a good reason. Worse; at least some types of them were autonomous (a German model, for example - and the British Brimstone missile is similar).

There are also interesting problems associated with transport drones, such as the Kaman K-Max-based drone (a helicopter with external payload). How could they be used in other than flat terrain?

There are also EW drones, most notably some radio comm jamming drones which were developed to do radio comm jamming in incredible depths (up to 150 km IIRC). How could you keep such a electromagnetic lighthouse from getting shot down against an opponent who warrants such a jamming effort?

Or superficially simple operational analysis problems regarding the slow cruise speed of a Predator or (still slow) Reaper when facing an opponent who is smart enough to learn the reaction time and break off his actions after a few minutes? You may be able to loiter over an area for hours with such drones, but not over all areas!

How about deconfliction? Shouldn't it be possible to fly drones at a few narrow altitude bands and free them this way from deconfliction concerns? Mortars, artillery, fighter-bombers - they all should not have any deconfliction concerns with drones, but last I heard is there are such concerns. And they keep especially the very small drones in practice almost always on the ground. Should a huge country ("airspace") like Afghanistan with few hundred manned aircraft in-theatre really have an elaborate deconfliction regime at all? I was especially astonished by the huge effort spent on having a flying deconfliction clearing house in form of AWACS aircraft...it doesn't get more expensive than that.