Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
Well, starstreak is command guided which does make it immune to most countermeasures, but this has been the case with command-guided systems for decades. Command guidance has its own set of limitations, however.

It's not a feature when a potential enemy can exploit vulnerabilities to make all your aircraft fall out of the sky. That was the point I was trying to make. The potential to jam or hack the signal, or destroy the centralized relays (be they satellite or land-based) could eliminate your entire unmanned fleet from the battle.
Starstreak is NOT command controlled. It is a laser beam rider.
LBR SAM technology has rarely been applied, only the British and Canadians use such missiles in significant quantities.

The passive laser sensors face backwards, so there is physically not soft defense possible unless you can blind the operator in the few seconds of flight.

The time of flight would typically be about five to seven seconds with no UV or IR exhaust trail after one or two seconds, so there's hardly any hard kill chance as well (especially as a single Starstreak launches three darts).



UAVs are not RC model planes. UAVs can easily return to base and make an automated landing if designed to do so. That ability was possible since the 50's at the latest, probably even in the 40's.
A well-designed UAV might crash because of component failures (that's when the possible lower redundancy that I mentioned kicks in), but because of a simple loss of radio contact (unless it was designed really stupid or is a very lightweight design of few pounds).