The Army has its own air force of tiny fixed wing bomber/recon craft allowable because the pilot is on the ground.
AeroVironment, the company that developed the original, and very popular Switchblade in 2005 for the U.S. Army, had it ready for combat testing by 2009. This was very successful and the troops demanded more, and more, and more. Switchblade completed development in 2009 and was initially thought useful only for special operations troops. Some were secretly sent to Afghanistan in 2009 so army Special Forces troops could test it a combat zone. That was very successful and in 2011 the army ordered over a hundred Switchblades for troop use and since then has ordered several thousand. The army asked AeroVironment to develop a larger version of Switchblade to replace the original model. This was called Switchblade 300 and development was completed in 2017. By 2020 Switchblade 300 had replaced the original Switchblade and, as expected, was more capable and popular with users than the original Switchblade.
The rules about what the Army can fly are getting so strange when the Air Force has to focus on air superiority missions so much that the Army worries about getting air support.
The Marines, special forces, and Navy like them, too. And they're getting better, with some bigger and able to take out tanks. Others are smaller and available to even infantry squads. Make them reusable, too, and that will be something big. Do read it all.
