Suicide drones are evolving. Will they become killer robot swarms? Or will other system evolution supplant them?
"Killer robots have arrived on the Ukrainian battlefield" (tip to Instapundit):
In a front-line dugout this spring, a Ukrainian drone navigator selected a target—a Russian ammunition truck—by tapping it on a tablet screen with a stylus. The pilot flicked a switch on his handset to select autopilot and then watched the drone swoop down from a few hundred yards away and hit the vehicle.
Suicide drones seem to be following a path blazed by anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), as I wrote here. Broadly speaking.
The suicide drones can cross terrain that hides enemies that are safe from any line-of-sight ATGM. But the suicide drone that is normally driven into the target only has the fire-and-forget mode when it finally spots the target. In the quoted case from a few hundred yards away. So the target designation is not at launch as with a modern ATGM. And the drone really isn't a killer robot given that an operator flies the suicide drone and has to lock it on to a target before the brain guides it in. Again, that final stage is what a fire-and-forget ATGM does from launch.
And really, the Air Force (and I assume ground-launched systems, too) will be able to use the targeting-after-launching feature to create an instant swarm. We'll see what is more effective.
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NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
