Persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) makes loitering FPV suicide drones effective. Loitering suicide drones are not the only means to exploit the surveillance. If your ISR is persistent, you can hit fleeting targets with other types of weapons.
Singing the praises of suicide drones:
Loitering munitions are aerial weapons that can stay in the air while they search for a target, with some capable of returning to base in the case of unsuccessful target identification. While they operate similarly to armed drones, their self-destructive capabilities are what set them apart. Loitering munitions initially only played a limited role in the war in Ukraine, but the scope and scale of their use has grown dramatically such that they have become a key capability for modern militaries globally.
If you have the information that the persistent battlefield ISR provides, couldn't other weapons provide the attack options? And might those weapons be superior to the FPV suicide drones once drone counter-measures spread through military formations?
Will it make sense to rely on manpower-intensive drone units that launch short-range FPV loitering munitions all along the front? Or will it make more sense to mostly use missiles from ground, air, and sea launchers as well as air-dropped glide bombs? High-altitude balloons could be a launch platform, too.
These means of launching loitering munitions will provide the range to concentrate the loitering munitions and reach deep behind the lines, evading frontline short-range counter-measures.
Not that cheap FPV suicide drones--likely AI-flown--won't be part of a expanded combined arms effort.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: Image from the article credited to Sergey Dzyuba via Shutterstock.com.
