Written by an individual who has spent 6 months as a foreign volunteer FPV pilot looking into effectivity of these drones on the frontline. He claims they are pretty much a fad with limited impact. The issues are:
- unreliable / cheap hw
- limited amount of radio channels for video / control (I thought they were running custom FCs - they aren’t!)
- weather and light conditions dependent
- suseptible to electronic warfare
- lack of qualified pilots / hard to fly
- not always the chapest or quickest option
Note: I am something of an FPV “pilot” myself, I am not sure I agree with everything being said (eg imo fpv drones aren’t toys for rich people - I am definitely not rich), but interresting reading anyway. Also - I’ve never been to a war - I know crap.
As a person who develops drones, and who has already read the article about a week ago, and given a review of it in another place:
The author’s unit was quite obviously supplied with crappy drones, his description hints of many recognizable issues. Their takeoff failure rate would be considered unacceptable in some circles. Their detonation failure rate hints of sappers erring on the side of caution (sappers want to go home alive). These problems can be solved with factory made munitions and decent quality assurance.
Some of his complaints are organizational. Lacking bomber drones, they wasted FPV drones to destroy stationary / abandoned / disabled vehicles. This is not a tech issue, but an organizational issue.
He’s correct to point out that heavily loaded quadcopters won’t safely take off in adverse weather. I must remind that a catapult launched UAV plane will reliably take off in adverse weather, exceed quadcopters in range and payload capacity, so we can guess that planes taking off from launch tubes will gradually replace quadcopters taking off from grass.
He’s correct to point out that once you go below direct visibility, your 5.8 GHz video link will break. There’s at least 3 solutions around this: an airborne repeater, fiber optic cable and bombing the target from altitude. All 3 solutions are already widespread.
He mentions lack of GPS, compass, inertial navigation and pilots getting lost. This is true, GPS is suppressed on the front and will likely stay suppressed, some drones are cheap and don’t provide the pilot with obvious and simple navigational aids (they should) and some pilots do get lost when navigating (this is unavoidable, but can be reduced).
He mentions need for long training. This is the current reality, but not the reality of a tailor-made combat drone system. Today, people are fighting a war with civilian sports supplies. That’s why pilot training is important to overcome difficulties. In a few years, you can give a ready-made drone system (in a sealed container, with a factory-made warhead) to a random guy or girl from a street in the middle of a storm, and he or she can shoot down a combat helicopter from 10 kilometers distance with it. Just liking firing an NLAW can be learned in 5 minutes (but not mastered, of course), firing a drone will be possible with 5 minutes of instruction in the near future.