• Gucci_Minh [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    Modern aircraft fly too fast and too high for TV guidance to be practical for the most part (also the sky is big so target acquisition is more important in the first place), and if you were to make a really fast drone that had radar or infrared guidance, you just have a regular anti air missile. The reason drones work so well for ground forces is their ability to do recon and loiter over a target area until a target presents itself. A loitering anti-air munition could certainly be possible, and may already exist, but it would have limitations to its range, size, or manoeuvrability since a large amount of its weight would need to be fuel, which ends up leading to the conclusion that you might as well just use regular fighter aircraft, and in some cases putting air to air missiles on larger drones (e.g. Iran’s Karrar drone, which mainly carries bombs or anti ship missiles, can be adapted to launch anti air missiles as well).