Outside the vagaries of this conflict, this FPV drone bomb is a terrifying weapon. It's cheap and effective. It's faster and more agile than humans. It's portable and concealable. The operator does not need to be in harms way. I think it would be difficult to defend against.
I wonder if we'll start to see more "bombings" around the world that are launched from this platform.
These drones aren't even purpose built. They are hobby racing drones built out of DIY components and off the shelf parts, with a grenade or other small explosive strapped to the bottom. Once these start being custom designed, they will be half as large, half as noisy, and a single central computer will fly literal swarms of them with automated mission parameters. This will be an area denial weapon- you'll be able to set up a base station, a larger recon drone will do overflights, and you can task the system 'kill anything that moves in this area'. The system can then select a drone (small anti-personnel drone or larger anti-vehicle drone) to dispatch to eliminate any intruder. Or a larger drone like a Bayraktar will have racks of these that it can drop on command to precisely target an enemy.
Oh geez, you're right. As an area denial weapon this would be extremely effective. There is no upper bound to the number of drones in the sky over any given area aside from the budget. A large spotter fleet with IR vision could operate continuously from high above in the dark.
When a target is spotted it can command the swarm to go take it out.
I think a similar attack could be used selectively against a VIP target where a spotter identifies the location and sends waves of cheap grenade drones to pay a visit.
Robert Evans reporting on the Rojavan fight against ISIS said the generals were terrified of the sound of buzzing drones. He said they had no good defence against them.
After a lot of missing some of them started to get more consistent shots on target, and they could take the drone out after only one or two passes. I expect if they had full auto weapons or semi-auto shotguns with shot or anti-drone rounds it would've been a lot easier. Although if the drone was just attacking and not flying in circles inside a limited cone of fire that was safe for bystanders, they wouldn't have had time to make the shots.
That said this drone was spending a lot of time loitering in one spot trying to panic them. If they'd been equipped or trained for anti-drone tactics, they might've had a decent chance of shooting it down. Especially since it looked like it was trying to separate them from the vehicle, they could've used it as cover to take some shots.
I mean it's easy to sit here on my phone spectating and giving criticism, but it's reviewing footage like this that lets soldiers come up with counter-tactics. The generals talking about ISIS drones were from quite a few years ago. Things must've advanced since then.
We've all see those drone swarms that are used with lights to create cool designs in the sky at outdoor shows.
Knowing these cheap drones can all be centrally controlled like this to act as a "unified" entity makes me imagine how effective it would be to attack an enemy position from every direction at once with many kamikaze units. Back them up with roving AI movement detection units in an outer orbit followed by human controlled FPV units and damn... It would be tough to evade an attack.
I fly drones for over a decade and i totally get why it's hard to defend against. The buzzing even from bigger drones is very easy to hear, but when they're on a slower pace and too far up in the air, it's getting really hard. And that is when there is no war around. Someone could just fire around to pollute the noise. Use one empty drone and use another drone with a payload. Or multiple payloads. Fly with the sun in the back. Shit people have to be so paranoid when they hear a drone that all their eyes are up in the air, to make it easier to ambush people.
The crazy thing about this war is that i never did any military training at all, ever and never plan to, but if war breaks out, i might become an asset.
The CIA tried to use something similar to assassinate Maduro, but they failed. Seems like it would be effective in the hands of a more competent group.
I had only seen the long view of this one before, not the FPV, so I'm surprised to learn that the running in circles thing actually did help - the drone had to get around to the other side of the vehicle to get a clear shot at them. Must have been terrifying on a primal level - humans facing actual nonhuman predators whose goal is to kill them and before which they are completely helpless. Been a long time since there were predators like that in the wild. The only way they might have survived is to have split up and sacrificed one for the other.
That explains why it buzzed them so many times. They wanted to separate them from the vehicle. Seems like maybe the best way to survive would've been to stay close to the vehicle and keep it between them and the drone.
Then of course they're distracted and easier targets for ground troops, but sometimes you are just fucked and shouldn't be invading.