Comment on Houthi rebels shoot down 7 US military Reaper drones worth $334m, in recent weeks
stsquad@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
I assume you need fairly sophisticated SAM systems to take out these drones. Are they all coming from Iran? Is this a step up in their missile capability?
freeman@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
If you can shoot any aircraft at a given attitude you can shoot this type of drone. It’s not fast, has no stealthy design and its not even small like some other drones.
stsquad@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
You would have thought for $33mil a pop they would have some countermeasures. I guess they are still several orders of magnitude cheaper than a jet with an expensive pilot so are more disposable?
freeman@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
They are not that cheap compared to just a jet (F-16@70m, F-35@100m) but pilots cost a lot and not just money.
They also must have a much smaller mission cost due to fuel efficiency. Provided they do not get shot down.
It certainly wasn’t designed to survive against serious opposition and I doubt mere countermeasures would change that. It would probably increase costs more and would be useless in most missions.