What was old is now new.
What was old is now new.
this very idea with these very drones was done in Vietnam under the program name HAVE LEMON , over 3500 mission flown, BQM-34A,35B firebee drones were ground launched, and air dropped from C130 motherships. They fired laser guided glide munitions and Maverick missiles which are twice the size of a hellfire our current drones fire recovery was done under parachutes. The major advance is satellite high bandwidth comms which allows the operator’s to not be in line of sight over the air battle.plus miniaturized GPS and TFR radars these old birds were hand flown by TV or on radar altimeter in TFR mode. there’s storys of drones going under powerlines and bridges they flew so low in nap of the earth flying this was in the 1970s.
www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-34.html
check out the bottom for the armed ones, these little guys are amazing drop tanks, ECM gear, photo recon we have been using drones for a LONG time, this is corporate pork they have had this technology for decades.The flyboys should have been replaced with machines for all defensive suppression and penetration missions in the 1980s but you don’t get the girls and the billions of pork funding by flying cheap.drones from a trailer in Nevada via satellite.