“Just change the rules of engagement for the drone operators and within one or two Russian jets crashing, this nonsense will stop.”
The reason remotely controlled drones make bad fighter jets is engagements take place at close quarters and milliseconds count. The drone sends a signal to a satellite. The satellite sends the signal to another satellite. That satellite sends the signal to the ground. Even at the speed of light you’re talking seconds for this pathway and an equal amount of time for a responding command. In those seconds the two planes may have moved thousands of feet.
Likely the drone has not positively identified the approaching plane but only has a physical image or a radar return. So, whose plane are you shooting down? Is it even a military plane? When “the facts” are presented in an article the answer to shoot or not seems plain. But in the heat of the moment, I assure the answer is not obvious and the results might have ramifications the US would rather not deal with.
I worked at a satellite internet provider for a while back in the middle 2000’s.
We provided internet service (and VOIP) to oil rigs in the Gulf of Texas, Army Corp of Engineers, and other remote/mobile units.
It was literally half second delay up and half second delay down - one full second round trip. Anything more and we would violate some of our service level agreements (SLA), etc.
I cannot imagine trying to remotely control an aircraft in Syria from Las Vegas (Nellis), etc. I would imagine the controller has to be at the FOB to get decent response time.
Simple solution: Proximity fuse on a major explosive. Warn all nations, get too close and you blow up.
Thank you. You raise good points.
The following article is a little “blue sky” but indicates that drones once (unsuccessfully) fought back and there are concepts that could be added to drones to allow them a better chance to fight back.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/yes-the-mq-9-can-defend-itself-with-air-to-air-missiles