Give ‘em no more than a year. Advances in portable (hummVee) lasers designed to take them down will kill them off easily.
Another five years after that and aerial superiority will be a thing of the past.
As to operators, another drone sent up to find the signals controlling the attackers will make it suicide to hold a remote. There is no security on those.
“Even though they frequently operate from behind the frontlines, the drone controllers often leave an electronic trace if they aren’t careful, which allows the enemy to pinpoint and follow them, The Economist reported this week.
“A lot of people want to become drone pilots because they think the work is further back and safer,” one front-line commander told the outlet. “The reality is that it’s extremely dangerous to be flying battlefield drones.”
“Hummer,” a commander in Ukraine’s 47th brigade operating along the Zaporizhia front, told The Economist the Russians fire with everything they’ve got as soon as they identify a target.”
DEW (laser/microwave) applied from air to ground will serve as a counter-measure to vehicle borne lasers. The perpetual upgrades on either side keep the defense contractors in business.
Electronic Countermeasures are already a common component in the battel field because of drones. They don’t work so well when attacked electronically, and the operators are easy to find. Fox Hunting is a century old skill.