The purpose of a mission like this is to get our ships to light up the active defense systems and gather electronic intelligence. Sometimes you just let the other guy take pretty pictures rather than revealing your capabilities.
As much fun as it is to shoot drones out of the sky, if they pose no threat, there is no sense in giving away information on your defense capabilities and systems for free.
What the Navy needs is a quick-n-dirty response to this sort of thing. Once a drone like this has been detected (and it certainly was detected), it should be dispatched with a visually aimed heat-seeking MANPADS from one of the outlying ships or some such thing. That way we don't give away information, but we still assert our position.
What the Navy needs is a quick-n-dirty response to this sort of thing. Once a drone like this has been detected (and it certainly was detected), it should be dispatched with a visually aimed heat-seeking MANPADS from one of the outlying ships or some such thing. That way we don't give away information, but we still assert our position.
Or having our boys follow the drone back to it's base and bomb it back to the stone ages. Seems like a reasonable response.