Funny those drones are taking out armor. How many drones can ya buy for an F18
Yup. But that's more a failure of Russian tactics than anything else. A drone shouldn't be able to. Armor is meant to be deployed with air support and with troops on the ground to screen for incoming missiles/RPGs.
Russia was running their armor in unsupported columns like ******* dipshits in a manner so inept it terrified US military planners. Drones travel at as little as 120MPH. They should be fairly easy to consistently screen for, especially considering that that a javelin missile can travel as fast as mach 1.7. Or about about 1300mph.
Literally an order of magnitude faster.
And those can be screened for with the proper support.
Russia was
so incompetent with their tactics and their uses of forces that it was immediately obvious that NATO forces could overwhelm their conventional military with shocking ease.
Which means that Russia would be left with its unconventional military capabilities. Nukes.
And how many drones could you buy for one F/A-18. Quite a few. But how long does an F/A-18 last? About 6000 to 10,000 hours. That is literally
thousands of sorties. All with vastly greater payloads, greater speed by about an order of magnitude, vastly greater versatility and adaptability, greater range...and here's the kicker:
much higher success rates than a drone.
All with better air to air capability. And if outfitted with the proper missiles MUCH better air-to-air capabilities. We've had tomahawk missiles that do much of what modern drones do, but better.....for a very long time. And yet, our carrier groups have only renewed and expanded in their capabilities.
Another major factor is electronic warfare. Russia and other nations (most definitely the US) have developing jamming capacity that will render a drone dumb as a paper airplane if its satellite or RC capacities as disputed. You can
definitely **** with an F/A-18 with electronic warfare, but you can't stop it with that alone.
Again, carrier groups are in no short term danger of being replaced by drones.