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Fact is, the US was a late adopter to more modern drones, or UAVs, having fallen behind countries like Israel and South Africa who had developed propeller-driven surveillance UAVs and used them operationally in combat from the late 1970s.
Both gained much experience in the use of drones to evade surface to air missiles and developed stealth prototypes, including the South African Flowchart, and began early work on weaponising them. As a result, both Israel and South Africa were early exporters of drones, selling to dozens of countries and remaining major sellers. When the US needed to acquire tactical UAVs in the 1980s, it acquired Israeli Tadira Mastiffs. It wasn't until nearly a decade later that the first Predator flew, in 1994.
Both the above countries have armed drones for sale, though refuse to publicise their sales. So even if the US were to scale back its drone research massively, it would not do anything to slow down this pace of development elsewhere, which has only increased with more countries and companies building drones and their subsystems.
It was only in 2001 that trials were first carried out to arm Predators with Hellfire missiles. Not because they were more effective weapons platforms than manned aircraft, but because the idea was to shorten the time needed between spotting a target on the UAV's cameras and hitting it with a bomb or missile.
As such, most countries don't actually need armed drones. They're slower and more vulnerable than manned combat aircraft, are not designed to dash to target areas quickly and are typically more expensive to operate than aircraft like the Embraer Super Tucano or Aerosud AHRLAC because they need more ground equipment and a ground control station. The market for surveillance drones, especially those that can provide some level of persistent surveillance, is huge and growing bigger. The number of countries specifically requesting armed drones, however, remains low.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly not trivial, and certainly not for $1K. Perhaps in 10 years like the article suggests. However, you could probably take an off-the-shelf large R/C plane or helicopter and put a small explosive payload in it, then crash it into somewhere. Even that would be hard to do for under $1K, and range would be limited.
And if it was practicable and effective it would have been done already. The IRA experimented with this decades ago and gave up and lest be honest the average al Qaeda terrorist cell would find using human suicide bombers much easier to use.
Leonardo da Vinci experimented with flight many centuries ago. He gave up.
Which came first, the widespread availability of drones or the Good Friday Agreement?
How do you get a 'human suicide bomber' in to some place like Number 10 Downing Street? You don't. You don't even use a drone. You use a mortar bomb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack
Where are these 'al-qaeda' terror cells of yours? The ones that see their lives as having no more value than that of a housefly's? Did I miss out on the Kool Aid?
>What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United States to do anything about it. This is an extraordinary comment to make, when they have used drones more than anyone.
'The USA has been igniting and fuelling this arms race with ever greater use and weaponization of drones, but now the process is self-sustaining. Even if the USA should cease developments of its drone program and start decommissioning the crafts, that in itself would not stop drone armament, since several other actors would in all probability continue developments on programs that are now already in full action'
> Every country ... Only every country that is, wants to be or pretends to be a military power. Many (smaller) countries realized long ago that if they would end up at war with a much larger neighbour, their own military power would be of no use, and gave up on maintaining and building self-sufficient military machines. Instead, they focus on a certain aspect of military operations, and develop and maintain that segm…
Defensive versus attacking capabilities differ very strongly though. The quagmire defense is not soo expensive, I would think. For example, Switzerland has lots of basements and guns and gun training. That just sounds like such a lame headache to take and hold.
I'm not surprised. How hard would it be for an individual to mount an RPG or Liberator firearm payload on a sub $1k drone that can be piloted 20km? I also expect drone regulations to increase considerably once attacks from such low-end drones start appearing.
Certainly not trivial, and certainly not for $1K. Perhaps in 10 years like the article suggests. However, you could probably take an off-the-shelf large R/C plane or helicopter and put a small explosive payload in it, then crash it into somewhere. Even that would be hard to do for under $1K, and range would be limited.
300m however with a live video stream and GPS navigation programming is available under $1k even on Amazon:
I guess the title should say "Every developed and some developing countries". Other countries have troubled economies that barely allow to have armed forces, let alone to purchase a new hardware.
> Every country ... Only every country that is, wants to be or pretends to be a military power. Many (smaller) countries realized long ago that if they would end up at war with a much larger neighbour, their own military power would be of no use, and gave up on maintaining and building self-sufficient military machines. Instead, they focus on a certain aspect of military operations, and develop and maintain that segm…
Defensive versus attacking capabilities differ very strongly though. The quagmire defense is not soo expensive, I would think. For example, Switzerland has lots of basements and guns and gun training. That just sounds like such a lame headache to take and hold.
Presumably, you wouldn't want to risk b), which means for every instance of a) you'd presumably end up committing resources to counter it, if the odds of b) are "high enough", where "high enough" could easily be 1% chance of a bomb or less if the 1% case is sufficiently lethal.
You could see a hidden defending force "swarming" an invader with toys with the odd highly lethal weapon in the mix very cheaply to slow an advance...