The USMC just issued a call for 10,000 FPV drones to be delivered in one year, a small step toward fielding this capability across the force.
The American drone program is not looking good. They’re going the wrong direction (even though this article mentions the opposite) by trying to implement drones at the squad level. No one wants to be running around with drone googles carrying batteries and spare drones.
Ukraine has a better idea where they assign a entire drone battalion to a front and they cover a wide area supporting all infantry in that area. Also the bomber drones are completely slept on by the us.
The US also has a problem with cost per drone. They can’t produce enough once the supply chains break down compared to their rivals.
They’ve already cloned the Sahed under the LUCAS program. So low cost bomber drones are already in operation and being used in active combat by the US.
As for the organizational/operational philosophy, we’ll never know what is better until we see it in real neer-peer combat. I can find merit in both countries approaches, and suspect a blend of both would be even more beneficial.
LUCAS program
This has only recently been cleared past testing. I am not sure if it will retain its low cost claims once real world production or wartime supply comes into play.
