>What "rumors" are you even implying about?
rumors that suicide drones are being deployed in the ME
>If you're going to indiscriminately kill everyone in a town then send in B52s. If you need to kill 3 guys in a house you fire a hellfire from a predator/reaper. Anything else is just uneconomical.
all bullshit. economics of an anti-personnel bombing run -
-Single CBU-105 bomb (cluster bomb) cost - ~$400,000
-Kill ratio - .01 people/bomb (optimisitc Vietnam War stats, modern stats are still largely classified, are probably comparable)
- cost per kill - 40,000,000 USD
you can get into smart bombs if you want, kill ratio (Probably) is closer to 1, but at ~20 million USD/bomb, the point is still made.
Economics of a drone
- Approximate cost with an explosive charge - ~20,000 USD (From a DARPA Proposal, I'll dig it up if you want)
- Possible anticipated kill ratio - ~.1
- cost/kill - ~200,000 USD
You can't seriously think that economics favors the B52-bomb-everything-to-fuck.
>but muh infrastructure
Infrastructure damage is a meme against ideologically driven modern guerrilla force that are used to living in mud huts and caves anyway.
>but muh factories
everybody we have fought for the past 30 years has been armed by another country, sometimes by us.
On top of that
- Drones, even swarms, require no airfields
- Drones don't damage infrastructure you might want to keep
- Flying a drone requires a video-game level of skill, flying a B52 requires years of training and experience
how can you seriously think that it will not be a thing at all?