There are a couple of major differences. My understanding is that helicopters can’t typically reach and maintain the altitude that unmanned drones can, making drones more effective to be used in less conspicuous ways. There’s also the difference in the baseline level of security between the two. Helicopters do go down from time to time, thus creating a human risk that isn’t present in drones.

I feel that since drones pose less risk to the lives of their operators, the desire to use them will be greater.

>thus creating a human risk that isn’t present in drones.

most unmanned drones used today have a far higher history of 'unintended forced landings' than most other military craft -- when you use planes that have a high risk of crash over metropolitan and suburban areas, the human risk multiplies.

The US military has 'lost' about 400 'large' drones between 2001 and 2014.

To put that 400 number into perspective, the US had 5 or 6 major airliner crashes between 2001-2013, and about 400 accidents (including non-crashes and minor incidents) over the period of 2004-2013.

I'd rather have any fighter jet in production right now over me than anything General Atomics had designed.

Here's an older WaPo article from 2016. From 2001-2016 400 military drone crashes occured. Military incidents are harder to find out about, otherwise I would have used that number.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/drone-crash...

>I feel that since drones pose less risk to the lives of their operators, the desire to use them will be greater.

absolutely true -- but don't let that make you think that loss-of-personnel is the most important metric for whether or not a mission flies.

>when you use planes that have a high risk of crash over metropolitan and suburban areas, the human risk multiplies.

Yeah, but it's not a risk to the government. The government is very good at weaseling out of responsibility for killing bystanders with little more than a settlement check. When people acting on behalf of the government get killed then that's when government gets held accountable.

Oh No they might crash more! They totally wouldn't use them offensively because it's easier and less "risk".

Oh wait, we have nearly 20 years of the endless war that proves that they will.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2015/07/l...

Drones also make it easier to get people to fire on civilians because they are remote controlled.