Re:Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of sol...
by nradov on Sunday May 15, 2022 @09:47PM
(#31393006)
Dive bombing is a silly idea for rotorcraft. It just doesn't work aerodynamically.
Sophisticated militaries will strike moving targets with precision guided munitions. Generally either laser guidance with a designator mounted on the drone, or some kind of pattern recognition built into the bomb itself (could be optical, IR, or millimeter wave radar). For example, something like the GBU-44/B.
Poor militaries and insurgents will make do with whatever they can get. Either wait for the target to stop moving, or just lead it a little and hope.
Every one of these drone-drop videos is several seconds between letting go of the bomb, and the bomb colliding with the target.
If they actually want these drones to reliably hit a moving target, or even a vehicle in combat, they'll need to do something.
That's a lot of hang-time and delay in these "drone drop" videos. Once the bomb is let go, there's going to be another 20+ to 30+ minutes before the drone operator is able to fly another drone into the field, and that's if the drone operator has a 2nd drone with him. Maybe it will be hours, or maybe the next chance to drop a bomb never comes ever again.
You really want to maximize the chance of striking the target with these operations. A huge number of WW1 and WW2 operations were summarized as "Flew for 4 hours, missed my bomb, flew home". You want to minimize that kind of thing.
Especially if these drones are considered somewhat expendable.