But then they go and say "drone swarms will defeat all future adversaries!"
Like in the Ukrainian context everyone seems to think the drone swarm was the deciding factor and is saying "this will replace air forces!"...kind of ignoring the multi month infiltration and espionage operation which got those systems in range (they were literally trucked right up to almost the fence line).
Many/most folks use the term "drone" to talk about CCA's and other expensive platforms. In fact, "drone warfare" predates the common application to quadcopters, people were calling the Predator drone a drone in the early 2000's. I do agree that calling everything a drone is annoying though, and makes it hard to know what people are talking about. "AI" is having the same problem today.
But every post vaguely about drones on HN has a whole bunch of people acting like a 1000 quadcopters will replace an F-35.
I don’t really put much stock in your average person’s take on warfare generally, so I’m not too bothered by the torrent of misunderstanding. You see the same thing with AI/AGI, and much of it is fueled by those garnering for clicks.
I will say I missed in my original response that the OP was taking exclusively about autonomous devices, and in that case I would agree with their take.
These bombers attacks were done with manual control too. These drones had LTE modems and on footage it's clearly visible that they controlled by operator.
People can't read these days, especially if it doesn't match the reality they build in their heads.
I'll skip the shitty retort about not reading.
Governments are falling over themselves to: acquire drones, figure out how to defend against existing and future drones, and to figure out how to exploit them well. Given the recent attack against Russian bombers, I find it hard to take you seriously here.
Hell, the US knows it can't compete with China on aircraft numbers, and is placing its money on collaborative combat aircraft to give it the advantage. That's about as strong an endorsement as you can get.