I'm surprise the article didn't mention the US military history.
The US Army has not had a evolution of its attack helicopter since the 1970s.
I remember because one of my favorite childhood games was Comanche 3. [1] Control a helicopter, not crash, not get shot down, neutralize enemies, and achieve mission objectives -- it was cutting-edge for 1997.
The Comanche program was scrapped after more than a decade of development. And the Defiant program was just cancelled last year as well.
Avionics for sure, but there's not really anything like a "5th gen" helicopter. Helicopters are mostly close air support. No one is going to send fleets of helicopters to engage in air to air combat with other fleets of helicopters.
I suspect that the US likely has effective means of jamming drone communications. If you have a seeker that doesn't need human intervention, why use electric motors when you can use rocket motors for your drone, aka "missile".
The drones I would see as maybe being effective is some kind of anti radar drone that can loiter in an area without comms and strike when the radar lights up.
That said the CAS role requires radio comms to the helicopter / airplane, so I mean maybe a drone with an LLM that can use human comms to figure out friend from foe.
Obviously the drone has to send back a TV signal to the controller, I think the US would figure out some kind of HARM missile that would just lock onto the drone transmitter. Or a CIWS system with a radar that locks on to the transmitter.
I think solid fuel rocket motors are cheaper than electric motors and batteries.
Maybe drones are the future, but I sort of see it as 2 broke countries duking it out. There's probably a reason why Ukraine wants US weapons like ATACMS and not a container ship full of drones. If you look at the $120 billion in aid to ukraine, that would buy you 100 million drones at $1200 per drone. Or 10 million at $12,000 per.
I guess what I'm saying is if NATO fought Russia it would be over in a few weeks and no one would care about drones. I think drones, except for Ukraine's sea drones, are highly useful in this conflict but probably not many others.
Sea drones could be a game changer, its a super long range torpedo and for anyone fighting the US, its probably safe to assume vessels beyond the vessel that launches them, are those of the US military / the enemy.
You know, there is an argument to be made that if you just abandoned having an army, and bought 1 million drones that would just target anything vehicular or human, you could just let the drones self guide on some kind of, go that way, kill something if you see it, or return for fresh batteries if you don't kind of algorithm.
The problem then is all the OPFOR has to defend against is cheap shitty drones.
If you haven't already, be sure to checkout MicroProse's [1] "modern" retro flightsim, Tiny Combat Arena.
Sure, it's beta and continuously in development (and likely won't be finished, ever), but still, you can take off in a Harrier and blow up stuff. The graphics are charmingly retro.
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[1] published by MicroProse, but actually a one-man effort.
VTOL VR is a pretty great VR first mil flight sim. It has f-18, f-35, and apache like vehicles. They recently introduced wind effects and EW. Allegedly the radar cross-sectioning is better than DCIS (actually accounts for orientation towards the radar)
Tornado was another terrific sim. It had the best mission planner and immersion even though its simulation of the ALARM was busted. Digital Integrations? Don't remember if that was the publisher.
The US Army has not had a evolution of its attack helicopter since the 1970s.
I remember because one of my favorite childhood games was Comanche 3. [1] Control a helicopter, not crash, not get shot down, neutralize enemies, and achieve mission objectives -- it was cutting-edge for 1997.
The Comanche program was scrapped after more than a decade of development. And the Defiant program was just cancelled last year as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_3