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maybe the drones will have actual aiming mechanisms for the dropped grenades in the next block

How many drones is that? More than 500 but less than 1000?

*According to google, the cost for the average military drone is between half a million to just over a million dollars. The article is very short on information. Not sure why asking a question for perspective's sake is drawing ire.

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>Kyiv is now seeking to boost domestic production to build what officials cast as an "army of drones."

"Begun, the Drone War has."

I'm thinking they could at least throw an IR laser pointer aimed down, and IR camera on them.

I build drones, and that seems like the most easy, lightweight answer I can think of.

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The majority of the drones that are being used right now are off the shelf DJI drones under 2k.

Domestic production wise, their heavy lift drones cost 20k, and they've started to churn out what are effectively DIY FPV racing drones with RPG warheads strapped to the bottom, and running them into tanks and APCs, cost of those likely being under 1k.

So more like a few hundred thousand drones. Thank you.

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With what money??? They are already indebted from ear to ear with all the aid coming from just the US alone. For all those thinking those billions were paid out of kindness, wake up. Their economy obviously is not in good shape right now either. So how will they fund an expensive drone program this year? Even more debts?

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I envision a future hobby of the ultra rich - drone army battles.

Hello DJI how much C4 can we strap on and still fly?

At least 1

Is the US paying for that too?

That would honestly be really cool. It would probably be a good way to get them to lay off the actual wars too.

They just need someone to pay for it.

We are paying for everything in Ukraine.

I've been downvoted to oblivion and so will you so here's an upvote and a question. Who ultimately gets paid in the purchase/ manufacture of these drones? I'm assuming China via our military industrial complex.

I’d reason that it’ll be the Chinese and the western Military Complex. China will be an easy source to by cheaper resources to build these drones and the industrial complex in the west will get contracted out to provided their expertise to Ukraine. Really only the Chinese and the MIC benefit from this. The US just writes massive checks out to Ukraine for defenses but it’s up to Ukraine how to spend it.

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Apologies. I'm from the West so I referred to it as OUR MIC. If the Ukraine's previous actions are repeated then they'll be immediately flying these drones into Russian buildings. That's not great either. What do I know though?

I feel like these would be pretty effective if they couldn't be jammed very easily and I have no idea how easy that is to do.

Ukraine naturally would want to escalate the war because to them it would force Russia to the negotiating table in Ukrainians favor. But most of Russia, contrary to western belief, silently support the war. All the Russian anti-war protesters are a massive minority of Russians.

The sad reality is Ukraine has almost full mobilized and is suffering from manpower shortage and desertion among the lower ranks. Heck, last week their government increased the punishment of desertion. You don’t do that if you are not suffering for such a situation.

Russia meanwhile began their mobilization late, and it hasn’t even peaked yet. In a war of attrition Russia will come out as the winner, bloodied, but it’ll get its way.

Ukrainian support only lasts as long as western leadership is willing to support them. So what happens if say Trump gets re-elected? He’s happily axe all that support and leave them out to dry.

China is content to sit on the sideline. They might not say it, but they are still trading with the Russians and they are learning valuable military lessons from this war. This war will most likely dictate their policy going forward with Taiwan and the likes.

What’s the alternative? Capitulate to Russia and cease to exist as a state?

They know they have that, the US taxpayer

Given how they've been effective at rigging/using consumer drones to drop bombs on those Russian invaders. I can wait to see what they can do with their own drones.

Back when I had a DJI phantom 1, the general rule of thumb was that it would lose 1 second of flight time for every 1 gram of equipment added. That was about 10 years ago, so things may have changed since then.