Thanks for sharing that. Interesting what constitutes a military breakthrough these days. A real nation-state with a military-industrial complex would just shoot that thing down.
Especially modern stuff. I've been talking with a lot of hobbyist drone owners lately and several folks are working on fascinating projects using a fleet of semi-autonomous lightweight fixed wing and quad drones along with modern autonomous aircraft techniques.
These things are small (you could hold them one handed on a crowded bus), fast (even the quads break 140mph), can be quiet (especially the fixed wings) and have cellphones.
One of the projects I saw was proving that an automated drone network could create a full coverage, high resolution video coverage of a parking lot even with drones having to leave the site to get fresh batteries.
They're working for a team that has a DARPA grant, so...
I'm surprised we don't see a lot more of this, but I assume it 10 years it will be extremely pervasive.
Drones which can zoom into an area at 100 mph plus and establish a complete surveillance perimeter. They could dock on telephone poles throughout a city. I imagine "calling 911" could dispatch these monitors to your location in under 60 seconds on average.
Drones were a lot more prominent in the recent hurricane response, I think it's the tip of the iceberg.
Breakthroughs are situational. Many first tier militaries spend time thinking about urban pacification. Within those contexts, it really is a breakthrough.
Just like how stealth aircraft were a breakthrough, and also totally useless in this situation.
