Drone CAS

I'm talking about electronic warfare against the drone

Well that would make the entire concept of drones useless altogether. But I don't jihadis have EW capabilities.

I completely agree with OP.
Ive asked Jow Forums again and again.
I have no idea why no branch has ever turned a drone into a 40mm delivery system.
not even a predator. just a toyota corolla helo drone with a 40mm attached. some optics and its good to go.

really just put a 40mm on a really really cheap platform that has flir and can drop them where it needs.

CAS is usually a missile. RPAs have been doing this for years. We even had the base defense mission when I was deployed.

I want to see a drone with a howitzer stuck in its nose

because despite your understanding of things 40mm and 30mm gun systems are fucking really really heavy and add retard amounts of drag and many of our air support drones have lawnmower power. not to mention your demand of good optics which is already like half to a quarter the weight of the damn things.

if you want to carry heavy complex shit it won't be cheap or small.

if you want it to be cheap and small it won't be able to carry heavy shit

the drone would have to be bigger than your mom

You're talking about mounting a relatively short-range weapon on a very big, very slow aircraft user.
Let's think about this for a second. The M230 has a firing range of ~4000m. That's less than a third the standard operating altitude of an AC-130. To put that into comparison, the AC-130's standard 40mm Bofors L/60 has a firing range of over 7000m. Simply put, the Global Hawk cannot possibly hit a target with the M230 while remaining at a safe operational altitude. This is why the M230 is mounted on helicopters like the Apache, where having to perform a large, slow orbit to hit targets isn't an issue, or even necessary.
Even if we wanted to though, it would be very hard to mount any substantial weapon to the Global Hawk, since it's a relatively narrow fuselage that isn't designed to carry any substantial payload. It's like you're trying to strap a handgun to a kite.
On top of all this, the type of CAS performed by aircraft like the AH-64, AC-130, and even jets like the A-10, require a considerable degree of coordination and situational awareness. As advanced as these drones are, the nature of physics means that a drone operating halfway across the globe from its operator will always have a slower response time than a manned aircraft. It's the same reason we don't have drone air superiority fighters; it's one thing to make a computer that can observe, analyze, and act as fast as a human. It's another thing to fit it in an aircraft and teach it who it is and isn't supposed to kill.

to elaborate on my final point:
As silly as it sounds, one must also consider that CAS is a very "human" mission. Unlike dropping a bunch of bombs on a target and zooming off, or firing a missile at a building and saying "job's done", a CAS pilot is truly part of the battle. They see the enemy. They see the friendlies. They get a hell of a lot closer than most other types of attack aircraft. Knowing this, you have a certain bond between the CAS pilot and the guy on the ground; everyone knows who's got their back, and the enemy knows that somewhere up above, there's a pissed off motherfucker with some big guns watching them run away. I get that this is all fairly subjective, anecdotal, and has no real bearing in terms of fiscal practicality, but the fact is that if you give your grunts the choice of air support to pick from, their first question is never going to be "which one is cheaper?", and for good reason. While some may have a great deal of faith in computers to not make mistakes, the fact is that most people would rather have a human watching their back from 20,000ft than from 7000 miles.

a mk 19 on a turret with flir can be put on a fucking hot air balloon.
just make it a helo drone instead of a fucking jet propulsion thing. it doesnt need to be a tank hunter.
something strictly anti personnel.

how big?

Way to low cost for the DoD to sign off. A missile designed for tanks and 5 figures at the minimum is needed for "niche COIN" stuff.

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turrets are gay, modify the Reaper by spacing out its hardpoints to accept LAU-69/A racks, literally 228 APKWS rockets on a single drone

eh something that could be taken down with a DSHK of course.
maybe 10x10 disc.
just make it an apache drone.
flying tank at high altitude that can take some small arms fire.

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Wouldn't that be a good niche role though? Instead of spending a $10,000 missile against goat herders, just have a mounted cannon that can be reused. You could have them permanently attached to companies for small scale CAS missions instead of risking pilots lives to blow up Mohammed.

my sentiments exactly

so something quite big and expensive? what if we put men inside it so we can keep this expensive investment usable in a jammed environment aswell? what do you say chap?

how is that big and expensive?
no lets have drones that can fight our air war with china and russia at the same time and completely ignore what the US military has been doing for 3 decades now and the needs of boots on the ground.
we need something that goes mach 5 and can take out a su-22 because thats whats costing us lives on the ground for more than a quarter century.

>just make it an apache drone.
>flying tank at high altitude that can take some >small arms fire.
all of this would require the expense of the Apache + your additional requirements for protection and drone tech. That's far more weight than a regular Apache so it will need to be bigger.

I won't even get into your 4th generation warfare retardation.