- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
Houthi rebels in Yemen have shot down seven US Reaper drones in less than six weeks, a loss of aircraft worth more than US$200 million (NZ$334m) in what is becoming the most dramatic cost to the Pentagon of the military campaign against the Iran-backed militants.
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360666149/houthi-rebels-shoot-down-7-us-military-reaper-drones-worth-334m-recent-weeks
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Have we considered DJI drones? I hear they’re only a few hundred bucks. 💸
That’s a Chinese company which they hate https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/dji-drone-ban-passes-in-us-house-countering-ccp-drones-act-would-ban-all-dji-sales-in-us-if-passed-in-senate
Somebody installed Signal on their phone…
Houthi rebels didn’t shoot down any US drones when Obama was president.
-Democrats, unironically.
I assume you need fairly sophisticated SAM systems to take out these drones. Are they all coming from Iran? Is this a step up in their missile capability?
If you can shoot any aircraft at a given attitude you can shoot this type of drone. It’s not fast, has no stealthy design and its not even small like some other drones.
You would have thought for $33mil a pop they would have some countermeasures. I guess they are still several orders of magnitude cheaper than a jet with an expensive pilot so are more disposable?
They are not that cheap compared to just a jet (F-16@70m, F-35@100m) but pilots cost a lot and not just money.
They also must have a much smaller mission cost due to fuel efficiency. Provided they do not get shot down.
It certainly wasn’t designed to survive against serious opposition and I doubt mere countermeasures would change that. It would probably increase costs more and would be useless in most missions.