Drone turrets and sniper drones.
Warfare - Part VII
In Part VI, I wrote about how drones could tap covertly into the enemy’s power grid and how this could be used to recharge drones mid-air.
In this pose I will write about drones that wield machine guns or sniper rifles.
Drones that explode have been very efficient in warfare but the cost per strike of each FPV drone is still relatively high and the drone itself is destroyed on impact.
There are more and more drones that drop their explosives instead of exploding on impact and they have a higher economic efficiency when dealing with troops.
However, explosives can only fall in one straight line and those drones are unable to kill troops that are not directly below them.
Likewise, early development of drones shooting other drones are starting to emerge.
Sniper drone.
First off, Snipers have limited utility in today’s battlefield.
Not only are snipers expensive to train and only have 1km of range.
They are also immediately detected and taken out with FPV drones on today’s battlefield.
However, the 1km range is useful when defending against other drones and setting up drone ambushes in the enemy’s rear.
As the drone is highly mobile, its firing position can be detected.
By the time an FPV drone arrives to investigate, the sniper drone is already relocated.
Design considerations
First off, drones are flying platform and recoil is a serious problem which is why the bullet has to be fired from a tube similar to how helicopters launch rockets.
That means the bullet needs to be activated through an electrical ignition system and the casing needs to fly out the back.
I would suggest to use automatic range finding like Herstal developed for sniper rifles.
Machine gun drone.
Similar considerations exist for a machine gun drone.
However, to fire at a higher pace the reloading has to be done in a rotary fashion where the a bullet is injected into the tube and the lower tube is fired electrically.
In fact, both systems could be combined into a mobile gun ship.
The sniper drone is just one where the shot is taken carefully and the machine gun drone is one where burst firing or continuous firing is used.
These drones could hover above charging points indefinitely.
Their ammunition could be resupplied using drone logistics chains or the drones could just fly home when they are low on ammo.