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Comment by scintill76 | Hacker News Reader

I’m amused picturing soldiers following the fiber back to the drone operator. But I suppose either their location is no real secret, it’s easy to defend and/or the other end has a radio transceiver far enough away from jamming and giving them a few more km of buffer.

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The problem with following the fiber back is they don't have just one explosive drone and they will happily target anyone meandering into the grey zone.

Good luck finding end of the strand after explosion :)

Why not lasers?

Like using line of sight laser comms to send commands and return video?

Exactly that, line of sight. The horizon strictly limits your operational range, and for fpv suicide drones there goes your terminal guidance (or the "buzzing around inside a maintenance warehouse to blow up vehicles inside") capabilities.

Could be useful for high flying surveillance drones, but not much beyond that.

Fly the drones in pairs? Relay drone goes to a significantly higher altitude in the middle?

    *
  /   \
 /     \

Yes, or just have a relay drone with radio comm relatively close, so jamming's not a problem and have that communicate via laser with the disposable drone.

One problem might be smoke, though, which happens both naturally on a battlefield and is also often used for concealment.

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