Personally, I think consumer-grade drones are around their maximum lethality in warfare now, and that countermeasures will gradually catch up before an equilibrium is reached. Much like heavy water-cooled machine guns were at their maximum lethality sometime during WWI, before stuff like armour, mobility, snipers, and accurate medium-range strikes (artillery and CAS) started countering them.

Especially now that a lot of military powers not actively involved in the war (US, a bunch of European militaries, China, India, ...) see a very clear incentive to invest heavily in developing anti-drone capabilities. Before long, I think we'll see highly effective "interceptor drones", possibly even autonomous ones, that can track a given infantry unit and provide air cover (basically the development that happened for aircraft). I also think we'll start seeing more and better purpose-built anti-drone weapons that ordinary infantry can carry (like MANPADS).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Drones are easy to take our with WWI level weapons, and there is good reason to think those can be automated. It will take some time to get it all working, but since drones are in reach of any 2 bit wanna-be terrorist it is important to have them. I could probably build (with effort) something to take out 1950's era fighter planes cheaper than our current options, but either you can't build something of that level or you are skipping up to modern 5th generation fighters so it isn't worth it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

A drone with wire cutter propeller blades to shred nets and fibre wires.