>>63948856
>Is it really that much cheaper than a pipe gun?
The initial cost (and more importantly the skill and effort required) is way, way lower with a scrap metal trident ram.
The metal is essentially free, just give a mobik a hacksaw and tell them if they come home with some scrap, they won't be beaten for retreating from the assault. They pass a dozen wrecks in every assault anyway.
>Especially since the gun all but guarantees you can recover?
That makes it much cheaper but not because of the weapon, because of the drone itself.
Drones that come home are always going to be cheaper, by an order of magnitude and this can justify putting a more expensive and complicated weapon on it.
There's issues though, weight makes it much harder to return, one-way drones are always at the extent of their battery when they get their kill, battery is nearly as big a limiting factor as signal.
A gun is always going to be heavier than a blade because barrels are bigger and heavier than a pointed rod and that's before you get into the action and possibly a magazine. This means that melee drones have better range and are more likely to make it home.
Returning drones have all sorts of issues though, FPVs are preferably partly because you don't have to risk your life to go pick them up and the enemy can't track them back to your position.
Still, vidrel is a Russian video about trying and failing to shoot one of Ukraine's new models.
I haven't seen anything official on this, it's been soft-leaked via Russian footage on a Ukrainian news channel just today, I assume something official will now follow in a few days.
It's described as a high speed drone bomber, it's clearly winged, probably horizontal EDFs on the wing but maybe a rear prop/EDF and from the way it's manoeuvring, I'm sure it's an FPV.
I don't think AI bombers are already at the stage of improvising attack runs, evading gunfire and taking another pass for BDA. It's probably not that far off though.
