Drone swarms. The drones win. Sorry everybody. I’m not going to sugar coat it, the drones come out on top ultimately. The debate is raging right now on social media about the future of air combat and I just wanted to chime in with my two cents. Fighter jet pilots are very cool. It’s an awesome gig. They make movies about Jet pilots. But drones are the next thing to rule the skies. Here’s why in the debate about Drones vs Manned aircraft, drones some out on top. It’s just reality rearing its ugly head.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought ever since I saw that people were making drone hummingbirds. They’ve been working on and developing these for decades. The hummingbirds are just one example.

Now let’s start imagining swarms of the thousands. Tens of thousands. All working remotely with no pilot. Just a kid with a laptop in a bunker somewhere.

Now comes the part there people say something about an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) weapon that will knock all the drones out of the sky. Okay. You launch your EMP. Now all the electronics are fried. ALL of them in a certain area. Including yours. So, you shot your EMP and now everything got zapped. Certainly, your enemy won’t launch another wave of inexpensive drones! They won’t just have thought ahead and planned on that.

You better have a lot of faith in your drone rifles.

Not to bring you down, but drones just keep getting faster and smaller. You’re going to have a hard time shooting them.

Do you have a swarm of these drones protecting a larger one with a weapon? Or is it enough to launch a couple hundred thousand of these things in waves? Some to take out traditional aircraft and some to take out people? It’s terrifying to think about. but we better. I guarantee someone is.

You will always need boots on the ground (Until robots get a longer battery life) to do certain missions, but in the future of air combat? Looks like it’s going to be drone for the win. It’s not sexy but it’s cheap and you don’t need a human pilot. Sorry Maverick.