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Comment by openasocket | Hacker News Reader

You should take a look at the switchblade. The switchblade 300 model has the equivalent of a 40mm grenade as a warhead, 2.7kg weight, endurance of 10 minutes and a range of around 10km all puts it well in that lower end range. Couldn't find any pricing data, but I imagine more COTS approaches could come out pretty cheap.

I'm actually surprised we've got man-portable loitering munitions like the switchblade in use before the widespread adoption of guided mortar rounds. I'd have to imagine it's more cost effective (in terms of kilograms of high explosive on target per dollar) to make some GPS-guided or laser-guided mortars, and either use ground troops or a small UAV to provide targeting data.

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> I'd have to imagine it's more cost effective (in terms of kilograms of high explosive on target per dollar) to make some GPS-guided or laser-guided mortars

The problem is scale. No one in the private sector makes or needs mortar rounds, so the DoD doesn't benefit from buying COTS components for them. Whereas you can pretty much just strap a grenade to a quadcopter with a few minor tweaks and you're in business. Which is more or less exactly what the Ukrainians have been doing with their surplus Soviet anti-tank grenades.

I don't even see how the 'switchblade' is useful for anything but special operations strikes on 'key assets' - which is what it was designed for.

It doesn't matter if it's 'price effective per kg' - it can't disable a tank, and might not disable a soft target without a direct it.

The 900 series is the one that might be quite useful.

All of that said, we'll have to see how countermeasures work it may be that they develop rapidly to neutralize drones ...

... and then a rational actor like China takes the 'saturation approach' and launches 100's of them at a single battalion etc..

Oh I dunno, Russian generals in particular may be concerned about the lowly 300 model.

The XM395 120mm GPS mortar guidance kit is about $10k per round and was introduced a short time before the switchblade. Switchblades are about $7k and are fairly low yield relatively speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM395_Precision_Guided_Mortar_...

Perhaps it's 10km range, more precise and visual targeting on moving vehicles vs close range and/or fixed position targeting. There is a switchblade 600 with even more range and more payload which can be used anti-armor.

Also, mortars and other artillery are subject to a counter-battery fire.

I've seen a claim that Switchblade 300 costs less than USD 7k. No idea how accurate this is tho.

This video says $6k as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PcWS1marOA

The most interesting part is that it flies extremely fast so you'll never see it coming. Particularly how it bursts through a windshield before exploding.

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