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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

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Havoc·

> Do you really think that a $400 cost is of any issue for military use?

If your name is Ukraine then yeah. Effectively halves the number of drones you can build

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> Effectively halves the number of drones you can build

You're confusing the price tag of an FPV drone (for which this tech has no use, 4km precision is roughly the range of such drone, so even without a positioning device you'd get such a precision…) with the one of a long-range drone which is hundreds of magnitudes larger, even for Ukrainians.

FPV used in combat these days go a lot further than 4km, you can punch out to 25km+ with a good repeater setup easily, 10-15km with a good mast setup, and strikes using FPV quads out to 45km have been documented (but these are rare).

You just need to plan your battery selection and consider the electronic warfare environment to go the distance.

There’s also the optical fiber drones which come in spool lengths up to 20km…

You're picking nits here. Again, you barely even need any kind of positioning system in an FPV, let alone a positioning system with 4km accuracy.

Such a system only make sense for use in long-ranged drones.

Sorry, this is wrong. They'd be based on long range UAV's - not short range FPVs. Ukraine have been building about half a dozen types of different long range drones and are producing a good number of those every day now (some with jets making them analogous to cruise missiles). They're much more expensive than a cheap FPV with an RPG warhead strapped to it.

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