In 2024 and 2025, I served for six months as an international volunteer on a first-person view attack drone team in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. My team

Written by an individual who has spent 6 months as a foreign volunteer FPV pilot looking into effectivity of these drones on the frontline. He claims they are pretty much a fad with limited impact. The issues are:

  • unreliable / cheap hw
  • limited amount of radio channels for video / control (I thought they were running custom FCs - they aren’t!)
  • weather and light conditions dependent
  • suseptible to electronic warfare
  • lack of qualified pilots / hard to fly
  • not always the chapest or quickest option

Note: I am something of an FPV “pilot” myself, I am not sure I agree with everything being said (eg imo fpv drones aren’t toys for rich people - I am definitely not rich), but interresting reading anyway. Also - I’ve never been to a war - I know crap.

  • magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9·
    9 hours ago

    “Fpv drones are for rich people”

    You can get into flying whoops for like $250, and if you wait it out you can spend that over the course of months:

    1. Radiomaster pocket and a free sim ($60)
    2. Cheap box goggles down the line to improve the sim and use once you get your qwad ($50 - $100)
    3. When you finally don’t suck you can get a mobula3 or whatever for like another $120, now you’re flying FPV

    FFS, one of the most prevalent YouTube fpv channels of all time started out while the guy running it was squatting out in a box car and dealing with serious substance abuse issues.

    I’ve spent far more money on old eBay servers and weed over the years. But no one calls you rich for smoking dope or playing with Linux on EoL hardware…