> The Fury UGV you link to is a gun on wheels, which I see as infinitely more usable and viable than this Palletrone contraption.
Palletrone is by all means a demonstrator that the idea is possible, an utter MVP.
> And in cases where you would want flight capability, why wouldn't you just use a standard aerial drone (obviously used already to great effect in the Ukraine war)?
The key thing IMHO is the fusion of aerial and ground movement. A gun on wheels is nice but it's immediately stopped in its tracks by anything from swampy terrain ("rasputiza") over a random trench to hedgehogs [1], not to mention mines. Give it aerial capability, even if it's just enough to hop over a hedgehog or a smaller river, and the ability to defend itself while airborne, and the game becomes much more serious.
All you need to be is the first one to actually pull it off and hope it's enough of a surprise effect that the enemy gets hindered long enough that you can make some military gain out of it.
Side thought: I wonder how much downforce a drone can actually exert on the ground. Could a heavy enough drone with serious bottom armor be powerful enough to detonate anti-personnel mines without being endangered in the process?
> Give it aerial capability, even if it's just enough to hop over a hedgehog or a smaller river, and the ability to defend itself while airborne, and the game becomes much more serious.
Again, the whole idea presented in this article is that it responds to people pushing on it. What you have just described is what a standard, existing aerial drone is capable of. There is already terrain-following tech that allows a drone to stay at a given height above the ground.
Palletrone is by all means a demonstrator that the idea is possible, an utter MVP.
> And in cases where you would want flight capability, why wouldn't you just use a standard aerial drone (obviously used already to great effect in the Ukraine war)?
The key thing IMHO is the fusion of aerial and ground movement. A gun on wheels is nice but it's immediately stopped in its tracks by anything from swampy terrain ("rasputiza") over a random trench to hedgehogs [1], not to mention mines. Give it aerial capability, even if it's just enough to hop over a hedgehog or a smaller river, and the ability to defend itself while airborne, and the game becomes much more serious.
All you need to be is the first one to actually pull it off and hope it's enough of a surprise effect that the enemy gets hindered long enough that you can make some military gain out of it.
Side thought: I wonder how much downforce a drone can actually exert on the ground. Could a heavy enough drone with serious bottom armor be powerful enough to detonate anti-personnel mines without being endangered in the process?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_hedgehog