I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

Don't drones have another advantage not mentioned here -- counter-battery against operators being more challenging?

More challenging than what?

More challenging than counter-battery fire against artillery, which is basically a solved problem in warfare.

But not more challenging than counter battery against teams firing Javelins or other portable anti tank weapons.Or teams using Switchblades.

FPVs are man portable guided munitions, not artillery. Pretty much all existing man portable guided anti tank weapons are better than FPVs at their job.

And artillery is better than any of them at it's job. While FPVs can score kills they have minimal suppression effects, when an FPV hits a friendly, everyone else is going to keep moving, because stopping will offer them no benefit from the next one, and the next one might be minutes out. When an artillery round lands everyone hits the deck.

Drone pilots regularly die due to the source of wireless signals being found. Especially in the built up areas where they cannot operate from a trench or bunker. It is a challenge but there have been methods for this for a while now and it has shown. Even recently there’s been reporting that priorities of some drone teams are now purely anti-pilot activities compared to other targets.

FPVs don't seem anti-tank replacement -- they do seem to have a role against soft targets ie against massing infantry, c2 nodes or suppression of enemy mortars. In this role, from a distance, they seem harder to suppress than the alternative, ie mortars.

Also these are immature tech... I suspect at least some of the issues identified will be mitigated in time.

Fiber wires are now the standard for most low flying drones.

True - and I hope I didn't give the impression that drone operators aren't taking significant personal risk, but compared to the alternatives for short range indirect fire (mortars) it seems like these systems should be less vulnerable?

> Pretty much all existing man portable guided anti tank weapons are better than FPVs at their job.

Sure, but a Javelin missile costs more than $200K. You can have 200 fpv drones for that price.

Yeah, but it takes like two guys to carry and use the javelin. 200 fpv drones need like a company to be deployed.