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

You still want someone to get the drone to a place where it can see the target, and someone to select this target.

Only then can CV do the last part ("terminal engagement"). But that also means it won't go inside a hangar and find the target there.

IF you tell it go into the hanger and find a target CV can do that. It might not be the best target in the hanger, but that doesn't matter too much if you can get in.

If you add enough "if's", then surely everything is possible :-).

I don't think we're anywhere near having drones that happily fly above a war zone, detect an interesting hangar, find a way to get inside and select a target inside.

Currently they mostly fly FPV drones manually. The next basic step is to have "terminal engagement", where at some point they can select a target and the drone will fly autonomously to it using CV. But in order to do that, the drone will need processing power, and therefore it won't cost 500$ anymore.

Would you rather go for a drone that costs 5k and can use CV for terminal engagement, or 10 drones that cost 500 and simply stay on their latest vector if no command arrives?

How much are the controllers they're using now? It's not like computers and cameras needed to do interesting CV are all that expensive.

some mid-range iphones or android would even do the trick. especially iphones have tone of processing power nad strong NPU/GPU and lots of cameras, lidar, depth sensor, and plenty of other sensors. second hand phone 13 mini would do the trick and you can get it for less than $500

I was trying to state you fly it manually to the hanger. Once it locks onto the hanger (that is not your own hanger) it can fly - even if cv messes up we are at a target so anything destroyd is okay even if not what you want.

Oh, I had misunderstood it. But still, it's a lot harder to do that succesfully than to lock on a target and fly straight into it. Which already requires the compute power to do it, which makes it a lot more expensive than it is without.

Terminal guidance boards are already available on Aliexpress for $300-ish. Using YOLOv7 no less. The future is now.

It's not as if you could glue an iPhone 13 mini at the front of the drone and call it a day, right?

Yeah I think people overestimate how big yolo models are and how much compute costs.

Are you telling me that you can search for "terminal guidance" on AliExpress and find such boards?

The drone is 500$. If the board is 300$, it makes it a lot more expensive. What's the value of that board? How much does it help? Remember that you need to fly it with FPV to the place where the operator can select the target. So you have a radio link at some point, that can be jammed.