Drones?
 

With the advent of drones in greater numbers, would it not seem smart to put a small drone, say 4-8kg in weight, in as a base load?

Recon drones were used in Vietnam, so it is not unreasonable. It's just the aircraft support and miniaturization that come into question. 1980's tech is not exactly small, so the drone gets bigger and you have to support the thing. If you keep the small drone, you have to rationalize miniaturization technology that may not have existed.

I can almost accept a small, hand launched, electric propelled drone with a CCD camera, switchable IR filter, connected to a radio sending slow scan b/w video at 320 lines back at somewhere between 5-10 FPS in the size you mention. Range would be only a couple of kilometers, but you would almost have to have line of sight the whole time with it to keep it in the air. The camera feed might be a bit too low for remote flying without line of sight if the winds pick up. Such a drone would let you get eyes over a treeline or ridge without unnecessary exposure.

I redid my project 5 years ago with modern equipment and I had hand launched drones (RQ-11 Raven) and the 40mm Parachute ones at the team level. Larger drones might be found at command posts or with specialty teams.

Drones require a bit more support than the average team can honestly supply easily. even with cheap toy drones today which don't they are then limited by duration time and breakdowns. There is no happy medium for a Recon Team, Mars Team, or many other teams to make use of drones much. There just too fragile in my opinion.

When I think basic drones that can be used by a Recon team my first thought was an idea touted early on but a basic cigar balloon with helium or another "lighter than air" craft that can be used for short durations, however I realised yes it's cheap to fix, but the lack of resupply will be an issue.

As for cheap 50 bucks RC craft, be it helo or fixed wing, those could work and aside from the fuel (battery powered?) could be reasonably well fixed in the field.

The only real limiter to a Drones endurance is fuel and need for servicing.

So a fusion powered drone with some kind of new fangled, regenerating nano lubricant for it's moving parts could possibly be flying a 150 years into the future.
Equip it with lasers instead of missiles and it could be a surprising angle of mercy that saves the team from a tight spot. If they can just work out how to take control of the darned thing.