Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by natehale1971

During Desert Strom UAVs were still new and being used (and actually had some Iraqis surrendering to UAVs) in combat for the first time in modern history.

IIRC, the Israelis were the developers of the Pioneer UAV system used by the U.S.N. in GW1. The Israelis used them in '82 as decoys to fool Syrian SAM sites in Lebanon into turning on their radars so that F-4 and F-16 Wild Weasels could past them with Shrikes, HARMs, and cluster bombs.

I agree with Mousekill on every point. I might even take it a step further.

I think UAVs would be the most common aircraft in most hot zones during the later years of the Twilight War. Some of the earlier types of prop-driven UAVs are essentially large model aircraft and, although I'm no aircraft mechanic, it seems to me that they would be a lot easier to keep fueled and running than any manned aircraft. I don't think you'd see any hunter-killer types like the modern Predator, but small recon drones wouldn't be too uncommon over T2K battlefields.

In Fusilier's excellent T2K PbP, the protagonists recently (a few weeks ago, IRL) encountered some kind of UAV circling the ruins of Czestachowa (we still haven't figured out who was operating it or why). I thought the episode was a stroke of genius and immediately kicked myself for not thinking of such an encounter in my own campaign.