"Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot." Mounted on a smaller, lighter, much shorter range defensive quadcopter. Don't even need the

"Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot." Mounted on a smaller, lighter, much shorter range defensive quadcopter. Don't even need the fancy weapons, just collide with the larger, long range, very expensive attacking quadcopter. Nothing is ever really new, and a lot of the "drones will solve everything" talk sounds exactly like "missiles will eliminate guns in military aircraft" from the 50s/early 60s. That didn't turn out very well, and if you ignore the details that don't matter, drones are tactically merely very slow, short range, traditionally cheaper, missiles. Yeah yeah the electronic speed controllers are infinitely interesting to a EE but to a grunt a drone weapon system is tactically a lame cheap missile. So your attack helicopter of the future will have drone wingmen, but it'll also have guns. Or some infantry platoons might carry a couple anti-armor drone weapons instead of a couple AT-4 or LAW rockets, but they'll still dig trenches and carry some kind of M16 variant.