Drones require a radio signal to work. Radio signals can be jammed. You can get around this by having the drone on a wire, but obviously the range of the drone will be limited by the length of the wire.
An aircraft with a human pilot can still do it’s mission even if radio signals are being jammed.
Also I can imagine someday they might combine the technologies. Human piloted jet carries drones close enough that it can hit the target while being connected to the jet by a wire so it can be controlled by the human pilot in the jet in an area where signals are being jammed. Of course the enemy will want to counter that… by sending a human piloted jet to take out your human piloted jet.
You could of course build more sophisticated drones that can operate autonomously. But remember they they may not be able to connect to a server farm to because of jamming. So you’d have to put a lot more stuff on the drone itself and before long it’s no longer a cheap $400 drone, it’s price tag goes up until you’re basically spending almost as much per drone as we do on missiles.
Military tech is all about inventing new thing, invent thing to counter that, invent thing to counter the counter to your new tech. In wartime procurement you just need the thing that works right now. With peacetime procurement you want to get things that keep your options open and not be too dependent on a tech that might be countered in a few years. So you get both jets and drones because maybe the jets will be obsolete, but it’s just as likely drones will be obsolete if the time comes to use them.
Why is Ukraine still using jets?
Drones require a radio signal to work. Radio signals can be jammed. You can get around this by having the drone on a wire, but obviously the range of the drone will be limited by the length of the wire.
An aircraft with a human pilot can still do it’s mission even if radio signals are being jammed.
Also I can imagine someday they might combine the technologies. Human piloted jet carries drones close enough that it can hit the target while being connected to the jet by a wire so it can be controlled by the human pilot in the jet in an area where signals are being jammed. Of course the enemy will want to counter that… by sending a human piloted jet to take out your human piloted jet.
You could of course build more sophisticated drones that can operate autonomously. But remember they they may not be able to connect to a server farm to because of jamming. So you’d have to put a lot more stuff on the drone itself and before long it’s no longer a cheap $400 drone, it’s price tag goes up until you’re basically spending almost as much per drone as we do on missiles.
Military tech is all about inventing new thing, invent thing to counter that, invent thing to counter the counter to your new tech. In wartime procurement you just need the thing that works right now. With peacetime procurement you want to get things that keep your options open and not be too dependent on a tech that might be countered in a few years. So you get both jets and drones because maybe the jets will be obsolete, but it’s just as likely drones will be obsolete if the time comes to use them.