FPV Drones Are Ammunition, Not Assets - by Luke Sander

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Stop Clutching Your FPV Drones<br>Treat FPV Drones as Ammunition, Not Assets

Luke Sander<br>Jun 17, 2026

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For as long as we can remember, since the grand ol’ days of the Ravens, Pumas, and Shadows, militaries have viewed Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) drones as assets, with their control, employment, and accountability held at some level of Company, Battalion, or Brigade Command. Asset , here, refers to any resource a commander can call upon to accomplish a mission, usually a vehicle or weapon systems that are not cheaply fungible or expendable.<br>The introduction of the Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) and Medium Range Reconnaissance (MRR) drone variants like the SkyDio quadcopters and the Anduril Ghost-X only solidified this view.

The Anduril ‘Ghost-X’ autonomous drone is highly modular and flexible, purpose-built for reconnaissance, security, and force protection.<br>For over a decade, we have treated these systems as such, and this view has unfortunately bled over into the realm of single-use First Person View (FPV) drone weapon systems. Time and time again we see, across various units and armies and at all levels of command, a reluctance to adopt a position that FPV drones are not assets that need to be held, clutched to the chest, like a bottle of water in a desert.

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Asset vs Ammunition

While many ISR drone systems are indeed assets, their purpose to provide a clearer picture of the battlefield, the acquisition of smaller, cheaper FPV drones has muddled these waters. ISR drones, with their exquisite sensor suites, can hardly be compared to a simple FPV drone with explosives attached to it, designed to strike the enemy exactly once. However, the battlefield is never that black and white.<br>It really then becomes a command decision of whether a system in a certain space, at a certain time, is best used as an asset or as ammunition. In a given situation where a High Value Target (HVT) or High Payoff Target (HPT) presents itself and the only option to engage is to strap explosives to an ISR asset, isn’t that the “best” option? It boils down to calculating and weighing the cost per kill versus the payoff. Is that target worth your ISR asset not being able to identify future targets, or not? This calculus simply isn’t the case with FPV drones, which are designed to destroy and to be destroyed themselves in the process.

Cost per Kill

For the purpose of this argument, we will use the widely-employed Neros Archer as an example. Coming in at a cost of under US$5,000, the Neros Archer is a lethal one-way strike FPV drone capable of carrying a roughly 2.5 kg warhead up to 20km wirelessly, and with new fiber-optic spool kits, able to reach up to 60km. When we add the cost of the explosive charge at roughly $40 per kilogram, it is miniscule in comparison to the staggering $197,884 for a Javelin missile system. Even if it does take three Neros Archers to take out a tank completely, the cost ratio is still roughly 1:13.

The Archer Strike FPV Drone (Photo by Cpl. Joshua Baker)<br>And that doesn’t even bring into account the distance of engagement disparity. The distance from which a soldier can engage that tank with an FPV drone versus a traditional anti-tank system, not to mention the ability to do so indirectly (rather than directly staring right at it!) theoretically reduces the potential risk to one’s own forces.<br>In a “traditional” tank-on-tank fight – which while increasingly rare, are still taught in training schoolhouses as “the best way to kill another tank” – we are looking at an ever faster and more direct and kinetic response. Certain modern tanks, such as the Russian T-90, actually slew their main guns directly towards a sensed laser so the crew can fire nearly immediately at anyone trying to get a lock on them.

U.S. Marine Corps engaging with the Archer Strike FPV Drone System (Photo by Cpl. Joshua Barker)<br>An FPV drone operator, on the other hand, is far away, and while there are countermeasures against drones and methods for hunting their operators, the distance and indirect nature of what they are doing creates time and space and reduces the immediate risk to the force – and risk to the mission. A 125mm round simply won’t come screaming in at drone operators as they lase onto and then send drones speeding down into an enemy tank.

Control of Ammunition

Then comes the question of, “who really controls the expenditure of ammunition?” At the Squad level, it’s our Squad Leaders, who are junior NCOs. We wouldn’t second-guess a Squad Leader engaging a tank with two AT4 rocket launcher systems (roughly $4,000 per shot), so why do we constantly do it with FPV drones?

U.S. Army Paratroopers engage a target using a M136E1 AT4-CS confined space light anti-armor weapon. Each AT4 launcher is designed to be used...