I believe sone habibi country got their CASA aircraft converted into AC130 spooky like configuration.
We could do same. Either with CASA CN platform or KC390. There are drones both MALE and HALE, with good endurance/time on station/loitering ability but their firepower and ammo capacity is a serious limiting factor.
Whereas, CAS/recon aircraft like AC-130 have limited loitering ability. I believe Spooky loiter time is 4-5 hours. But by God it can rain down hell's fury on enemy tgts.
So I guess it's a tradeoff time on station vs firepower.
I think of a MALE/HALE drone like a sniper. A lot if not most of the time a sniper team is doing recon and observation. Other times the it goes in aor looking for a very specific tgt. That's drones are a good candidate for drone security in my view cuz you can keep an eye on the border and lob a atgm, gbu on a small group trying to hop the fence.
And think of Spooky like aircraft as a Squad machine gunner providing suppressing fire(only this suppresses enemy for ever).
How do you think an AC130 like aircraft would have faired vs cobras in Pakistan's WoT campaign?