I think Growler's comments here are salient. Those whom understand your Pakistani UAV capabilities are in position to judge the merits of this craft but what struck me was being able to down-link to TICs (troops in contact).
Mentioned in the initial press release early in the thread is the training followup that's necessary. Why, I'm unsure but my guess is that there are capabilities here that require some levels of training to fully exploit this system's advantages.
24/7 all-weather acquisition is critical to ground forces. My first awareness of these systems came at an exercise in Twenty-nine Palms, Calif. in 1988 where we had a very early version deployed. We located a Marine M109A3 artillery battalion refueling at night...in real time and with the ground coordinates displayed.
Oh, and in range of our artillery. Ten minutes later that battalion had been neutralized for the purposes of the exercise. 18 guns, their ammo carriers and their C3I gone.
1988. Things have unquestionably improved since.
Maybe you already have all that in your present vehicle and the dismissals seen here by everybody are perfectly accurate. Fine, don't accept it. My suspicion is, however, that if your armed forces take on this asset it will be because it offers them something needed to fill a gap that few of you are apprised about.
Thanks.
