We are in agreement on those points. I am sure that anything I can generally imagine has already been prototyped by the military. Cruise missiles carrying digital images of the terrain have been around for decades now. Now software can recognize vehicles and faces. It is only a matter of time before the technology trickles down and the costs come down as they always do in consumer electronics. I was guessing five years and you think it might be ten or less. The “future” isn’t far off! I recently read about new neural computer chips that mimic the brain and promise a breakthrough in image-recognition speeds. No, drones certainly can’t destroy the nation, but they could carry out limited objectives.
One thing that unnerves me is the fact that the old Tomahawks that worked via the digital images of terrain were discontinued in favor of GPS guided Tomahawks.
The old tech was difficult to manage and slow to engage if you needed to program an unanticipated “terrain” that wasn’t already prepared for, but at least they would work whether or not our GPS satellites were functional.