Hellfire = suicide drone
Hellfire missiles have a flight time measured in seconds and limited retarget ability. A drone by definition implies flight time measured in minutes if not hours and the innate ability to not only retarget but also seek out new targets autonomously. Our own DARPA has already created tested and fielded insect sized drones a few of them even being powered by nuclear batteries giving air independence as well as extreme lifetimes. The ability to engage human sized targets with insect sized drones exists. The day is not far away when a drone of fighter jet size will drop from high altitude thousands of insect sized drones that are all programmed to seek out and kamikaze into and human not emitting a coded IFF signal on a battlefield. The current treaty on chemical and biological weapons prohibits the using of chemical toxins as the payload on an insect sized drone which have a few grams of payload capacity. There’s toxins that have milligram LD100 when delivered dermal or subdermal. It’s irrelevant as 2 grams of compound 4 or RDX detonated against the cranium or chest cavity of a human would also be nearly 100 % unsurviable. That is the future of warfare. Moving up to bird sized drones allows enough payload to engage light duty vehicles and pinpoint infrastructure such as power transformers, fuel tanks, communication gear act. Think sparrow sized drones in the thousands from a b52 sized bomber. Also in the biomimic range would be cat and dog sized drones for on the ground or underground hunting with payload ranges of a few kilograms they could carry multiple bird sized drones and hundreds of insect sized killer drones. All of this technology exists the limits have been communication bandwith and power supply miniaturization. High density lithium ion batteries changed the game, nuclear betavoltic cells, and MEMS hydrocarbon based generators along with MEMS based solid oxide fuel cells which can run off J8/5 have been tested and are at a TRL of 7 or above right now.