Hornet Suicide Drone

The Hornet is the Lightning doctrine's suicide drone: a quadcopter with an anti-tank charge slung under it, flown into what it is sent at and gone with it. It never attacks on its own. Left alone it hovers where it was put, an enemy tank can drive under it, and an attack-move only parks it at the far end. Order it at a vehicle, a ship, a building or a spot on the ground and it flies there and explodes: 160 damage from a shaped charge, most of it wasted on light vehicles and nearly double against heavy armour, so three Hornets kill a Bison.

How to use

Send them at what matters, in threes: a Mammoth, the artillery behind the line, a ship. A Hornet costs 120 metal and dies with its target, so it is a trade, and the trade is good only against armour. A faction may have six at most, those in the air and those still in production together; one that goes off frees a place for the next.

It flies low, so it is fragile under fire. Anti-air shoots it down, and so do machine guns and autocannons, which cannot touch anything else in the air: the Recon Buggy, the Wolf, the Gator, the gunboat, the MG Turret, the Gatling and the headquarters' own gun. An armour column with a light escort loses half a strike on the way in. Come round the escort, or strike while it is somewhere else.

It is researched at the War Lab (Suicide Drones, Lightning doctrine) and built at the Advanced Airbase.

Anecdotes

The first-person-view racing drone became a weapon on the Ukrainian front: a hobbyist's quadcopter, a camera and a pilot wearing goggles, with an RPG grenade taped under it, for the price of a few hundred dollars. By 2024 both sides were building them by the hundred thousand, and armies put cages over their tanks and sent electronic jammers and shotguns forward against them. Each one still needs a pilot at the controls all the way to the target, which is why a team flies a handful at a time and not a swarm.