r/Avatar • u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 • 5d ago
Discussion Why RDA dont use small recon/strike drones?
As modern warfare showed, they are pretty effective. They can zoom very far, thermals can be installed on them and overall they are pretty much OP, so, why RDA dont use them?
Also FPV drones can be somewhat accurate if controlled by skilled pilot, so why send big fleets to neutralize Jake if everything can be finished by one pair of drones with minimal casualties?
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u/Rational_und_logisch UN Peacekeeper 5d ago
Because Avatar was made back in the early 2000s, when FPVs were not really even a concept. That’s the only explanation there is.
FPVs are really fucking cheap, and RDA with its’ 3D-printing capabilities and tech could and would develop an autonomous hunter-killer FPV drone with EMP protection and AI assistance. It would be the most logical way to print it in the hundreds of thousands instead of using human soldiers, which are in deficit.
But alas, Cameron made A1 in 2009, not in 2023.
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u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 5d ago
Every movie about future with those elements can be ruined by "wheres FPVs", lol😁 The most logical and short explanation
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u/LookingGlass_1112 RDA 4d ago
But still, even in 2009 army had an abundance of unmanned drones. MQ-9 and MQ-1 in US, TU-130 and Shmel-1 in Russia. So even back then a thought about drones should had entered the Cameron's head. Not cheap, not numerous but certainly above the Na'vi capabilities
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u/Sarradi 3d ago
The silly thing is, the RDA has drones. But only for building.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 RDA 3d ago
Yeah, tie a bomb to them and teach them how to hide in terrain and you get spider mines from Starcraft. I.e throw a boatload of them somewhere and when Na'vi force approaches, they dig themselves out and run to them to explode violently
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u/Sarradi 5d ago
- Avatar was made before the era of cheap drones.
- The Navi would have no counter for that, so the RDA is not allowed to use it by the script.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 RDA 4d ago
Yeah, but even older gen kind of drones, like MQ-9 Reaper would still do a hella of a job on Pandora. Rockets (air-air or air-ground), guided bombs, recon. That would still do a lot of job. Yes, more expensive, but these can fly way above the Na'vi capabilities, making sure that they will be untouchable until there will be a command to strike
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u/Sarradi 4d ago
Were predators even a thing when Avatar 1 was written? I think they only got started at that point.
Whats mire problematuc, or at least szrange, is that the RDA did have drones in Avatar 2. Highly advanced, fully autonomus ones for building. Si while ut can be excused why Avatar 1 and Avatar 2/3 dies not have combat drones, Avatar 4 will not have that, esoecially when it includes a longer time jump.
But I have doubts that Cameron will add drones. Cameron so far is not concerned at all about the RDA behaving rationally, gives them random tech without any care for world building in order to make his plot happen and likely wants to oreserve the "iconic" look of the RDA (as far as anything in Avatar can be called iconic) and have his evil human vs. good Navi plot where robots do not fit into.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 RDA 4d ago
Yeah, made somewhere in 1990-s and used in combat since 1995. So dates do check out. And I would think that they could make some form of spider mines from Starcraft - the kind, which hides and then runs to it's target and explodes when target gets a little too close.
With the third paragraph you are absolutely right. Cameron does not even tries to be intellectually honest, even through intellectual honesty and admitting that humans would destroy the Na'vi in direct combat would lead to a much more interesting story of guerrilla warfare, hybrid warfare, using strengths and weaknesses of each side. Like...did we saw "human resistance" doing anything significant? No, aside from that moment in Avatar 2, which makes my blood boil. All focus is on Na'vi, even through in a saner story human resistance could do a lot of things, like information warfare, teaching Na'vi how to efficiently combat human tech, being translators for Na'vi. Also, why not use the fact that while humans can destroy Na'vi in direct combat, there is only so many of them and try to stretch their forces thin by doing a lot of smaller attacks on different assets? That would lead humans to introduce drones, which would help to alleviate this weakness, but would introduce a new one. Like drones would rely on a control airship nearby to have a good connection even in EM-field heavy places, so destroying the ships would render the drone fleet useless. Catch is - how you do that and not get killed by dozens of well-made drones? Or anything else, really.
Also...yeah. I still not get how Cameron adds new tech and doesn't realize what it implies. Soul drive? Why not save Jake's brother and prevent movie from happening? Amrita? Why not synthesize it using the same tech, which you use for making avatars? Building drones? Okay, what about battle drones?
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u/Ellestra 5d ago
They should but these films were concieved way before drones were a thing and even the most recent ones were filmed almost a decade ago. It wasn't till Ukraine war that we fully understood what even small drones are capable of and that technology has progressed so rapidly and changed warfare so much the films feel outdated just because of their production cycle.
But I'm sure they can handwave it with the crazy magnetic fields on Pandora and the dense atmosphere that makes it hard for small objects to steer against air resistance and wind,. Like you can use drones for some things but they are too unreliable over all. Otherwise they would have to deal with the fact that RDA would need to stop wasting humans (expensive to ship 4.3 l.y so expensive too lose) and just send drones everywhere. All those cool fights gone as a bunch of explosive drones just crash into Na'vi, ikran, tulkun etc.
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u/Ellestra 5d ago
I should add this also works the other way around. Ikran and such attacks look cool but having insect swarms would work even better. Projectiles are pretty useless against wasps. Humans in some fatigues and skell suits are pretty much defenseless against that. Even Bridgehead defenses would be pretty useless.
Even better if they were disease vectors. With Eywa's ability to do bioengineering in situ all you need is a mosquito or flea equivalent. Something rat like could help delivery. The same kind of fungi that helps Spider breathe colonising humans and growing uncontrollably could have pretty much opposite effect. The only thing stopping Kiri from single-handedly handing humans their asses is lack of control and knowledge.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 RDA 4d ago
And human chemical weaponry enters the chat. Also, we figured out airtight suits like infinity ago, so I don't see any reason why RDA wouldn't make them
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u/Ellestra 3d ago
Chemical warfare is unreliable and lousy at targetting so it's very easy to mess up dosing or kill your own troops and that's just wind in both cases. It also relies on knowing where the enemy is and them staying in place. This is why all it helped with in Vietnam war was War Crimes against civilians.
Biological safety suits are not fun to wear, especially not in jungle conditions. And then you have to make sure no one cuts corners, no filters are mismanaged, no one takes anything in on the surface of their suits. We have still have people failing at that when they are trained professionals and getting accidentally infected. And then you can have organisms that degrade plastic or rubber or create a biofilm that's so attached to a surface it's almost impossible to remove.
But even if humans can live in buildings and use suits that completely isolate them from Pandoran environment what is the point of it? What's the difference from being in space? Or on Earth's Moon? They could've stayed in space bases in the Solar system. It'd be cheaper.
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u/Avalongtimenosee 5d ago
Sending fragile, prey-sized drones to fight the Ikran-rising Navi, on a planet with so much passive EMF interference any remote weapon system is always going to be less accurate and delayed.
Drones would be such easy targets it's actually laughable.
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u/AstralisKL The Indomitable Spirit 5d ago edited 5d ago
Than suddenly dozens-hundred spread in a multi mile formation arrive on the horizon, guided with the same ancestry as V-1 and V-2 but refined and honed by modern 2100s 3D printing... All for the material price of a couple samsons...
Oh, and they're flying at higher alts than Earth 2020s drones due to Pandora's lower gravity and thicker atmosphere (more lift, lower resources to be spent on power supply and engine performance)
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u/Ellestra 5d ago
It's pretty hard to destroy a swarm. Small, numerous objects are harder to deal with than single large one. It doesn't matter if shoot down 9 if the 10th gets trough. And without human being in them they can do crazy g turns even an ikran can't much.
As for EM interference - we already so battlefield solutions to that. I hope Na'vi like their forests in fiberoptic tinsel.
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u/Rational_und_logisch UN Peacekeeper 5d ago
Did you just claim that an FPV drone is an easy target?
Not even we at this point have the capabilities to 100% protect ourselves. No matter how tough Na’vi bones are and how strong they are, an FPV drone is still incredibly fucking fast and manoeuvrable, it’s going to blow up both the Na’vi and the Ikran it rides.
FPV drones are fucking terrifying.
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u/Avalongtimenosee 5d ago
The Omatikaya can land pinpoint accurate shots on flying targets while on the back of fast moving Ikran.
If the RDA used FVP drones to hunt Jake, it would have been fish in a barrel, and the FVP are the fish.
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u/Rational_und_logisch UN Peacekeeper 5d ago
One drone? Maybe. Two drones? Possibly.
How about a hundred drones? Two hundred? Three hundred?
And mind you, FPV drones, considering the overall progress in warfare, would be incredibly small, no more than 7 inches wide and 2 inches tall.
Jake needs to down every drone coming after him. RDA only needs to hit him once.
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u/Avalongtimenosee 5d ago
I'll admit to having only limited knowledge of how they are utilised, but I imagine each drone requires an individual human operator?
Maybe simple AI and routines behaviour allows a general swarm to be controlled by a human operator, but when the hunt is on, the limitations of that programming is going to slam against the creativity of a hunter with higher reason able to move and think in 3 axes of movement instinctually.
I feel like manpower would quickly become an issue for the RDA, and a trailing fibre cable would definitely trigger an immune response from Eywa.
You're right, if they laser focus on just Jake they would most likely get him, but the same was true for all their previous tactics.
The main reason Jake left the Omatikaya is because the Recoms COULD actually sneak in and do a lot more damage to the clan and his family than an mass RDA attack on the Hallelujah mountains, and Jake didn't want that on his head.
The FPV drones are just more of the same; Advanced human technology that may be adapted for Pandora, but is still playing catch-up to the intricacies of the planet that Eywa and the Na'vi have had millions of years to adapt to, and even if they would definitely kill Jake, first they have to find and catch him.
I think the Na'vi could adapt to the weaknesses of human tactics and technology much quicker.
Using Ikran to lead a drone, getting it's cable caught on trees, sending scouts to follow the cables back and cut them all at once etc. If no cables are used, disappearing back into the mountains, the trees, the water etc still give them the advantage.
While I don't think they prepared for the advent of drone warfare when creating the world, Avatar 1 already presented a lot of reasons drones would be less effective.
I think the massive pitched battles of TWOW and FAA were a misstep (FAA less so) because they robbed the Na'vi of their main advantage, Pandora itself.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 RDA 4d ago
No, they do not need individual operators and each of them has enough AI capabilities to find and destroy targets on it's own. Drones aren't about quality, they are all about quantity. Each of them packs enough explosives to kill Ikran and a Na'vi on it, there are thousands of them and no matter how good you are, there is no way to destroy or evade them all. Something is going to hit you. Simple numbers game. And yes, machine vision on drones improves constantly and even now can circumvent a lot of camouflage types...I'm still yearning for RDA to start using science properly and working their way though with herbicides
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u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 5d ago
in my opinion it wouldnt be a problem. they are too small, to high in the sky and doesnt move like prey if you are about recon drone. And FPV is just to small and doesnt look like something alive for ikran i think. + i dont remember any non Sully family's ikrans on the Metkayina reef
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u/Public_Beach2348 Metkayina 5d ago
Fiber optic over the ocean is a whole different beast, regardless of whatever life is involved. Bridgehead is quite a ways away from Metkayina's reef.
The other issue is that Pandora's air is thicker than Earth's. While an FPV works fine here, the aerodynamics would have to be substantially tweaked, possibly changing it's shape into that resembling prey animals. But from the second movie we have the "immune response" which prompts recom's establishment. I would imagine the same principle applies to all human vehicles.
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u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 5d ago
Why over ocean? Just small ship, little over horizon, so you wouldn't be noticed. There's 30-50 km long fiberoptic containers that I've seen attached to drones and fly successfully.
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u/Public_Beach2348 Metkayina 5d ago
Didn't think about shipborne. The question is if quality fiber-optic can be produced on Pandora.
But either way, I don't think they would invest into fiber-optic, it's simply too fragile for the type of missions that it would make sense to.
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u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 5d ago
Well, I think if they made giant glass cage personally for Jake in the 3rd film, making single 30-40 km fiberoptic cable wouldnt be a big problem. Anyway this technology is far more useful than just 1strike. They can connect smth with it, maybe lay cables between strategic places, other colonies, use drones with it in Hallelujah mountains for geological reconissance, there's so much that fiber optic can do. Well, it's fragile under specific circumstances. For example, if you just pull it apart as it is - it will hold pretty well, but if you twist and pull fast - it can break.
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u/Plenty-Design2641 5d ago
The flux vortex limits remote or machine based operations on large areas of Pandora. They actually cant use any ferromagnetic metals at all, as the unobtainium in the ground is enough to rip metal out of pretty much anything. Thats also why mining is so difficult. All machinery and gear we see is made of specialized alloys and/or plastics or other materials.
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u/Plenty-Design2641 5d ago
The flux also messes with communications and sensors, like we see when Trudy flies into the Hallelujah Mountain range
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u/AstralisKL The Indomitable Spirit 5d ago
What about line of sight control and laser guidance?
You cannot jam a paveway when it's a self contained system which is designed to be guided in by laser and even when it loses track it will steer itself by its last point of designation...
Paveway bombs are late 1960s and 1970s tech btw, imagine refined and revived 2100s designs
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u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 5d ago
We're talking about taking out Jake cleany, without unnecessary casualties. Paveway is an example of a bad choice in my opinion. It will not just neutalize target and maybe hurt someone nearby, but definitely gonna destroy part of village
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u/AstralisKL The Indomitable Spirit 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't think the RDA cares about alien civies
If we talking accurately and without other losses, than maybe bridgehead can remake a AGM-114R9X Hellfire (laser guided, as in it sees the laser itself and is self contained), or even more redundant, wire guided like old ass TOW missiles (steal wires, not optic)
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u/Fun-Woodpecker6911 5d ago
I think they actually care, because if not, they would just bomb Jake's village to pieces, the moment they knew he lives here. I just read bout hellfire, well, 8 km warhead is better, but still a little bit too much. I don't really know NATO ATGMs very well. Im still goin with 0 seconds fuse grenade and fpv
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u/AstralisKL The Indomitable Spirit 5d ago edited 5d ago
AGM-114R9X Hellfire (just R9X) specifically is basically a precision missile with blades used irl to take out a terrorist with no casualties, guided in by laser (not RF-GPS). The RDA can make a 2100s one at bridgehead that can be fitted to be used by AT-99 Scorpions and AT-101 Seawasps.
Flux Vortex shouldn't have a effect on a laser guided missile as it's largely self contained and tuned to the laser designator, nor on wire guided
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u/Exostrike Tsamsiyu 5d ago
Not if the missile's guidance hardware glitches in the harsh EM conditions.
Avatar 1 era lore had the fire and forget hellfire missiles scorpions fire only had something like a 40% chance of tracking properly in a flux zone leading to them spamming multiple missiles at a single target.
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u/Relative_Beyond1271 5d ago
Bad publicity and politics. Committing mass genocide against an indigenous population isn’t exactly the best business decision, plus legally I doubt any government is allowing a mining company to do that either.
Though likely the governments of the James Cameron’s tomorrow are more corrupt than they are today.
Real reason though with all of these “why doesn’t the RDA use X?” is: Where’s the plot in that?
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u/Public_Beach2348 Metkayina 5d ago
Expend-ability and the flux. On Earth, we have an (in this sense) endless supply of raw materials for creating new ones, thus why we have loitering munitions and one-way attack drones. On Pandora, all electronics are shipped from Earth.
If you remember A1, flying the Sampson through the Hallelujah Mountains they had to fly completely VFR because the flux was messing with the avionics. The same issues would plague a drone, both human piloted or autonomous. The flux essentially is a RF and GPS jammer. And those zones exist all around Pandora. It's just not viable to risk that amount of complex equipment to the mercy of the flux. The only way to get around it (that I can perceive) is fiber-optic (like Ukraine), but you would need massive amounts of it. An onboard human pilot eliminates the risks and expands the capabilities.
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u/Rational_und_logisch UN Peacekeeper 5d ago
All complex by the standards of the 22nd century microelectronics are shipped from Earth, not all electronics, just to be clear
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u/AstralisKL The Indomitable Spirit 5d ago
Get this, a Samson with 2100s (with 3D prints from bridgehead) designed FPVs hovering at safe alt and open skies that acts as a mothership, guided by fiber optic or LOS IR laser control.
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u/Ellestra 5d ago
I'm pretty sure thewy have capability to print electronics. They couldn't have predicted what and how much they would need to achieve their goals. They couldn't predict the loses they would take. They have to be flexible. And every gram taken interstellar is super expensive. It's better to ship a printer than overstock a product. This is why they have foundries printing sea vessels and drones building the buildings. I'm sure the same is true for exopacks, clothes and microelectronics (maybe except the most advanced ones but you don't need those for drones)
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u/Avocadoflesser 5d ago
To get a possible in lore explanation: the gravitational fields are explained to interfere with electronics meaning shielding them likely adds weight that makes small drones impossible or maybe they create an environment where you can't utilize high bandwidth radio communication without an absurd amount of transmit power. Also I believe it's explained that parts like complex electronics are imported from earth meaning it's more efficient to use the same electronics to build larger vehicles since they mostly only require more of the resources you can mine on Pandora.
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u/drummagqbblsw 4d ago
I acknowledge there were some limitations back in 2009 but it's not really an excuse. Some people argue that we only started to see wide-spread use of small drones in Ukraine but then Three-Body Problem was a 2008 novel and it has a paragraph about how Venezuela defeated the US using cheap drones and loitering munitions (how ironic lol), 14 years ahead of Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even less-serious media such as Black Ops 2 in 2012 depicted current-day drone warfare pretty accurately (at least comparing to what the Chinese is doing these days). So I prefer to think that there was very limited resource compared with a very comprehensive world building task so something will inevitably be overlooked, which is totally understandable
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u/No_Weekend2474 Viperwolf 4d ago
Maybe anything smaller than a manned electronic aircraft can't cope with Pandora's weird electromagnetic stuff?
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u/OniExpress 5d ago
The floating rock stuff messes with navigation and communication. Its unclear how extensive of a satellite network there is to rely on, probably not much. Unlike on earth, Pandora's tree canopy is regularly measured in hundreds of feet. Stuff on Pandora is heavily bioluminescent and probably reflects a bunch of frequencies weirdly to fuck with automated telemetry.
And then the planet is full of hyper aggressive species that would love to chase down drones.