Planes were used in the world wars, then we have 9/11. This is the post 9/11 era where air travel sucks so much.
Similarly:
Drones are now being used in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Eventually, there will be a “9/11” with multiple coordinated drone attacks and then the way drones are treated will be forever changed. Civillian ownership of drones will likely be heavily restricted or entirely banned.
History rhymes.
The vehicle is almost irrelevant. They can be box trucks, planes, cars, suicide vests, backpacks, parcels, any number of things, including drones. Any mobile form can be brought close to an intended target.
Drones are more of an assassination weapon as far as FPV drones go. They can be built if you have the knowledge from available parts, but do require quite a bit of skill to fly. Their ability to only carry a small charge (yes, there are huge drones, buy flying one of those monsters around is a completely different animal) is probably only going to hurt a couple people or kill one person in particular.
I don’t disagree that they can be used as weapons of terror, however I just don’t see FPV as weapons of mass terror.
OTOH the large winged drones that can be launched from miles away that are essentially “cruise missile” drones could certainly be used as mass terror weapons, but those aren’t the kind used by regular people for fun or photography.
You underestimate the destructive potential of even small drones. Quantity has a quality all its own. Imagine a swarm of thousands of drones, all cheaply built 3D printed things, made by a single individual or small group. They have one task. They fly to a fixed set of GPS coordinates and land. No targeting needed. No AI facial recognition to target some specific politician. No auto-gun mounted beneath a large drone. Just a dirt simple task. They just fly up, over, and down. Once landed, they send a small electrical signal to a small incendiary device, perhaps a thermite charge, installed at the base of the drone. Such drones could be made quite cheaply if made on a large scale.
Imagine fires being started atop the roofs of every building in a city. Oh, and the attack starts with each fire station being attacked by a dozen such drones. Imagine every building in a city being lit on fire simultaneously. Soon a firestorm develops, and the fire starts feeding itself.
Let’s say you needed 10,000 such drones. Maybe you make them for $50 each. That’s $500k to burn down a city. For the cost of a single building you can burn down every other building in a modest sized city.
We are approaching a point where a single determined individual, using the scale of resources regularly available to a single individual, could recreate the firebombing of Dresden.
Yeah, I didn’t need to envision every movie supervillain mastermind’s plot to create havoc and terror. You seriously underestimate the resources needed to pull off such a thing and keep it secret even if it’s technically possible. Why make “10,000” little drones when you can make a half-dozen bigger RC plane types that can do an incredible amount of destruction? The point is to start terror, which requires far less than your elaborate plot and conditions like “facial recognition”. You went off the deep end of a Marvel movie plot to wipe out a city. We all know that just a couple well-placed hits is enough to send the country into a spiral.