Minor point on your mention of Hermes 450 drones not being able to fly in bad weather: relatively few drones, wherever they're made and whoever they're made for, are performant in bad weather. The reason this has not been so much of an issue in the 25 years since the first combat drones were rolled out post-9/11 is because the vast majority of combat drones are active in the Middle East. While there are obviously cloudy and rainy days in that part of the world, generally speaking it's more sunny, more of the time. Any drone war waged on UK soil would be regularly stymied by our climate.
This is excellent but so much of it made me want to tear off my eyelids with my own teeth
Minor point on your mention of Hermes 450 drones not being able to fly in bad weather: relatively few drones, wherever they're made and whoever they're made for, are performant in bad weather. The reason this has not been so much of an issue in the 25 years since the first combat drones were rolled out post-9/11 is because the vast majority of combat drones are active in the Middle East. While there are obviously cloudy and rainy days in that part of the world, generally speaking it's more sunny, more of the time. Any drone war waged on UK soil would be regularly stymied by our climate.
Obviously we've seen drones being used lots in Ukraine over the last couple of years. But weather conditions are less material to the performance of kamikaze or improvised drones, which fly lower to the ground and are not designed for long-duration surveillance. There are multiple examples of Russian drone activity being much reduced in periods of inclement weather: https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3936366-enemy-reduces-drone-usage-on-southern-front-due-to-bad-weather-ukrainian-military.html