Comment by nine_k
6 days ago
It depends; not all drones are kamikaze-type. Great many drones are used for delivery (food, ammo, medkits), for reconnaissance, as carriers of smaller drones, and as radio retransmitters. Bomber drones also fly a large number of sorties before getting shot down or breaking down from wear.
Ground teams usually have a bunch of batteries for quick replacement, because charging is slow. With these fast-charging batteries, they may need to lug fewer batteries, and larger generators.
I've looked at the stats, and it's:
- 45 flights per recon consumer quadcopter drone before it's lost
- 69 flights per heavy bomber drone before it's lost
They switch the batteries before each flight anyway, so even batteries that are rated for 10 cycles would be good enough if the price/performance is good enough.
Certainly batteries rated for 300 cycles are an overkill.
Source (from March 2025): https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/04/16/hidden...
Also I'm listening to Piotr Ryczek talking about his time with drone unit in Ukraine, and he says recovering drones is complicated (because you have to land far away from your position and the enemy drones wait for people trying to recover a drone that landed, so you have to wait for hours before going there and do it at night). Which drains the batteries to 0 after every flight and reduces the drone availability by half or more.
So there's tactical reasons not to focus on quality too much, too.
It's less about cycles and more about the energy density per kg. Nothing on the market comes close to 400Wh/kg.