This is the greatest game changer I see being implemented into conventional warfare. What was previously an exclusively American advantage has now become everyone's. It won't be too long before drones with thermals are being used on the battlefield.
With the ubiquity of small capable drones in the hands of squad and team sized elements the command coordination is sped up. "Network Centric Warfare" is really coming into its own here, but now we are seeing this capacity in the hands of militaries with less developed assets and at a smaller unit levels.
It used to be up to the long range drone with advanced electronics being fed to the COC then to the unit front line commanders. Now, we have front line commanders operating their own set of drones to coordinate field elements with very low cost of training, equipment, and implementation.
Dangerous.
I presume the next stage will be directional jammers and other ECM means to disable the drones, but what range would you need?
The power consumption for the vehicle borne anti-IED ECM system was a problem and only gave us a few hundred yards IIRC. The manpack version even less. The drone we see in that footage is hovering around 1000 ft.
