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Not just field trials, your average joe has been able to program waypoint missions for a long time. They generally require reliable GPS after take off, but I imagine rough intertial referential sensors would be enough for warfare. It's enough for commercial aviation.


Consumer grade IMUs drift into unacceptable garbage in about two minutes of flight without GPS corrections[0]. You would need visual odometry to work in GNSS-denied environments

[0] https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/indoor-mission-plan-no-gps/7...


And visual assistance has been well supported in most commercial drones for years.


2 minutes is a pretty long time for a lot of use cases.


Yup - and consumer drones have had reasonable inertial sensors for quite awhile now. Not good enough for nap of the earth, but not far off.




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