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Optical fibre is fucking fragile as all hell. You aren't going to see appreciable signal loss with an antenna with much better weight savings not have a spool of cable either on the armoured vehicle (minimal if on the vehicle) or the drone (undesirable). Not to mention the mechanical issues associated with the spooling.
Optical fiber is actually quite strong and flexible these days. Especially when bundled with a small kevlar strength member or when armored.
The strands are still glass though, and have a much wider maximum bend radius than something like CAT* cable.
Did you watch the video? He's wrapping fiber optic cable over a 10mm mandrel with no problems and it's causing no loss. The video is 10 years old at this point too, we've probably progressed further with technology.
Huh. I guess the company i worked for was cheap as shit and bought trash cable.
So, you still need the special connectors, still a cable. I mean, if you wanted a smart kite sure, that is an overpriced solution.
Connectors are not special, they are standard and cheap due to fiber optics used in telecoms in massive amounts.
Now I’m imagining a guy on top of a tank in battlefield conditions trying to do an emergency fuse repair on a fucked up pigtail while cleaning the glass with those fancy fiber wet wipes and ranting about how there’s too much dust.
A soldier would just pull a new one out of a disposable sealed bag