First off, disclaimer about the camera bias. Every FPV strike comes with a video. When a Ukrainian brigade drops a 152mm shell, nobody on Telegram sees it. When a $500 quadcopter lobs an RKG-3 that's a 30-second clip with a soundtrack, and the shooter can decide whether to show it, or not show it. The visibility asymmetry shapes both public perception and - increasingly - survey data getting cited.

Combat armies work as interacting systems, not 1v1 contest. Artillery clears treelines to give FPVs clear LoS, FPVs take out FOs before they can call back grids. No one would fire their guns for a 1-2 man infil, and no one sends a single drone to a revetted hard target - but working together, each one is better than the sums of their parts.

Tube artillery is not going to get mission-killed by a hand grenade's worth of munitions. That takes serious explosives. If you're spending 5-10 drones per hit (see disclaimer), now you're talking a big expenditure for effect, and unless you hit crew or magazines, you can't really disable the thing.

Which all would be fine because drones have the range advantage . . mostly. Howayyyver . . . range advantage of UAS has gotten seriously bitten by the increasingly obnoxious EW and jamming situation. Sure, vision AI can do terminal guidance[1], but you have to be pretty close to something before you can see it. That means navigating in a combat zone where every satellite is jammed all to hell - and navigating is hard. Ask the RAF bomber force circa 1942. Hell, ask pretty much any UA soldier firing one of the many US GPS guided doohickeys. Fiber drones do fix this problem, but now the range is dialed back to 10-40km, and you're in the arty zone again.

Ultimately "artillery vs. drones" is a category error - much like the constant US obsession with "fighters" or "bombers" or the increasingly meaningless ship classes. "Precision Fires" will take many forms. Tube artillery with bolt on laser guidance, rocket artillery popping gliding munitions riding either lasers or winding up close enough to use their onboard EOIR, alllll the way up to the lancets and the shaheds on the pure UAS side, with the high performance cruise missiles as the kings of that hill.

There's a spectrum there, and the harder your fight is, the more of that spectrum you're going to absolutely need. If anything, the Ukraine experience has most definitely shown that, both in the developing Russian "reconnaissance-strike complex" and the increasing capabilities of both sides to shoot and scoot in 90 seconds like CAESAR units.

If this forum did pics I would photoshop a cartoon of an artillery shell and a drone holding hands with BEST FRIENDS 4EVER t-shirts.

[1] and no one feels really all that safe with a boxed tiny dumb vision model zooming around with its safeties off . . and no comms. Has it been done? Sure. Were they happy about it? Oh lord no. There's a reason these sorts of systems are still heavily in testland outside of horrible desperate straits like UA or the Gulf.