https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDO2EvXyncE

This appears to be flight stabilized and guided via direct command coming from the launcher. It is not an autonomous guided missile.

* https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR

It's also incredibly slow. There are children's rocket kits that fly significantly faster than this.

Not that this matters for the topic, but I don't see why people have started saying "weapons system" instead of "weapon".

On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for making them blow their $1k active countermeasures on your $500 missiles before sending a real one in to finish the job. Heck, even just forcing your adversary to treat every sky like it's hostile is worth a lot.

Both approaches are clearly worthy of development.

Small firearms are hundreds of years old. Drones have been commercially available for many years and are easily modifiable into something that is 80% as good as what is currently being fielded in Ukraine.

It is not technically feasible to restrict someone from assembling basic, non-firearm-specific components to build a firearm. In the US, there is an increasing effort at the state level to serialize, restrict, and document individual firearm parts. However, an 80% good barrel can be fabricated at home, a 100% as good receiver can be printed on any recent 3D printer, and the rest of the parts (bolt, trigger assembly, etc) can be designed around easy home fabrication (see FGC-9). There is no practical way to trace, regulate, or stop behavior.

It isn't possible to restrict someone from building a capable drone either. The firmware is opensource, the parts can be ordered from almost any marketplace, and an energetic payload can easily be made by any amateur chemist from chemicals in any hardware or camping store. EW is often touted as a solution, but is frequently beaten by tethered drones. Cheap COTS IMUs are getting good enough to provide surprisingly accurate short-term INS, to say nothing of autonomous systems that need no external input past initial targeting.

I personally think this is a far bigger risk than most countries realize, largely because they are 10-15 years behind the technology. I believe this will force most governments into spending an order of magnitude more to defend their institutions at every level, not just core government security.

At least in the US, these threat vectors will absolutely be used to justify intrusions into civil liberties, but no amount of infringement will be able to even partially mitigate these threats. I think this should start to play out over the next 5-10 years.