The Lantean Drone Weapon Discussion Thread

[FallenAngelII]

No, because it was stated that they could no longer use that weapon in "New Order", whose events occured BEFORE those of "Rising".

Because in "New Order", Elizabeth Weir (albeit played by a new actress) was still at the SGC!

[FallenAngelII]

No, because it was stated that they could no longer use that weapon in "New Order", whose events occured BEFORE those of "Rising".

Because in "New Order", Elizabeth Weir (albeit played by a new actress) was still at the SGC! By cannon order, they probably hadn't even figured out that the Antarctica gate could dial the Pegasus galaxy yet as she was still fixed at the SGC.

[ItsDan]

O'neil was not a fighter pilot, he was a special forces foot soldier

Yes he was/is special forces, but he was also a pilot.

[SmallTimePerson]

when sheppard

Spoiler:

fired the drone, from the jumper in condemned it didn't explode on impact, it tunneled through part of the hull before exploding, or hitting something that exploded.When sheppard fires drones at darts the darts explode instantly, possibly taking out the drone as well.

I think the main reason why drones aren't shot down by the wraith id their attack signature, the drones are reasonably small and move quite fast, but the nuclear missles are quite big (and explosive) and move pretty slow compared to the darts.

I think the real question is, why does sheppard sometimes use 1 drone to destroy a dart and other times use up to 3 drones on a single dart?

[LOKI LOKI]

i think its definately a good point about the mental aspect of the person controlling the drones and i think we need to see a major engagement with the wraith and drones to understand whether they want to shoot them down or not. they may have figured as there wasn't thousands pouring at them like in TLC that they werent worth worrying about really and to concentrate on what they already had planned. whats a few darts and their pilots because they are already too short on food

[freyr's mother]

O'Neill was a fighter pilot thats why he's in the "air force". On another note im just suprised atlantis' drones didn't get shot down by our RG's by accident.

[LOKI LOKI]

In TLC you see the drones being fired at anubis's fleet and theres hundreds maybe thousands of them. They destroy the fleet with most of the drones still intact my first question is what happened to them? Did they deactivate when o'neill got out of the chair (like the one with jack and mitch in the helicopter) did they automatically detonate or what? if they all deactivated we could use the transporters on daedulus to pick them all up and either return them to the main weapon in the antarctic outpost or we could ship them to Atlantis as a nice little surprise for the next wraith hive ship feeling a little peckish?

[freyr's mother]

I have wondered that myself. After anubis' ms explodes it looks like the drones just get pushed far far away by the blast wave. It didn't look like they were destroyed. Someone should tell TPTB about this and maybe they could incorporate them into the next season.

[RA the sun god]

well since the alterans were prety smart i wuld presume that they wuld have put a recal device in the drones so that they went back to the silo they came from...thats what i think

[freyr's mother]

thats a good idea, i never would've thought of that.

[RA the sun god]

well if they dont the alterans could have lost thousands of drones in one attack and as i see it in the lost city all the drones were shot and if this is so why then would they keep the zpm at the antartica base to defend earth???so they must have come back

[Mio]

O'Neill was a fighter pilot thats why he's in the "air force". On another note im just suprised atlantis' drones didn't get shot down by our RG's by accident.

If the ammo from a rail gun hit an active drone, It's likely that the ammo would be destroyed by the drone, not the other way around.

[Wildrat]

Not all drones were shot. There are still more left. Thats why they wanted the zpm to stay there.

[Magneto]

This is a good point which i was wondering myself. I would like to belive they all returned or are still left deactivated in space!

[cs-comm]

If the drones from Earth weren't used as missiles, where did they go after destroying Anubis' fleet? Did they return to the Ancient outpost? Did they self-destruct?

The most likley explanation that occurs to me is that the drones used on Earth had a higher yield then those used in Atlantis. Because a deathglider is a easy target, they could simply be rammed but the more powerful motherships could only be destroyed if the drones exploded.

If O'Niel knew how to best use the drones he would have fired one for every ship in orbit since we know that a single drone can destroy a mothership. The fact that he used huge overkill by deplying thousands of drones shows that he either thought that he needed to deploy that many drones or he thought that a wasting thousands of valuable drones was worth the light show.

With regards to the original topic of this thread, I think that drones aren't shot down because gould gunners have horrible aim and couldn't hit the F-302 much less a drone that is much smaller.