"They expand, come back together"
A squadron of drones could be designed/configured to fly in tight formation - tight enough that it may appear to be a single object. I mean, we've all seen Blue Angel/Thunderbird vids of their formation patterns with ridiculously close params. Imagine that concept in rotary config, scaled down by a factor of ... what ... 50? Add the latest FLIR component, networked, and even supersonic incoming could be tracked adequately enough to issue a command to separate the drones prior to incoming reaching target. Bob's your uncle.
I vote yes for Earth-based
A squadron of drones could be designed/configured to fly in tight formation - tight enough that it may appear to be a single object. I mean, we've all seen Blue Angel/Thunderbird vids of their formation patterns with ridiculously close params. Imagine that concept in rotary config, scaled down by a factor of ... what ... 50? Add the latest FLIR component, networked, and even supersonic incoming could be tracked adequately enough to issue a command to separate the drones prior to incoming reaching target. Bob's your uncle.
I vote yes for Earth-based