How do people fly unmanned drones to shoot at?

[panzer1b]

Ok, one thing ive always wanted to do but never knew how is to test say my weapons against a flying target in real time. How do people do this in videos (ive seen plenty of people use BDArmory, or even stock unguided crap against a drone they werent controlling, and both were in mid air simultaneously).

Anyways, is there some mod that lets you have a craft that say flies in a circle around KSP or something at a set altitude? And then you can engage it, or is there some other way to do it? How do they bypass the limitation that KSP deletes craft past 2.3km or so, as ive seen the vids show multiple craft flying around upwards of 20km away.

Finally, is this just a DMP server or something (where each one is manned technically but flown by separate people), or is there an actual mod that allows such things as combat test drones to be flown around KSC as you get on its 6 and attempt to take it out?

[RainDreamer]

Possibly mechjeb/ kOS. You can program your own flight routines with them and I don't think it is very far fetch to make one that circle around in place.

[Pecan]

What happens when that scatological stuff hits the rotors?

[Starwhip]

What happens when that scatological stuff hits the rotors?

You didn't just... :/ Gah!

Links to the videos in question?

[Taki117]

I direct you to the great Manley

[Denks]

It appears that in the video something was mounted on top of the craft with a radial decoupler.

I'm not sure if this would work, but you could try putting something on top of a larger craft and activating its engines and decoupling it. It probably wouldn't fly right though (it would have to have SAS and probably a remote guidance unit).

EDIT: Oops, I skipped the beginning of the video. Nevermind.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Denks