Trending Now — Drones

The US has a lead in military UAV development in the world, but China is swiftly closing the gap, thanks to intellectual property theft, reverse engineering and innovative skills.

- Joseph Noronha

TWENTY YEARS AGO, DRONES WERE OBJECTS OF INTEREST for military personnel alone. That changed after February 4, 2002, when the United States Central Intelligence Agency (US CIA) first used an unmanned General Atomics MQ-1 Predator in Afghanistan for a “targeted killing” or assassination in plain language. By the time the MQ-1 retired on March 9, 2018, “drone” had become a household word.

A drone, more correctly called an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), may be a remote controlled aircraft operated by a pilot on the ground or may fly autonomously based on a pre-set flight plan or operate using more elaborate dynamic automation systems. Its military roles include anti-aircraft target practice, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, communications, and strike missions. But it is in the civil domain that drones are finding new applications by the day such as agricultural services, traffic and crowd surveillance, weather monitoring, search and rescue operations, photography and delivery services.

MILITARY SEED, CIVILIAN HARVEST 

More than a hundred years have passed since the British Army first used a pilotless plane to obtain aerial photographs of the German trench fortifications. There were many other attempts to use unmanned aerial reconnaissance and the name drone (male bee) may have originated from the de Havilland DH82B Queen Bee that entered service in Britain in 1935. A major reason for the Israeli Air Force’s stunning victory over the Syrian Air Force above the Bekaa Valley in June 1982 was its innovative use of UAVs. The US military now has well over 11,000 UAVs and their numbers are increasing. According to the New America Foundation, about 80 countries have military drones, mainly unarmed surveillance platforms; but around 20 nations have armed UAVs.