HOW THEY SHRUNK THE DRONES

REAMS have been written about the strategies in the recent India-Pakistan border conflict. But fewer words have been expended on a core aspect of this war: drones—their use; their different deployments by the two countries; the cost to each country centred on the kinds of drones used; and, most importantly, how the war drones in this conflict fit into various streams of global developments in warfare.

- KAJAL BASU

The credit for 'the first drone war' goes to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The India-Pakistan faceoff was just another bead in a long chain that began 176 years ago, when pilotless hot-air balloons bombed Venice during the 1848-49 Italian revolution. It took 68 years to progress from the wind to radio-control—an 'aerial torpedo' against zeppelins and submarines designed by Archibald Low, the 'father of aerial guidance systems'. In 1935, the de Havilland DH.82 Queen Bee made its debut—a yellow-and-black liveried, radio-controlled biplane that not only became a testbed for future designs but also fathered the appellation 'drone'.

During the Second World War, the US Navy converted four-engined B-24 Liberator bombers to radio-control for bombing missions. During the Cold War, the US used AQM-34 Firebee for photography missions over China and Vietnam, with China shooting down one in 1964. Iraq first used its ubiquitous Mohajer-1 for battlefield surveillance in 1986, explosively multiplying the use of drones in West Asia.