Drones Defending the Expendables

The De Havilland Museum in the UK has a unique exhibit, one of the two surviving Queen Bee aircraft. In the 1930s, the RAF converted a Tiger Moth trainer aircraft into a radio-controlled version, with some modifications on the airframe like using wood in place of metal, and called it Queen Bee from where it acquired the often-used name Drone (male bee).

- AIR MARSHAL GS BEDI (RETD)

They built it as a target aircraft for realistic anti-aircraft gunnery training. A visit to the Museum would reveal an interesting fact that the Britishers realised the real value of UAVs when they found it too difficult to shoot it down. UAVs have since then evolved a great deal increasing their role in war fighting, and their evolution followed a pattern. A brief history of drones available at Imperial War Museum in the UK records their first ever use for reconnaissance in the Vietnam war.

Slowly, their size, capability and function swelled to further include target designation and targeting it by itself.

The Global Hawk appeared on the scene to supplement the recce capability of ageing U2 spy planes and Predator got a boost post 9/11.

The leader in Unmanned systems, US, armed the UAVs to achieve targeted killing of terrorist leaders, the latest being assassination of General Qasem Soleimani by a Reaper.

Islamists have used the drones to attack ground targets in Syria, and also Saudi Arabia's largest Aramco oil facility. But AUTOM ALE-DRDO the largest, concentrated and sustained use of drones is happening now in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

ADVANCES

As far as the advancement in the field of UAV is concerned, there are many high end programmes under development, like nEuron by Dassault, Taranis by BAE Systems, X-45 by Boeing, Rustom & TAPAS (Tactical Advanced Platform for Aerial surveillance) by HAL and Ghatak & Aura by DRDO.

Kelley Aerospace in Singapore is developing a supersonic UCAV, called Arrow. On the other end of the spectrum are cheap COTS available drones down to insect size being manufactured in mass scale by various start-ups.