Drone Wars

PREDATOR: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.'s Predator drones were introduced to combat in the mid-1990s and deployed in the U.S.'s 1999 Kosovo air campaign for surveillance and reconnaissance. COURTESY OF U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO/LT COL LESLIE PRATT, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Drone Wars: 9/11-Inspired Combat Leans Heavily On Robot Aircraft -- Scientific American

The U.S. Defense Department has added thousands of automated aircraft added to its fleet over the past decade to support troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan as concerns of drone accuracy persist.

The September 11, 2001, attacks initiated a flurry of advances in military technology over the past decade that has helped the U.S. and its allies redefine modern warfare. None of these advancements has had a greater impact on America's missions in the Middle East than the maturation of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or, more generically, drones. The U.S. Army's drone armada alone has expanded from 54 drones in October 2001, when U.S. combat operations began in Afghanistan, to more than 4,000 drones performing surveillance, reconnaissance and attack missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan (pdf). There are more than 6,000 of them throughout the U.S. military as a whole, and continued developments promise to make these controversial aircraft—blamed for the deaths of militants as well as citizens—far more intelligent and nimble.

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My Comment: A must read post on the present state and development of drones for the U.S. military .... and a heads-up on where we are going to go from here.