History of unmanned aerial vehicles
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) include both autonomous (capable of operating without human input)
A UAV differs from a cruise missile in that a UAV is intended to be recovered after its mission, while a cruise missile impacts its target. A military UAV may carry and fire munitions on board, while a cruise missile is a munition. Loitering munitions are a class of unmanned aircraft intermediate between them.
Early development
Austrian incendiary balloon attack on Venice
The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred in July 1849,
World War I
The first pilotless aircraft were built during World War I. From a suggestion that
Soon after, on September 12, the
Later, in November 1917, the Automatic Airplane was flown for representatives of the US Army. This led the army to commission a project to build an "aerial torpedo", resulting in the Kettering Bug which first flew in 1918. While the Bug's revolutionary technology was successful, it was not in time to fight in the war, which ended before it could be fully developed and deployed.[16]
Interwar period
After World War I, three
Subsequent British "drones" included the Airspeed Queen Wasp, the Miles Queen Martinet, and the US-supplied Curtiss Queen Seamew. After WW II these would be replaced by the jet-powered Anglo-Australian GAF Jindivik.[citation needed]
The Soviets tested pilotless munitions-delivery in 1935-1939.[26]
World War II
Reginald Denny and the Radioplane
The first large-scale production, purpose-built drone was the product of Reginald Denny. He served with the British Royal Flying Corps during World War I, and after the war, in 1919, he returned to the United States to resume his career in Hollywood. Denny was a successful leading man and between acting jobs, he pursued his interest in radio control model aircraft in the 1930s opening a shop.[27]
The shop evolved into the "
The true inventor of a radio-controlled aircraft that could fly out of sight was Edward M. Sorensen as evidenced by his US patents. His invention was the first to be able to know from a ground terminal what the airplane was doing, such as climbing, altitude, banking, direction, rpm and other instrumentation. Without these patents the early radio-controlled aircraft could only operate within visual sight of the ground pilot.[28]
Aerial torpedoes
The US Navy began experimenting with radio-controlled aircraft during the 1930s as well, resulting in the Curtiss N2C-2 drone in 1937. The N2C-2 was remotely controlled from another aircraft, called a TG-2. N2C-2 anti-aircraft target drones were in service by 1938.[29]
The US Army Air Forces (USAAF) adopted the N2C-2 concept in 1939.
The "
The Naval Aircraft Factory assault drone "Project Fox" installed an RCA television camera in the drone and a six-inch television screen in the TG-2 control aircraft in 1941.[29] In April 1942 the assault drone successfully delivered a demonstration torpedo attack on a US destroyer at a range of 20 miles from the TG-2 control aircraft.[29] Another assault drone was successfully crashed into a target moving at eight knots.[29] The Navy Bureau of Aeronautics then proposed a television-assisted remote control assault drone program of 162 control planes and 1,000 assault drones.[29] Disagreements arose within the Navy concerning the relative advantages of the proposed program for full-scale combat implementation versus a small-scale combat test with minimum aircraft resource expenditure which might reveal the concept to the enemy and allow development of countermeasures prior to full production.[29] Assault drones remained an unproven concept in the minds of military planners through major allied advances of 1944.[29] Utilization was limited to a 4-drone attack on a beached Japanese merchant ship in the Russell Islands at the end of July followed by expenditure of 46 drones in the northern Solomon Islands.[29] Two hits and two near-misses were scored on the stationary ship.[29] Several of the later drones failed to reach their targets, but most were effective.[29]
Pulsejets
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2023) |
The V-1 flying bomb was the first cruise missile ever built.[30] It was built in the Peenemünde Army Research Center and first tested in 1942. The V-1 was intended to target London and was massively fired, achieving more than one hundred launches a day. The V-1 was launched from a rail system to achieve the speed needed to operate its pulsejet engine and would achieve a 250 kilometers radius, at one point flying at 640 km/h.
After the war, the Navy obtained small numbers of another pulsejet-powered target, the Curtiss KD2C Skeet series. It was another cigar-shaped machine, with the pulsejet in the fuselage and intake in the nose. It featured straight, low-mounted wings with tip tanks, and a triple-fin tail.[citation needed]
Balloons
Japan launched long distance attacks on the US Mainland using their
Cold War
Target drone evolution
In the post-World War II period, Radioplane followed up the success of the OQ-2 target drone with another very successful series of piston-powered target drones, what would become known as the Basic Training Target (BTT) family (the BTT designation wasn't created until the 1980s, but is used here as a convenient way to resolve the tangle of designations), including the OQ-19/KD2R Quail and the MQM-33/MQM-36 Shelduck. The BTTs remained in service for the rest of the 20th century. The first target drone converted to the battlefield unmanned aerial photo reconnaissance mission was a version of the MQM-33 conversion for the US Army in the mid-1950s designated the RP-71,[32] later re-designated the MQM-57 Falconer.[citation needed]
The US military acquired a number of other drones similar in many ways to the Radioplane drones. The Globe company built a series of targets, beginning with the piston-powered KDG Snipe of 1946, which evolved through the KD2G and KD5G pulsejet-powered targets and the KD3G and KD4G piston-powered targets, to the KD6G series of piston-powered targets. The KD6G series appears to have been the only one of the Globe targets to be built in substantial numbers. It was similar in size and configuration to the BTT series, but had a twin-fin tail. It was redesignated "MQM-40" in the early 1960s, by which time it was generally out of service.[citation needed]
The use of drones as decoys goes back to at least the 1950s, with the Northrop Crossbow tested in such a role. The first operational decoy drone was the
By the late 1950s combat aircraft were capable of Mach 2, and so faster targets had to be developed to keep pace. Northrop designed a turbojet-powered Mach 2 target in the late 1950s, originally designated the Q-4 but later given the designation of AQM-35. In production form, it was a slender dart with wedge-shaped stubby wings, swept conventional tail assembly, and a General Electric J85 turbojet engine, like that used on the Northrop F-5 fighter.[citation needed]
Nuclear tests
In 1946, eight
Reconnaissance platforms
In the late 1950s, along with the Falconer, the US Army acquired another reconnaissance drone, the Aerojet-General SD-2 Overseer. It had a similar configuration to the Falconer, but featured a vee tail and was about twice as heavy.[citation needed]
The success of drones as targets led to their use for other missions. The well-proven Ryan Firebee was a good platform for such experiments, and tests to evaluate it for the reconnaissance mission proved highly successful. A series of reconnaissance drones derived from the Firebee, the Ryan Model 147 Lightning Bug series, were used by the US to spy on North Vietnam, Communist China, and North Korea in the 1960s and early 1970s.[citation needed]
The Lightning Bugs were not the only long-range
Soviet Union projects
The USSR also developed a number of reconnaissance drones, though since many programs the Soviets pursued were cloaked in secrecy, details of these aircraft are unclear and contradictory.[citation needed]
Known drone systems planned or developed by the former Soviet Union include (in alphabetical order):
Vietnam War: Reconnaissance drones
By late 1959, the only spy plane available to the US was the
Just after the incident involving the US Navy destroyers
The Squadron operated Ryan Firebees, launching them from modified DC-130A Hercules transport aircraft, normally two drones under each wing, each Hercules carrying 4 drones total. The UAVs deployed parachutes upon completing their missions and were usually recovered by helicopters which were tasked for those missions.[38]
The
Between 1967 and until near the end of the U.S. involvement with the war in 1972, varied models of the 147SC Lightning Bug flew over half the missions over enemy territory. The average sortie per drone was three missions, before it was lost. The most famous Lightning Bug was a 147SC drone named "Tom Cat." Tom Cat flew sixty-eight missions before an enemy gunner finally brought him "down over Hanoi on September 25, 1974."[43] From August 1964, until their last combat flight on 30 April 1975 (the
Iran–Iraq War
During the
Post-war reflections
The usefulness of robot aircraft for reconnaissance had been demonstrated in Vietnam. At the same time, early steps were being taken to use them in active combat at sea and on land, but battlefield Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) would not come into their own until the 1980s.[citation needed]
During the early years, target drones were often launched from aircraft; or off a rail using solid-fuel rocket assisted takeoff (
The most combat
The largest UAVs in Vietnam were the 147T, TE, and TF (
War on Terror
The use of armed drones came into its own with the start of the
Battlefield UAVs
This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Please add information related to Chinese, Iranian, Saudi, Turkish and other countries. Please also add information related to the recent years such as "Saudi led operation in Yemen", "Libyan Civil War", "2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war" and "2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine".(March 2022) |
The attitude towards UAVs, which were often seen as unreliable and expensive toys, changed dramatically with the Israeli Air Force’s victory over the Syrian Air Force in 1982. Israel’s coordinated use of UAVs alongside manned aircraft allowed the state to quickly destroy dozens of Syrian aircraft with minimal losses. Israeli drones were used as electronic decoys, electronic jammers as well as for real time video reconnaissance.[50]
The US military is entering a new era in which UAVs will be critical to
Miniature and Micro UAVs
Another growth field in UAVs are miniature UAVs, ranging from "micro aerial vehicles (MAVs)" and miniature UAVs that can be carried by an infantryman to UAVs that can be carried and launched like an infantry man-portable air-defense system.[citation needed]
Endurance UAVs
The idea of designing a UAV that could remain in the air for a long time has been around for decades, but only became an operational reality in the 21st century. Endurance UAVs for low-altitude and high-altitude operation, the latter sometimes referred to as "high-altitude long-endurance (HALE)" UAVs, are now in full service.[51]
On August 21, 1998, an AAI Aerosonde named Laima becomes the first UAV to cross the Atlantic Ocean, completing the flight in 26 hours.[citation needed]
Beamed power UAV experiments
The idea of using UAVs as a cheaper alternative to satellites for atmospheric research, earth and weather observation, and particularly communications goes back at least to the late 1950s, with conceptual studies focused on UAVs with conventional propulsion, or new forms of propulsion using microwave beamed power or photovoltaic solar cells.
Raytheon suggested what would now be described as a UAV using beamed power, flying at an altitude of 15 kilometers (9.3 mi), as far back as 1959, and actually performed a proof-of-concept demonstration in 1964, with a transmitting antenna powering a helicopter on a 20-meter (65 foot) tether. The helicopter carried a rectifying antenna or "rectenna" array incorporating thousands of diodes to convert the microwave beam into useful electrical power.
The 1964 demonstration received a good deal of publicity, but nothing came of it, since enthusiasm for Earth satellites was very high and the rectenna system was heavy and inefficient. However, in the 1970s, NASA became interested in beamed power for space applications, and, in 1982, published a design for a much lighter and cheaper rectenna system.
The NASA rectenna was made of a thin plastic film, with dipole antennas and receiving circuits embedded in its surface. In 1987, the Canadian Communications Research Center used such an improved rectenna to power a UAV with a wingspan of 5 meters (16 feet 5 inches) and a weight of 4.5 kilograms (9.9 pounds), as part of the Stationary High Altitude Relay Platform (SHARP) project. The SHARP UAV flew in a circle at 150 meters (490 feet) above a transmitting antenna. The UAV required 150 watts, and was able to obtain this level of power from the 6 to 12 kilowatt microwave beam.
Solar power
In the 1980s, new attention was focused on aircraft propelled by
In 1980,
In 1983, AeroVironment investigated the concept, which was designated "High Altitude Solar (HALSOL)". The HALSOL prototype first flew in June 1983. HALSOL was a simple flying wing, with a span of 30 meters (98 feet 5 inches) and a width of 2.44 meters (8 feet). The main wing spar was made of carbon fiber composite tubing, with ribs made of styrofoam and braced with spruce and Kevlar, and covered with thin Mylar plastic film. The wing was light but remarkably strong.
The wing was built in five segments of equal span. Two gondolas hung from the center segment, which carried payload, radio control and telemetry electronics, and other gear. The gondolas also provided the landing gear. Each gondola had dual baby-buggy wheels in front and a bicycle wheel in back for landing gear. HALSOL was propelled by eight small electric motors driving variable-pitch
Nine HALSOL flights took place in the summer of 1983 at the isolated and secret Groom Lake base in Nevada. The flights were conducted using radio control and battery power, as the aircraft had not been fitted with solar cells. HALSOL's aerodynamics were validated, but the investigation led to the conclusion that neither PV cell nor energy storage technology were mature enough to make the idea practical for the time being. HALSOL was put into storage, and as it turned out, would be resurrected for greater glories later, as discussed later. For the moment, though, it remained a complete secret.
In the mid-1980s, not long after HALSOL went into mothballs, NASA awarded a contract to Lockheed to study a solar-powered HALE UAV named the "Solar High Altitude Powered Platform (Solar HAPP)" for missions such as crop monitoring, military reconnaissance, and communications relay. The Solar HAPP effort did not result in a prototype. Solar-powered HALE UAVs were a concept a bit ahead of their time, and early practical work on endurance UAVs focused on more conventional concepts.
Amber
In 1984, DARPA issued a $40 million US contract to Leading Systems Incorporated (LSI) of Irvine, California, to build an endurance UAV named "Amber". Amber was to be used for photographic reconnaissance, ELINT missions, or as a cruise missile. The US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps were interested, and DARPA eventually passed control over to the Navy.[citation needed]
Amber was designed by a team under Abraham Karem of Leading Systems. Amber was 4.6 meters (15 feet) long, had a wingspan of 8.54 meters (28 feet), weighed 335 kilograms (740 pounds), and was powered by a four-cylinder liquid-cooled piston engine providing 49 kW (65 hp), driving a pusher propeller in the tail. The wing was mounted on a short pylon above the fuselage. The cruise missile version of Amber would discard the wing when it made its final dive on a target.[citation needed]
Amber had an inverted v-tail, which would prove a popular configuration for a pusher UAV, since it protected the propeller during takeoff and landing. The airframe was made of plastic and composite materials, mostly Kevlar, and the UAV had retractable stiltlike tricycle landing gear to ensure propeller clearance. Amber had a flight endurance of 38 hours or more.[citation needed]
The initial contract specified three "Basic Amber" A-45 cruise missile prototypes and three B-45 reconnaissance prototypes. Initial flights were in November 1986, with long-endurance flights the next year. Up to this time, Amber was a deep secret, but in 1987 details of the program were released.[citation needed]
Amber was only one of a number of different US UAV programs in planning at the time, and the US Congress became impatient with what was perceived as confusion and duplication of effort. Congress ordered a consolidation of UAV programs in 1987, freezing funding until June 1988, when the centralized Joint Program Office for UAV development, mentioned earlier, was established. Amber survived the consolidation of UAV efforts into JPO, resulting in the first "Amber I" reconnaissance UAV, which first flew in October 1989. Seven Amber Is were built, and were used in evaluations along with Basic Ambers through 1990. However, funding for reconnaissance assets was being cut, and in 1990 the Amber program was killed. LSI was faced with bankruptcy, and was bought out by
U.S. domestic use
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has experimented with several models of UAVs, and has begun purchasing a fleet of unarmed
On May 18, 2006, the
According to a 2006
Recreational drones became popular in the United States in 2015, with approximately one million expected to be sold by the end of the year.[55]
Drones Over Canada
The Government of Canada is considering the purchase of UAV's for arctic surveillance. The Canadian government wants to buy at least three high-altitude, unmanned aerial vehicles for potential Arctic use. The Canadian government wants to modify the existing Global Hawk drone, which can operate at 20,000 metres, to meet the rigours of flying in Canada's Far North.[56]
Small-player use
At one time the cost of miniature technology limited the usage of UAVs to larger and better funded groups such as the US military, but due to falling costs of UAV technology, including vehicles and monitoring equipment in their simpler forms, it has become available to groups that before would not have had the funding to use it. Beginning in 2004, it was reported that the Lebanese
in 2019.See also
- Battlefield UAVs in the United States
- History of unmanned combat aerial vehicles
- British unmanned aerial vehicles of World War I
- List of military aircraft of the United States
- List of unmanned aerial vehicles
- Miniature UAVs
- Modern US endurance UAVs
- Unmanned combat aerial vehicle
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- ^ Air Power in the Age of Total War, John Buckley
- ^ The Future of Drone Use: Opportunities and Threats from Ethical and Legal Perspectives, Asser Press - Springer, chapter by Alan McKenna, page 355
- ^ Naval Aviation in the Second World War, Philip Kaplan
- ^ Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War, Richard P. Hallion, page 66
- ^ Naval Aviation in the First World War: Its Impact and Influence, R. D. Layman, page 56
- ^ Broken Wings: The Hungarian Air Force, 1918-45, Stephen L. Renner, page 2
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- ^ Military Ballooning During the Early Civil War, The Johns Hopkins University Press, F. Stansbury Haydon, page 18-20
- ^ Mikesh, Robert C. "Japan's World War II balloon bomb attacks on North America." (1973).
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- ^ "The Dawn of the Drone" Steve Mills 2019 Casemate Publishers.
- ^ Professor A. M. Low FLIGHT, 3 October 1952 page 436 "The First Guided Missile"
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Andersson, Lennart (1994). Soviet Aircraft and Aviation, 1917-1941. The Putnam Aviation Series. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. p. 249. ISBN 9781557507709. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
Experiments with a pilotless drone version of the TB-1 controlled by radio from other aircraft started in 1935 and continued until 1939.
- ^ "Reginald Denny (1891-1967) - Aviation Pioneer". monash.edu.au. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
- ^ US Patent 2,490,844 filed in May of 1940; Patent 2,408,819 filed May 16, 1940 and patent 2,482,804 filed May 16, 1940
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- ^ Greg Goebel (1 February 2012). "[6.0] The Road To Endurance UAVs". Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: USA. Vectors. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
- ^ a b c Wagner p. xi
- ^ Wagner p. 53
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- ^ "Lightning Bug War over North Vietnam". 13 July 2017.
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- ^ Axe p. 137. Note-For record purposes: p. 137 states 578 drones lost
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- ^ a b Wagner p. 213
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Further reading
- Axe, David. Drone War Vietnam. Pen & Sword, Military, Great Britain. 2021. ISBN 978 1 52677 026 4
- Fahrney, Delmer S. (RAdm ret): History of Radio-Controlled Aircraft and Guided Missiles
- Hobson, Chris. Vietnam Air Losses, United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps Fixed-Wing Aircraft Losses in Southeast Asia 1961-1973. 2001, Midland Publishing, UK. ISBN 1-85780-115-6.
- McDaid, Hugh & Oliver, David.: Robot Warriors. The Top Secret History of the Pilotless Plane. Orion Media, 1997.
- Michel III, Marshall L. Clashes, Air Combat Over North Vietnam 1965-1972. 1997, Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-519-6.
- Toperczer, Istvan. MiG-17 and MiG-19 Units of the Vietnam War. 2001/2nd Edition 2008, Osprey Combat Aircraft 25. ISBN 978-1-84176-162-6.
- Toperczer, Istvan. MiG-21 Units of the Vietnam War. 2001/4th Edition 2008, Osprey Combat Aircraft 29. ISBN 978-1-84176-263-0.
- Wagner, William: Lightning Bugs, and other Reconnaissance Drones. 1982, published by Armed Forces Journal International in cooperation with Aero Publishers, Inc.
- This article contains material that originally came from the web article Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by Greg Goebel, which exists in the Public Domain.