MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft.Wikicommons/ U.S. Air Force photo/Lt Col Leslie Pratt. Some rights reserved.The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), or drone as it’s more popularly known, can be considered the military technology of the moment. Touted for both surveillance and strike capabilities, drones are being embraced by a growing number of nations, who are drawn to what former US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta described as “the only game in town” in the fight against terrorist groups.
In spite of their increasingly widespread adoption, the US nonetheless remains at the forefront of global operations, running the most established military drone programme. Whilst the US has a lengthy history of employing the drone as a form of target practice, a ‘flying bomb’ for the delivery of ordinance, and as a surveillance platform, the now iconic (and recently retired) Predator drone was developed for the US Air Force and subsequently armed in 2001. Shortly thereafter, the US conducted its first ‘targeted killing’ operation in a declared warzone in Afghanistan, and in an undeclared warzone in Yemen in 2002.
The Department of Defense subsequently went on to grow its inventory of aerial drones from 167 to 7,000 between 2002 and 2010, and to 10,000 platforms by July 2013. This growing embrace is further evidenced in the 2016 US Air Force-released figures revealing that for the first time in 2015, drones released more weapons than manned aircraft in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the US Air Force has since announced plans to double the number of its drone squadrons over the next several years. The drone as a tool of war, then, shows no sign of abating.
