Before drones existed, aeronautics fans dedicated themselves to flying small propeller planes, perfect and reduced-scale copies of those that really existed during the two world wars.
These planes were not simple toys, but something much more sophisticated. They had small piston engines, a small gasoline tank and were controlled with remote controls. They became very popular from the 60s onwards. Their owners organized competitions and people came to see them.
Chronologically, the first drone appeared during the Second World War, produced in the United States. They called it “Queen Bees” and 15,000 units were produced. They could launch small bombs and a torpedo. A thousand of them were used in Nazi Germany and Japan by American forces. However, they were much less effective than the German V-1 and V-2, which were not really drones but flying bombs.
It was in 1980 when the first industrial-scale drone emerged, which for a few years was used for terrain observation and mapping tasks, until the General Staff of the armies realized that they could have a military use and become a new weapon of war.
Thus, today's drones emerged with increasingly larger proportions and with a greater range of lethal use. The common characteristic of many of them is that they are still propelled. But they are capable of locating a target and firing missiles of various types, which destroy or seriously damage them.
Turkey, for example, is having international success with its “Baykar” drone with three different versions. The last one, the TB2S, has a satellite communication antenna and a radio wave interception system. Its armament is composed of “Roketsan” missiles with significant destructive capacity.
The “Baykar” have been used in the war in Afghanistan and in Libya, Iraq; Syria; Azerbaijan; Burkina Faso, Mali and Ukraine. Its cost amounts to about 5 million dollars.
One of the drones most appreciated by the military continues to be the North American “Reaper”, a combat drone that already has a wingspan of 20 meters and a length of another 1; and it has a speed of 480 km per hour and a radius of action of 1850 km; evolving at an altitude of 15,000 meters.
Washington uses it to monitor the southern border, currently subject to an invasion of migrants from South America, Asia and Africa, starting from Mexico. Here it is no longer a propeller drone, because it moves thanks to a turbpropelled engine. And the most interesting thing is that it has attachment points for explosive charges of up to 600 kilograms. With 2 fuel tanks, it can fly for up to 42 hours. It carries laser-guided bombs and missiles of two types: air-to-air and air-to-ground.
Thus we have come very far in the evolution of the art of war, which appeared in the form of a Military Treaty in China in the 5th century BC. His criterion was that the war must have a “just cause.” But do just causes really exist in today's wars?
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