Military Drones Essay

What is the future of the military? Many people would argue that drones are the future. Drones have a long history of development tracing back to the America’s Civil War. A large issue that drones had during this time was that they were highly ineffective, this continued until the war in Afghanistan ware started. During the Afghanistan war, the production of the Predator Drone was commissioned. This has been the military’s most successful military asset because of its many different application that the Predator drone has. This has lead to many companies to fund the Drone Program. With the funding for the drone program being available, many innovations have occurred in a short amount of time compared to previous year. This has allowed for

During this time both Confederate and Union Soldiers used drones to attack the opposition’s military ammunitions holdings. The Drone consisted of balloons that were filled with explosive. The hope was that this drone would float to the oppositions ammunitions supply area and explode all of their ammunition. This was highly ineffective due to the balloons being susceptible to the winds of nature; because of its ineffectiveness, the idea was discontinued. Controlled drones would not surface until World War II. During this war, we saw two different drones arise. The Japanese came up with the idea of high altitude balloons similar to that used in the Civil War. The purpose of this drone that the Japanese built was to curry incendiary bomb. The targets were not the people, but rather the forests of the United States. In retaliation to the Japanese Drone, the United States started the Aphrodite project. The concept of the Aphrodite was to allow a pilot to control an aircraft and fly it to high altitude. The Aphrodite project closely relates to the conception of present day drones by

This has increased the funding of the program, allowing for future generation of drones to have endless possibilities. All, of which could have been accomplish with such success without the concept of drones coming about during the Civil War, and for the continuous work on the concept of drones until their success in the Afghanistan War. Because of the success, the Predator drone has accounted for approximately sixty percent of all flight hours in combat since 1995 to present day. This leads us to the future where science fiction can become reality by the production of a synthetic brain, such as the X-47B. This just begs the question of what tomorrow has in store for the future of