Drones in Service Today

Various types of drone are in service. Some, such as the Dragon Eye, operate

О Small UAVs can resemble model airplanes, such as this radio-controlled drone operated by a Marine. The aircraft was used in Saudi Arabia in 1991 as part of Operation Desert Storm.

at low altitude. Others, such as the EQ-4 Global Hawk, can fly at high altitudes, staying in the air for 24 hours. The Global Hawk is capable of very long flights: in 2001, a Global Hawk craft flew 7,500 miles (12,068 kilometers) nonstop across the Pacific from the United States to Australia. The Global Hawk is as big as a small airplane, 44 feet (13.4 meters) long with a wingspan of 116 feet (35.4 meters). It can cruise at

around 400 miles per hour (644 kilometers per hour) at a height of

65,0 feet (19,812 meters). Using its radar, cameras, and other sen­sors, the Global Hawk can scan an area the size of the state of Illinois in a period of 24 hours.

The smaller MQ-1 Predator is used by the U. S. Joint Forces Command. The M stands for multi-role missions; Q means it is unmanned. Predator is normally flown at medium alti­tude on long-endurance missions. The aircraft and its control system are portable-they can be loaded into a freight plane, such as a C-130 Hercules, and airlifted anywhere in the world. The Predator drone does, however, need a runway to take off and land.

Drones can be made very small. The Israelis have some aircraft that can fly in through an open window and out again on spying missions. Known as Birdy, the smallest Israeli spy drone weighs only about 3 pounds

(1.4 kilograms). Israel uses this minia­ture airplane and other slightly larger drones (all of which look like model air­planes) to take photographs of sensitive areas. The aircraft are small enough to be carried by a soldier and can be oper­ated from a laptop computer.

In 2006 the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department announced that it was using drones. Its SkySeer is a small robot pro­peller airplane that weighs 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) and is battery driven. An officer can carry the kit in a backpack and can assemble the drone in as little as 5 minutes. At the touch of a button, the engine whirrs, and the plane takes off. The drone carries a video camera and can fly over a crime scene (such as a burglary) to scan the rooftops of surrounding buildings. It also can help locate people lost in inaccessible terrain—a ravine or forest, for example—
using low-light or infrared cameras to detect the heat given off by a body.

One advantage of drones over manned helicopters is their cheapness—a SkySeer kit costs around $30,000. Another asset is the speed with which the “eye in the sky” can be deployed when the need arises. Their size, in addi­tion, gives them access to places where larger aircraft cannot go.

SEE ALSO:

• Aircraft, Military • Control

System • Radar • World War II

_____________________________________________ /