The research and development departments of the world’s defense companies have barely begun to explore all the different applications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), or drones.
And governments, aware of this, are growing increasingly eager to find out what else they could do. In early June, the European Commission came up with a new plan to hand out 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) of taxpayers’ money to arms companies every year to develop new military technology.
And yet from the handheld Black Hornets to the 40-meter wingspan of the Global Hawk, military drones are so varied that no single company, or even country, dominates their manufacture. Here are the basic types and where they come from.
Micro- and nano-drones
Insect-sized spy machines may have become part of the furniture in blockbuster movies, but they’ve also been visible on battlefields for several years. The most obvious example is the 1-inch-by-4-inch Black Hornet, which British soldiers have been using to
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