to start off today's video let's begin with what is perhaps the most obvious direction for aircraft to go in and that is planes without pilots just as a side note these entries are going to be more general as opposed to specific designs we'll provide some sure but the focus is going to be on the concepts in addition you might now be thinking yourself up simon drones aren't theoretical aircraft they absolutely exist this is false advertising i want my money back well first of all no refunds second of all you're absolutely right drones aren't theoretical aircraft strictly speaking but all signs point to them being the next big thing in aviation and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention them before we get into that let's start with a brief history unmanned aerial vehicles or uavs have existed as a concept since the field of aviation was established for a while the technology was largely limited to so-called target drones as in radio-controlled planes used to train fighter pilots but the appeal of uavs was to many worth the cost of pursuing them the loss of experienced pilots was of a particular concern because not anyone can be a fighter pilot unfortunately it was during the vietnam war that america used unmanned drones in combat for the first time including the lockheed dNUMBER_TOKEN and the ryan aqm NUMBER_TOKEN firefly these early drones were primarily used for reconnaissance particularly into china there's a side note here when the chinese government shot down some american uavs and showed pictures of them to the world the official response from the united states was no comment israel was the next major country to push development into uavs and again they were primarily used for recon as opposed to weapons however they did find another purpose for them as decoys to trick the enemy into wasting anti-aircraft missiles on them but israel saw some merit in developing the concept further creating several models including the iai scout and the tadirian mastiff which again were used for reconnaissance as at this point the uav started to resemble their modern counterparts complete with data link systems that share information in real time along with live feed cameras and long flight periods the power of these uavs was demonstrated in NUMBER_TOKEN in the lebanon war when israel used intelligence gathered by uavs to thoroughly dismantle syrian air defense networks in one of the largest air operations since the korean war they destroyed almost NUMBER_TOKEN sam batteries without losing a single plane this set of events kick-started another era in uav development and it was over the next few decades that the technology really took off america in particular has led the way in both technology and controversy with models such as the mq-NUMBER_TOKEN predator and mq-NUMBER_TOKEN reaper which are equipped with hellfire missiles to take out terrorists and the occasional wedding putting aside the tasteless jokes for today we've regaled you with the history of uav so now let's talk about their possible future right now as many as one is three aircraft operated by the u.s air force is a uav and that number is set to increase as time goes on and the technology behind them improves right now the single biggest push in the field is pilotless fighter drones ace combat seven because we just can't seem to stop
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