A Brief History
On December 23, 2002, the first known air to air battle between a manned fighter plane and an unmanned aerial drone took place in the sky above Iraq, when an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter jet shot down an American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator.
Digging Deeper
Far from the manned fighter merely taking out the drone, the high technology dogfight was a real air to air combat, with the drone armed with and firing an air-to-air missile at the Iraqi fighter. Luckily for the Iraqi pilot, the drone’s Stinger missile was allegedly confused by the heat signature of the Iraqi air to air missile and missed the jet, while the MiG scored a fatal hit on the Predator drone.
After much fanfare in the 1980s regarding the integration of drones of all sizes into the US military arsenal, often for battlefield reconnaissance by ground units, a large family of offensive, defensive, intelligence gathering, and electronic warfare drones have been fielded by the US and many other nations.
In fact, unmanned drones go back a long time, from the Kettering Aerial Torpedo, nicknamed the “Bug” in 1918, basically a propeller powered cruise missile, and other even earlier attempts, to more development during World War II using radio controls to fly unmanned aerial vehicles and modified airplanes.
Drones of all types have become a vital part of modern warfare, as evidenced in the Russia-Ukraine War being fought since 2022.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Are the days of manned combat aircraft over?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Celander, Lars. How Drones Fight: How Small Drones are Revolutionizing Warfare. Casemate, 2024.
Frantzman, Seth. Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future. Bombardier Books, 2021.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Tech. Sgt. Sabrina Johnson of an MQ-1B Predator unmanned aircraft from the 361st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron taking off July 9 from Ali Base, Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a work of a U.S. Air Force Airman or employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain in the United States.
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