Израиль задолго до кончания холодной войны использовал дроны в боевых действиях в 1982 году во время Ливанской войны.Virginian wrote:...
По иронии судьбы дроны начали активно в США разрабатывать, а тут победа в холодной войне, мир, дружба, пьяный Ельцин оркестром дирижирует. Посчитали ненужной, дорогостоющей игрушкой и...передали все наработки Израилю. Теперь дроны идут оттуда на экспорт, в том числе и в Россию.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile batteries in Egypt and Syria caused heavy damage to Israeli fighter jets. As a result, Israel developed the first UAV with real-time surveillance.[18][19][20] The images and radar decoying provided by these UAVs helped Israel to completely neutralize the Syrian air defenses at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War, resulting in no pilots downed.[21] The first time UAVs were used as proof-of-concept of super-agility post-stall controlled flight in combat flight simulations was with tailless, stealth technology-based, three-dimensional thrust vectoring flight control, jet steering UAVs in Israel in 1987.[22]
With the maturing and miniaturization of applicable technologies as seen in the 1980s and 1990s, interest in UAVs grew within the higher echelons of the U.S. military. In the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Defense gave a contract to U.S. corporation AAI Corporation of Maryland along with Israeli company Mazlat. The U.S. Navy bought the AAI Pioneer UAV that was jointly developed by American AAI Corporation and Israeli Mazlat, and this type of UAV is still in use. Many of these Pioneer and newly developed U.S. UAVs were used in the 1991 Gulf War. UAVs were seen to offer the possibility of cheaper, more capable fighting machines that could be used without risk to aircrews. Initial generations were primarily surveillance aircraft, but some were armed, such as the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, which utilized AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles. An armed UAV is known as an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV).
As a tool for search and rescue, UAVs can help find humans lost in the wilderness, trapped in collapsed buildings, or adrift at sea.
In February 2013, it was reported that UAVs were used by at least 50 countries, several of which made their own: for example, Iran, Israel and China.
