Hrm... odd kind of article from a place called "The Aviatonist" I mean it is interesting but RC controlled UAVs have been around since the 70's, with prototypes going back to the 40's.
Only on February 26, 1973, during testimony before the
United States House Committee on Appropriations, the
U.S. military officially confirmed that they had been
utilizing UAVs in Southeast Asia (Vietnam).[13] Over
5,000 U.S. airmen had been killed and over 1,000 more
were either missing in action (MIA) or captured
(prisoners of war/POW). The USAF 100th Strategic
Reconnaissance Wing had flown approximately 3,435 UAV
missions during the war[14] at a cost of about 554
UAVs lost to all causes. In the words of USAF
The Soviets had missiles based on MiG-15 fighter - a nuclear armed version of one of these missiles was aimed at the Guantanamo Bay base during the Cuban Missile Crisis. See:
The South African Air Force was flying surveillance UAVs in Angola and Mozambique in the 1970s and 1980s, also achieving the first flights of UAVs in controlled civilian aerospace in 1994 when military UAVs were used to monitor the country's first fully democratic election.
It also had remote-controlled target drones, loitering anti-radiation drones & TV-guided boosted flying bombs in the same era, all of which meet this article's very loose definition. As others have pointed out the US and Israel have also operated surveillance UAVs for decades.
The use of UAVs did not begin in Afghanistan in 2011.
They misspelled the name of Giovanni Falcone.
Also I'm not sure it's safe to call them "drones" if they're just RC planes with a bit of explosive on top.
The Israeli Defense Forces made extensive use of drones for reconnaissance during the 1981 invasion of Lebanon. The use got a lot of press coverage then.
My grandfather designed and flew drones for Northrop in the 70s and 80s. They were used for target practice (US or foreign military would shoot at them). He flew them by adjusting oscilloscopes and he had a plotter on a map to show where the plane was.
