KNHaw

KNHaw t1_je5xoee wrote

Reply to comment by nomnomnomnomRABIES in TIL Early drones were developed during the First World War. These radio controlled planes were primarily for target practice but by 1942 a drone with a built in TV camera was capable of delivering a torpedo to a ship 20 miles from the controller. by jamescookenotthatone

No worries. Not classified at all. Gen Schwartzkopf gave one of his famous news conferences about it. "You know how the Iraqi government claimed they shot down a hundred planes yesterday? Well, let me explain why they think that..."

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KNHaw t1_je5c9ch wrote

Reply to TIL Early drones were developed during the First World War. These radio controlled planes were primarily for target practice but by 1942 a drone with a built in TV camera was capable of delivering a torpedo to a ship 20 miles from the controller. by jamescookenotthatone

In 1990 I was a fresh college graduate working at Northrop (now Northrop-Grumman) on the B2 bomber when Desert Storm started. There were several engineers who I worked with who suddenly disappeared. When I asked where they had gone, I was told not to ask.

It turns out they'd all worked on a target drone as described above. On the first night of the air war, the Iraqi air defenses detected hundreds of attacking targets and shot them down. But in doing so, they'd turned on their radars, which had been detected by ECM aircraft that had blown them up to pave the way for the real wave of air strikes.

That first wave was training drones, designed to be shot down, originally for training but here as a feint tactic. All those engineers who'd gone missing were in Saudi Arabia supporting this because they'd all previously worked on these crappy, low end target drones Northrop had made as a sideline.

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