UAVs in the U.S. military

rdf:langString UAVs in the U.S. military

rdf:langString As of January 2014, the U.S. military operates a large number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, also known as Unmanned Aircraft Systems [UAS]): 7,362 RQ-11 Ravens; 990 AeroVironment Wasp IIIs; 1,137 AeroVironment RQ-20 Pumas; 306 RQ-16 T-Hawk small UAS systems; 246 MQ-1 Predators; MQ-1C Gray Eagles; 126 MQ-9 Reapers; 491 RQ-7 Shadows; and 33 RQ-4 Global Hawk large systems. The military role of unmanned aircraft systems is growing at unprecedented rates. In 2005, tactical- and theater-level unmanned aircraft alone had flown over 100,000 flight hours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, organized under in Afghanistan and Task Force ODIN in Iraq. Throughout the US missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, rapid improvements in technology enabled steadily increasing capabilities to be placed on smaller airframes. Throughout those campaigns, further advances continued to contribute to a large increase in the number of unmanned systems being deployed on the battlefield, a trend which continues following American withdrawals from the Middle East and Central Asia. The first use of armed UAVs was in 2001, in which an MQ-1 Predator was used to carry anti-tank missiles into Afghanistan, controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 2006, flight hours by UAVs were not logged, though the DoD now states that millions of UAV flight hours have been logged. As the capabilities grow for all types of unmanned systems, states continue to subsidize their research and development, leading to further advances enabling them to perform a multitude of missions. UAVs no longer perform solely intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, although these still remain their predominant tasks. Their roles have expanded to include electronic attack, drone strikes, suppression or destruction of enemy air defense, network node or communications relay, combat search and rescue, and derivations of these themes. These unmanned systems range in cost from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars, with aircraft weighing from less than one pound (0.45 kg) to over 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg).