An aircraft no larger than a dinner plate can now locate a tank, guide artillery, inspect a bridge or film a wildfire. Its ancestors, however, were neither digital nor intelligent. They were balloons, fragile wooden aircraft and experimental machines whose inventors struggled with one fundamental question: How can something fly without a pilot?

The history of drones stretches back more than a century. Although unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are often associated with the wars of the 21st century, their development began long before computers, satellites or artificial intelligence existed.

The earliest experiments: 1849–1914

One of the earliest attempts at unmanned aerial warfare occurred in 1849, when Austrian forces experimented with explosive-carrying balloons during the siege of Venice. The balloons depended on winds and primitive timing devices, making them unreliable weapons.

Although they were not drones in the modern sense, they introduced the concept of delivering explosives through the air without placing a human operator aboard.

Another significant breakthrough came in 1898, when inventor Nikola Tesla demonstrated a radio-controlled boat in New York. His invention was not an aircraft, but it established a technological principle essential to modern drones: machines could receive commands wirelessly from a distant operator.

World War I: The first pilotless aircraft

The First World War accelerated experimentation with unmanned aviation. In Britain, engineer Archibald Low developed a radio-controlled aircraft known as the Aerial Target. Tested in 1917, it was intended as a pilotless flying weapon. Although the experiments encountered serious technical difficulties, they demonstrated the potential of remotely controlled flight.

Across the Atlantic, American engineer Charles Kettering developed the Kettering Bug, an experimental aerial torpedo tested in 1918.

The small wooden biplane used mechanical controls, gyroscopes and a preset flight mechanism. After travelling a calculated distance, its engine stopped, its wings detached and its explosive-filled fuselage descended toward the target.

The Bug never entered combat, but it represented an important ancestor of the modern cruise missile.

The 1930s: The birth of the drone

During the interwar years, engineers made substantial progress in radio-controlled aviation. In 1935, Britain introduced the de Havilland DH.82B Queen Bee, a remotely controlled aircraft developed from the Tiger Moth trainer. It was designed primarily for anti-aircraft gunnery practice.

Unlike earlier experimental machines, the Queen Bee could be recovered and reused. Its name is widely associated with the popularisation of the term drone, which subsequently became standard terminology for pilotless aircraft.

By the end of the decade, unmanned aviation was becoming a practical military capability.

World War II: Drones enter combat

The Second World War brought further developments. The United States manufactured thousands of Radioplane target drones for training anti-aircraft crews. These relatively inexpensive radio-controlled aircraft helped establish unmanned aviation as a specialised industry.

More significantly, in 1944, the US Navy deployed the TDR-1, an explosive-carrying aircraft controlled remotely through television images transmitted from its onboard camera.

TDR-1 drones attacked Japanese military targets in the Pacific, demonstrating that remotely piloted aircraft could conduct combat missions decades before modern armed drones appeared.

Nazi Germany also developed the V-1 flying bomb, which used mechanical guidance to strike distant targets, particularly London and Antwerp. The V-1 is more accurately classified as an early cruise missile than a modern reusable drone.

The Cold War: Eyes in the sky

During the Cold War, reconnaissance became increasingly important. The downing of an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over the Soviet Union in 1960 demonstrated the political and military risks of sending human pilots into hostile airspace.

The United States subsequently expanded its use of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, particularly the Ryan Firebee family.

During the Vietnam War, modified Firebee drones flew thousands of missions, photographing military installations, monitoring enemy positions and collecting intelligence.

For the first time, unmanned aircraft became established instruments of aerial surveillance rather than primarily experimental weapons or training targets.

Israel and the modern reconnaissance drone

During the 1970s and 1980s, Israel played a particularly important role in developing smaller, more practical reconnaissance drones. Israeli systems demonstrated their value during military operations in Lebanon in 1982, providing real-time intelligence and helping identify enemy air-defence positions.

Aircraft such as the Israeli Scout and the jointly developed US-Israeli Pioneer helped establish the model of tactical drone operations that many modern armed forces subsequently adopted.

The central innovation was not simply flying without a pilot. It was transmitting useful battlefield information while the aircraft remained airborne.

The Predator era: Surveillance becomes targeted killing

The 1990s marked another turning point. The American MQ-1 Predator, initially developed for reconnaissance, made its first flight in 1994 and was deployed in the Balkans during the conflicts of the 1990s.

Its ability to remain airborne for extended periods transformed military surveillance.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States increasingly employed armed Predators in Afghanistan and later in other countries. Equipped with Hellfire missiles, drones combined persistent surveillance with the ability to attack targets.

The more powerful MQ-9 Reaper subsequently expanded these capabilities.

However, drone warfare also generated serious controversies surrounding civilian casualties, targeted killings, sovereignty and accountability.

The civilian revolution

Meanwhile, drones were undergoing a second revolution outside the military. Advances in GPS navigation, miniature cameras, batteries, sensors and affordable electronics made small civilian drones increasingly accessible during the 2000s and 2010s.

Quadcopters became popular among photographers, filmmakers, researchers and hobbyists. Agriculture, disaster response, environmental monitoring, infrastructure inspection and emergency services increasingly adopted unmanned aircraft.

In 2016, the United States introduced comprehensive operational rules for routine commercial small-drone flights, reflecting their growing importance in civilian aviation.

Ukraine: The transformation of drone warfare

The 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh had already demonstrated how armed drones could influence conventional military operations. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 accelerated drone warfare on an unprecedented scale.

Ukraine initially gained international attention through its effective use of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones. As the war continued, both sides increasingly relied on smaller, cheaper and often commercially derived systems.

First-person-view (FPV) drones, reconnaissance quadcopters, long-range attack drones and increasingly sophisticated unmanned systems transformed the battlefield.

Ukraine developed innovative approaches to drone production and deployment, while Russia dramatically expanded its own capabilities, including mass attacks using Iranian-designed Shahed-type drones.

Electronic warfare, signal jamming, fibre-optic control systems and AI-assisted navigation became central elements of this technological competition.

By 2026, drones had become indispensable to battlefield reconnaissance, artillery targeting, logistics and attacks against military infrastructure.

Yet their proliferation also created new dangers for civilian populations and raised difficult questions about the future of human control over weapons.

The next chapter: Artificial intelligence and autonomy

Today, drone development is increasingly connected with artificial intelligence, autonomous navigation, machine vision and coordinated operations involving multiple aircraft.

These technologies could improve disaster response, scientific research and civilian services. They could also enable military systems to operate with progressively less direct human intervention.

A crucial distinction remains: remote control, automated flight and autonomous target selection are not the same thing.

The historical journey from explosive balloons to intelligent unmanned aircraft reveals a persistent technological ambition: extending human capabilities beyond the limits of physical presence.

But it also reveals a recurring dilemma. Every major advance in unmanned aviation has expanded both its constructive possibilities and its destructive potential.

The future of drones will therefore be determined not only by what these machines can do, but also by the political, legal and ethical decisions governing their use.

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EDITORIAL NOTE: This article is part of the editorial production of THE SHAPE OF WAR (shapeofwar.com), a forthcoming publication by FRONTLINE PRESS.