Resource: Pilotless Flight: Timeline of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The ability to control an unpiloted aircraft from remote locations offers numerous advantages. With manned aircraft, you must accommodate not only the added weight of a pilot, but also the pilot's safety. In military conflicts, for instance, a plane, if detected, may be shot at by enemy anti-aircraft weaponry. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can fly at higher altitudes over long periods than can piloted craft, and they can perform high-speed evasive maneuvers, the forces of which would stretch a person beyond his or her physical limitations. Freed of the weight of a pilot, UAVs can carry more communications and monitoring equipment. Computerized control systems can also maneuver airplanes more reliably than manual systems can in certain difficult phases of flight, such as low-level night flying over undulating terrain or bad-weather landings.

Early UAVs were typically converted airplanes. As mission goals evolved to include high-altitude and long-duration surveillance flights, weapons delivery, stealth capability, weather monitoring, rescue operations, changes in structural designs, fuel systems, and on-board technologies naturally followed. Today's planes are equipped with real-time communications capabilities, advanced imaging systems, television relays, and infrared cameras. Some non-military vehicles have begun to tap solar power and fuel cell storage systems. A class of mini-UAVs, called MAVs, has even been designed to mimic the flying movements of certain insects.

Choose any two consecutive decades and describe the advances in UAV design that occurred during that time.

What design challenge do all of these vehicles have in common?

Why are the solutions to that common challenge so different?

Do you think the United States should devote resources to developing the next generation of pilotless flying machines? Explain your reasoning.