Drone Technology Grows
While there were remote-controlled aircraft in World War II, the technology of the time was inadequate for reliable operation, as demonstrated by Operation Aphrodite. This began to change in 1948, when Ryan won the US Air Force competition for the Q-2 jet-propelled aerial target. Known as the Q-2A Firebee, the jet-propelled UAV, launched by a rocket and recovered by parachute, was also bought by the Navy and Army.
Drones did not have an immediate SIGINT role, but they are so important in later conflicts that the first modern development is worthy of note.
Read more about this topic: Signals Intelligence In The Cold War
Famous quotes containing the words drone, technology and/or grows:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
““If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He’ll find he’s mistaken....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)