New Delhi: Drone is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, an aircraft with no pilot on board. UAVs are currently used for a number of missions, including reconnaissance and attack roles. The military role of UAV is growing at unprecedented rates. In 2005, tactical and theater level unmanned aircraft (UA) alone, had flown over 100,000 flight hours in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). UAV no longer only perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, although this still remains their predominant type. Their roles have expanded to areas including electronic attack, strike missions, suppression and destruction of enemy air defense, network node or communications relay, combat search and rescue (CSAR), and derivations of these themes. Here are some rare known facts about the drones: 1. Drones are mainly manufactured in the USA and in Israel. Other countries have tried to build and manufacture them – most failing because of poor technology.2. The USA (unsurprisingly) are the most frequent users of – so frequent in fact that Obama openly admitted to using them in military strategies. Stating that, there was no point in hiding it anymore.3. Armed Drones were originally invented to find Osama bin Laden: Back in 1998 – before 9/11 had even happened the US army were already discussing plans to use drones in order to track down and trace the movements of al Qaeda in the Middle East.4. The standard costs for the USA made “Predator” model costs $4.5 million – $11 million per unit. However there is the larger, much more expensive and far more advanced “Reaper” model which costs approximately $30 million per unit to make. These two models are perhaps the best known drone types.5. The Pentagon who mark out the US military budget have asked the Congress for more than $5 billion to put towards drones in this year's budget (2012).6. Not all drones replicate actual aircrafts in size. There have been many drones that are as small as an insect. The variety of shapes and sizes is what makes the Drone such a flexible type of protection and surveillance.7. Drones are not completely accurate. In the past drones have killed the wrong people because of poor visual imagery available or poor technology. In April 2010 two US militants got shot down because of misidentification by a drone, which goes to show that even technology this advanced can fail.8. Drones aren't only used abroad; they are used in the USA too. On US airspace, they're often used as border patrol.9. Many debates have been held over how much drones intrude on people's privacy rights, with such high tech surveillance and no way of informing people of said surveillance, human rights activists are highly against drones.10. In 2010 almost a hundred drone accidents were recorded. With each accident costing the US government upwards of $1 Million, the price of drones stretches beyond just the simple costs of creation and manufacturing.
