Long before anyone spoke of drones, engineers were trying to make aeroplanes fly with nobody on board. According to Imperial War Museums (IWM), the first pilotless vehicles were developed in Britain and the United States during the First World War1. A century later, remotely piloted aircraft are flown by pilots in their own military career fields, are the subject of an international plan to supply Ukraine with a million first person view drones, and are about to be covered by a new layer of international civil aviation standards234. This is a short history of military drones, drawn from museum and official records, and a look at what it means for people who want to fly for a living.

The First World War: aerial targets and aerial torpedoes

Britain's Aerial Target, a small radio-controlled aircraft whose remote control components were designed by Dr Archibald Low, was first tested in March 19171. The American Kettering Bug first flew in October 1918, and IWM notes that although both showed promise in flight tests, neither was used operationally during the war1. The Bug was invented in 1917 by Charles F. Kettering of Dayton, Ohio. It was launched from a four-wheeled dolly running down a portable track, and a system of pre-set pneumatic and electrical controls stabilised it and guided it towards a target5. The Dayton-Wright Airplane Co. built fewer than 50 before the Armistice, and a shortage of funds in the 1920s halted further development5. The US Navy followed a parallel path: according to Proceedings, Elmer A. Sperry and a collaborator invented an automatic gyroscopic stabiliser in 1917, the autopilot feature that made unmanned aircraft a viable possibility, and the Sperry Corporation, working on behalf of the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance, combined it with a Curtiss N-9H trainer to create what it called the "aerial torpedo"6. These early machines were closer to a guided missile than to a modern drone, a point the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College makes about the Kettering Bug7, and Proceedings calls the Navy's version a primitive cruise missile6.

Targets, the Queen Bee and the Second World War

Between the wars, pilotless aircraft found their first lasting role as targets. In 1935 Britain produced radio-controlled aircraft for gunnery training, and IWM says it is thought the word "drone" came into use at this time, inspired by the name of one of these models, the DH.82B Queen Bee1. The Queen Bee was a pilotless derivative of the de Havilland Tiger Moth trainer, and BAE Systems Heritage records 320 built at Hatfield and a further 60 by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick8. A US Navy history published in Proceedings says the Navy also first used the term "drone" for an unmanned aircraft during its experiments of the 1930s6. In the United States, the Radioplane Co. in California developed target aircraft from 1935 based on an original design by former film actor and modeller Reginald Denny, and the OQ-2A generated contracts for almost 1,000 targets in 19439.

During the Second World War, unmanned aircraft were used as weapons by both the United States and Germany10. The US Navy's Interstate TDR-1 assault drone carried a television camera and was steered by an aviator in a modified TBM Avenger; TDR-1s flew a series of strikes against Japanese targets in the autumn of 1944, but the Navy ended the experiment in late October 19446. The limits were technical: early radio could not control a drone from more than four or five miles away, so the human operator had to fly nearby in a separate aircraft6. Range improved quickly after the war. On 6 August 1946, two remote-controlled prototypes based on the B-17 Flying Fortress flew 2,600 miles from Hawaii to California in almost 15 hours, setting a new endurance record for remote-controlled aircraft1.

Vietnam: reconnaissance without risking aircrew

IWM says reconnaissance UAVs were first deployed on a large scale in the Vietnam War1. The US Air Force's Strategic Air Command flew remotely piloted AQM-34 Firebees, which the National Museum of the US Air Force says obtained excellent photography of dangerous areas without risking aircrews11. They were first deployed to South Vietnam in 1964 and flew missions in Southeast Asia into 197511. Most flew by day at low altitude with an optical camera, while other versions flew at high altitude, sent back real-time television imagery or took infrared photographs at night11. The family grew out of Ryan's Model 147 Firebee, an unmanned target drone built in more than 20 variants12. The high-altitude AQM-34N could operate above 60,000 feet, and between March 1967 and July 1971, 138 AQM-34N missions were launched from DC-130 aircraft and flown under preprogrammed control12. Almost 65 per cent were recovered, many by a specially equipped helicopter that caught the drone in mid-air while it descended under its parachute12. The AQM-34L on display at the museum flew more than 30 missions over North Vietnam before it was damaged on 6 August 197213.

Israel in the 1980s, then Predator and Reaper

After Vietnam, countries outside Britain and the United States began to explore unmanned aircraft1. Israel was already among them: according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), it invested heavily in remotely piloted aircraft in the late 1960s, and when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) was manufacturing the Scout UAV14. Successes with the Scout persuaded leaders of the US Navy's Mediterranean Fleet to acquire their own, and in 1984 IAI and Tadiran formed a joint company, Mazlat, to develop an improved version called the Pioneer14. US Navy forces received their first Pioneers in June 198614. In the 1991 Gulf War, about 40 Pioneers flew more than 300 missions, and during one low pass over Faylaka Island several Iraqi soldiers signalled that they wanted to surrender to the aircraft, which NASM describes as the first time enemy soldiers had surrendered to an unmanned aerial vehicle14. NASM also records how demanding the flying was: operators had to land the Pioneer into a small target at a precise airspeed, altitude and angle of attack, without the visual, tactile and aural cues available to conventional pilots14.

The Predator began as a garage project by Israeli emigrant Abraham Karem, whose designs led to the GNAT 75010. The CIA operated the GNAT 750 over Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 and 1994, and its larger development, the RQ-1 Predator, was operating there by 199510. In April 1996 the US Secretary of Defense selected the US Air Force as the operating service, and in 2002 the designation changed from RQ-1 to MQ-1 to reflect its new armament15. NASM counts among its milestones the fact that operators could fly it in real time from ground stations on the other side of the planet10. A launch and recovery crew near the airfield handled take-off and landing, while a crew in the continental United States flew the rest of the mission over satellite links15. US Air Force Predator production ended in 2011 with 268 airframes, and the larger MQ-9 Reaper entered operations in 200710. The Air Force scheduled the MQ-1's official retirement for 9 March 2018 at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, after more than 20 years of service16. The growth was rapid: in April 2001 the US military had only 90 UAVs in service apart from target drones, and NASM says the number tripled within four years and reached nearly 11,000 a decade after that10. NASM also notes that the drone campaigns of this period left a complex legacy, including considerable concern over the deaths of bystanders10.

The current era: Ukraine and loitering munitions

The war in Ukraine has changed the scale again. In February 2024 the UK government said first person view (FPV) drones had proven highly effective on the battlefield since Russia's full-scale invasion, and announced that the UK would co-lead an international drone capability coalition with Latvia17. In July 2024 the coalition's defence ministers said it was planning to deliver 1 million FPV drones to Ukraine3. In June 2024 President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree enacting a National Security and Defense Council decision to establish the Unmanned Systems Forces as a separate type of force within the Armed Forces of Ukraine18. Loitering munitions blur the line between drone and missile much as the Kettering Bug did: the Bard College centre describes them as unmanned aircraft built to strike a target, whose defining characteristic is the ability to stay airborne for an extended period before striking, and which are not meant to be recovered7. Greater autonomy also raises legal and ethical questions. The International Committee of the Red Cross has urged states since 2015 to agree international limits on autonomous weapon systems, and in 2021 it recommended new legally binding rules19.

What this means for pilots and pilot careers

From the radio-controlled targets onwards, most of these aircraft needed people to fly them, and militaries have built careers around that. The US Air Force created the 18X career field for RPA pilots in October 2009 as a rated specialty with rigorous physiological and academic selection standards2. When it announced undergraduate RPA training in 2010, the pipeline consisted of initial flight training at Pueblo, Colorado, RPA instrument qualification, a fundamentals course and a formal training unit, with a six-year service commitment for graduates2. The basic MQ-9 crew is a rated pilot who controls the aircraft and commands the mission, and an enlisted aircrew member who operates the sensors20. In the UK, IWM's collection shows RAF crews operating the MQ-9 Reaper from pods at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, with the pilot and sensor operator sitting side by side1. NASM notes that most early US Air Force RPAS pilots were experienced combat pilots, but that demand soon exceeded supply and the services began training non-pilot operators, which created friction over who holds pilot status10.

Civil aviation is building a similar structure. ICAO adopted standards in 2018 for the issue of remote pilot licences, and its framework for international RPAS operations now rests on three requirements: a remote pilot licence, a certificate of airworthiness and an RPAS operator certificate421. The airworthiness standards in Annex 8 are applicable from 26 November 2026, as ICAO aligns the applicability of its RPAS provisions to that month4. In Europe, Regulation (EU) 2019/947 has applied since 31 December 2020 and divides civil drone operations into the 'open', 'specific' and 'certified' categories, while U-space services are to manage drone traffic in busier airspace such as urban areas22. In the United States, the FAA proposed a new Part 108 in August 2025 for low-altitude operations beyond visual line of sight; under the proposal, drones would have to give way to manned aircraft that broadcast their position with ADS-B Out or electronic conspicuity equipment23. In January 2026 the FAA reopened comments specifically on electronic conspicuity and right of way24. If the proposal is adopted as written, pilots of conventional aircraft would share low-level airspace with drones that rely on electronic signals, rather than a pilot's eyes, to give way23.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the word drone come from?

IWM and BAE Systems Heritage both say it is thought the term was inspired by the DH.82B Queen Bee target aircraft of the 1930s18. A US Navy history in Proceedings says the Navy first used "drone" for an unmanned aircraft in the same decade6.

Is a military drone pilot a rated pilot?

In the US Air Force, RPA pilots belong to the 18X career field, which the service describes as a rated Air Force specialty code with its own undergraduate training2. In civil aviation, ICAO standards provide for a separate remote pilot licence21.