Thursday, 26 August 2010

Euro Hawk drone first flight video

A single click to view here

The future of flight is unmanned. These 'predator'-type UAVs (or RPVs - remotely piloted vehicles) are both awesome and sinister at the same time and eerily fascinating. I only recently realised that US drones over Iraq and Afghanistan are being flown from 'home' ie the 'pilots' are back in the US ! At any one time there can be up to three dozen in the skies over these countries. Amazingly they don't fly into each other and if the 'signal' is lost they can either return to base apparently or orbit untill such time as the 'signal' is regained. Apparently more drone pilots are being trained currently than 'real' pilots and the USAF is now training the first group of 'non-pilots' to fly these things.