drone

Drone warfare is a form of warfare using military drones or military robots. The robots may be remote controlled or have varying levels of autonomy during their mission. Types of robots include unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned surface vehicles (USV) or unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). The United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Iraq, Italy, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Poland are known to have manufactured operational UCAVs as of 2019.
Drones are commonly used for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance and to conduct direct attacks on target, however they may also be utilized for electronic warfare, explosive ordnance disposal, augmenting battlefield logistics or target training. Aerial drone attacks can be conducted via purpose-built UCAVs deploying ordnance during a drone strike or by weaponized commercial UAVs aerial dropping munitions or crashing into a target. Heavy-lift multirotor UAVs may also be used to airlift supplies to friendly ground forces. UAVs, USVs and UGVs are variously used for reconnaissance, kamikaze missions, transporting cargo, medical evacuation or may serve an anti-air, anti-armor or anti-personnel role. Smaller drones such as SUAVs and micro air vehicles are man-portable and can be deployed for low-altitude, short-range support operations. Larger drones can serve a "mothership" or drone carrier role, deploying smaller, sub-drones or being equipped with electronic warfare features such as a signal repeater in support of secondary drones. Multiple drones may attack simultaneously in a drone swarm.
In the early years of the 21st century, most drone strikes were carried out by the US military in such countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya using air-to-surface missiles against ground targets. Drone warfare has been increasingly deployed by Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran and by militant groups such as the Houthis. Since 2022, drone warfare has been extensively used in the Russian invasion of Ukraine by both sides, including long range fixed-wing drones, and short range multirotor FPV drones. Scholars have described the conflict as the first "drone war", due to the large scale and high intensity of attacks, and agree on the major role drone warfare has in modern conventional warfare.

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