UAVs come of age

August 14, 2007

"Low entry costs have led to rapid growth in numbers of unmanned air vehicles in development or available to buy – for military and civil use. Here is our guide to 100 leading programmes on the market.

The four years since Flight International launched its annual unmanned air vehicle directory have seen extraordinary growth in the variety of platform concepts being developed around the world. There are, even from a conservative analysis, something like 450 individual platform types at meaningful stages of development by industrial, research and scientific development organisations inter--nationally.

That 450 number excludes target drones, as well as the vast numbers of platforms in development by the education sector as part of training programmes for new generations of engineers and technical personnel."