What are Drones and how do they work? - Navo

• In the military, they are UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) or RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems). They are most commonly known as drones.
• The Drones are used in situations where manned flight is considered too risky or difficult. They always provide troops with a 24-hour "eye in the sky", seven days a week. The aircrafts can stay aloft for up to 17 hours at a time, loitering over an area and sending back real-time imagery of activities on the ground.
• The Drones are used by the United States Air Force and Royal Air Force range from small intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance craft, some light enough to be launched by hand, to medium-sized armed drones and large spy planes.
• The Two of the medium-sized drones currently in use in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the MQ-1B Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper. These Odd-looking planes carry a wealth of sensors in their bulbous noses: color and black-and-white TV cameras, image intensifiers, radar, infra-red imaging for low-light conditions and lasers for targeting. They can be armed with laser-guided missiles.
• However, drones are unmanned, they are not unpiloted - trained crew at base steer the craft, analyse the images which the cameras send back and act on what they see.Each multi-million dollar Predator or Reaper system comprises four aircraft, a ground control station and a satellite link.
• MQ-1B Predator (formerly called the RQ-1 Predator) was originally designed as an aircraft for intelligence-gathering, surveillance, identifying targets and reconnaissance. Although, since 2002 it has been equipped with two Hellfire II missiles, meaning it can strike at a range of up to 8km (five miles). The newer MQ-9 Reaper was conceived as a "hunter-killer" system. It carries four Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs such as Paveway II and GBU-12.