America’s Killer Drones… Of the Vietnam War

The armed laggard has become a symbol of modern warfare . Who needs the great unwashed ? We have cheap(ish ) robots that can spy and defeat for us — and they do , around the macrocosm . But before UAVs were rocketing Afghanistan , theyroamedVietnam .

The Aviationist ’s David Cenciottibrings us this test flight footage of an unnoticeable opus of military history : the BQM-34A ” drone , which “ flew almost 3,500 UAV missionary station during the Vietnam war , at a cost of more than 550 drones lost . ”

Despite raining down rocket engine almost half a century ago , a hatful of the principle were the same :

The -34A launched AGM-65 Maverick missile and GBU-8 Stubby Hobo glide bomb but since it lack asymmetric flight capability it had to set down a weighted shape from the opposite wing to equilibrise weights . The pilotless aircraft was flown by a ground wheeler dealer in a remote control van using a olfactory organ TV television camera : since the weapons were electro - optically guided the hustler could switch screen from the “ trailer view ” to the “ weapon view ” to run it to the target .

The BQM-34B included a optical maser designator nose and could fly without the weighted human body .

These precursor killers were , of course of instruction , a hell of a band more archaic than the Reapers and Predators we take flight today , which accounts for that “ 550 lose drone ” bit . This also lead to the not - so - unfortunate reverse engineering of the planes by China — a artillery that put down fallow . And of class , it ’s not like enemies get our dronesanymore , guys . [ Aviationist ]

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