

Italian mafia tested remotely controlled aircraft with bombs in the early 1990s - wslh
http://theaviationist.com/2013/06/13/mafia-drones/

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columbo
Hrm... odd kind of article from a place called "The Aviatonist" I mean it is
interesting but RC controlled UAVs have been around since the 70's, with
prototypes going back to the 40's.

    
    
            Only on February 26, 1973, during testimony before the                   
            United States House Committee on Appropriations, the 
            U.S. military officially confirmed that they had been 
            utilizing UAVs in Southeast Asia (Vietnam).[13] Over
            5,000 U.S. airmen had been killed and over 1,000 more 
            were either missing in action (MIA) or captured 
            (prisoners of war/POW). The USAF 100th Strategic 
            Reconnaissance Wing had flown approximately 3,435 UAV 
            missions during the war[14] at a cost of about 554 
            UAVs lost to all causes. In the words of USAF 
      

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle#History)

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arethuza
The Soviets had missiles based on MiG-15 fighter - a nuclear armed version of
one of these missiles was aimed at the Guantanamo Bay base during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. See:

[http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-
Khrushchev...](http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-
Khrushchev/dp/1400078911)

Probably a SSC-2B "Samlet":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KS-1_Komet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KS-1_Komet)

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_djo_
The South African Air Force was flying surveillance UAVs in Angola and
Mozambique in the 1970s and 1980s, also achieving the first flights of UAVs in
controlled civilian aerospace in 1994 when military UAVs were used to monitor
the country's first fully democratic election.

It also had remote-controlled target drones, loitering anti-radiation drones &
TV-guided boosted flying bombs in the same era, all of which meet this
article's very loose definition. As others have pointed out the US and Israel
have also operated surveillance UAVs for decades.

The use of UAVs did not begin in Afghanistan in 2011.

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terabytest
They misspelled the name of Giovanni Falcone. Also I'm not sure it's safe to
call them "drones" if they're just RC planes with a bit of explosive on top.

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byroot
Yeah it's more a remote control missile than a drone.

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cliveowen
This reminds me of a mission in GTA Vice City where you had to tear down a
building this way. Great game.

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cafard
The Israeli Defense Forces made extensive use of drones for reconnaissance
during the 1981 invasion of Lebanon. The use got a lot of press coverage then.

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tingletech
My grandfather designed and flew drones for Northrop in the 70s and 80s. They
were used for target practice (US or foreign military would shoot at them). He
flew them by adjusting oscilloscopes and he had a plotter on a map to show
where the plane was.

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davidw
Speaking of the Italian Mafia, today is the 21st anniversary of their
assasination of Paolo Borsellino:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Borsellino](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Borsellino)

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dschiptsov
tested vs. used

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hydralist
I think we all did that in the 80s in Vice City...Stupid Zero missions

