Unmanned Aerial Vehicle :

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone and also referred to as an unpiloted aerial vehicle and a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the International Civil Aviation Organization(ICAO), is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. ICAO classify unmanned aircraft into two types under Circular 328 AN/190.

• Autonomous aircraft

Autonomous aircraft are considered to be not suitable for regulation due to legal and liability issues

• Remotely piloted aircraft

Remotely piloted aircraft are subject to civil regulation under ICAO and under the relevant National aviation authority

How Drones can be used?

Drones of all types have already been used in a wide range of practical ways , including:
• Archaeological surveying.
• Science, in general.

• Environmental/meteorology; e.g., climate study, storm monitoring, mapping glaciers, general data collection.
• Military — surveillance, air strikes.
• Security — surveillance, crowd monitoring and control.
• Law enforcement — surveillance, traffic monitoring, search and rescue operations aiding hostage situations and for bomb threats, tracking a fleeing criminal.

• Firefighting — forest and fire monitoring, risk management. A volunteer fire firefighter in Connecticut used his personal $1200 DJI Phantom quadcopter as a drone to help monitor a fire situation at an industrial location by streaming video back, which helped determine how far the fire was from a storage unit containing explosives.

• Healthcare, including medical supplies delivery. E.g., vaccines, defibrillators to people in emergencies, or other supplies, especially in remote areas.• Farming — crop and livestock monitoring.
• Meat plant inspections, including catching companies dumping animal blood into nearby bodies of water.
• Commercial use — delivery. Amazon’s Jeff Bezo’s talked about future delivery by drone. Domino’s Pizza pulled a PR stunt delivering pizza. Lakemaid Beer, a Minnesota brewery, delivered cases of beer to ice fishermen before they were told to stop by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). In the U.S., the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has a say in how drones are used for commercial tasks.
• Aerial photography, including architectural photography, photographing music festivals.
• Shooting movies, TV shows, TV commercials.
• Land inspection and surveying.
• As scarecrows, to scare large flocks of geese near public parks in Ottawa, Canada.
• Pipeline and oil rig inspection using infrared cameras.
• Crop management, including spraying and watering.
• Monitoring marine life, including whale watching.
• Wildlife conservation, including tracking orangutans in Sumatra and monitoring several endangered species. Namibia has teamed up with the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) to fly drones over national national parks, in hopes of spotting poachers, as well as monitoring animals.

• Thermography — inspection of solar systems, wind turbines, power lines using thermal imaging cameras.

Some Specific Applications Of Drones :

1. Drones are used for spying purposes too.

2. They are also used for videography & sightseeing.

3. Drones are also used in special operations and wars. They are called Reapers.

The Ultra-Lethal Drones Of  The Future:

In 13 short years, killer drones have gone from being exotic military technology featured primarily in the pages of specialized aviation magazines to a phenomenon of popular culture, splashed across daily newspapers and fictionalized in film and television, including the new season of “24.”

What has not changed all that much — at least superficially — is the basic aircraft that most people associate with drone warfare: the armed Predator.

The Predator, with its distinctive bubble near the nose and sensor ball underneath, is the iconic image of drone warfare, an aircraft that grew out of 1980s work supported by the Pentagon’s future-thinking Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Originally developed to perform surveillance, the CIA added Hellfire missiles and began using the Predator to hunt down members of the Taliban and al Qaeda after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Though the CIA and Air Force now fly an updated version of the Predator — named Reaper — the drone is still relatively easy to detect, and easy to shoot down, at least for a country with a modern military.

In fact, as terrifying as drones sound, they actually aren’t all that sophisticated compared to other weapons in the US arsenal. The original Predator plodded along at a pokey 84 miles an hour.

Modal Trigger

A ShadowHawk drone with the Montgomery County, Texas, SWAT team. Civilian cousins of the drone are being sought by police departments, border patrols, power companies, and news organizations who want a bird’s-eye view.Photo: AP

Its missiles, though lethal, are decades-old technology developed to destroy tanks, not terrorists. And despite concerns about autonomous killing machines, the Predator must be operated by a pilot (albeit remotely). The Predator has proved effective, but it is not exactly the sci-fi miracle that many might imagine.

Under development, however, is a new generation of drones that will be able to penetrate the air defenses of even sophisticated nations, spotting nuclear facilities, and tracking down — and possibly killing — terrorist leaders, silently from high altitudes. These drones will be fast, stealthy and survivable, designed to sneak in and out of a country without ever being spotted.

In fact, the Predator may someday be to drone warfare what the V-2 was to long-range ballistic missiles: a crude, but important, first step in a new era of warfare.