United States fly high: while the United States and the Soviet Union were the first to re-explore uncrewed aircraft technologies since the second world war in the 1960s, notably through Ryan and Tupolev (but with mixed results in both cases), Israel was really the first nation to turn the discipline into a viable proposition in the 1980s, before being overtaken in terms of market size by the United States.

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United States fly high: while the United States and the Soviet Union were the first to re-explore uncrewed aircraft technologies since the second world war in the 1960s, notably through Ryan and Tupolev (but with mixed results in both cases), Israel was really the first nation to turn the discipline into a viable proposition in the 1980s, before being overtaken in terms of market size by the United States.

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Compared to spending on manned aircraft (the Lockheed Martin F-22 alone receiving over $ 3.5 billion in FY08), that on drones is small, but rising impressively. The Washington-based Teal Group estimated in late 2007 that the worldwide annual spend on drones will almost double from the current $ 3.4 billion to around $ 7.3 billion within a decade, thereby making this the most dynamic growth sector of the aerospace business.

The Pentagon's own forecasts show its unmanned aircraft procurement budget rising steadily from $ 878.4 million in FY07 to a peak of $ two billion in FY10. In the latter year, America's corresponding RDT&E expenditure is predicted as $ 1.3 billion and operating & maintenance as $ 421.2 million.

The US armed services are estimated to already have a total of around 5300 drones in their inventories, and this number is clearly set to rise dramatically. Procurement of the Aerovironment (AV) RQ-11 Raven alone is aimed at 3333 systems, each with three air vehicles. The Raven has been flying over 12,000 hours/month, and is expected to fly 300,000 in 2008.

The US military drone flying total was 165,000 hours in FY06, and 258,000 in FY07. Even when small hand-launched systems are excluded, American drones are currently flying over 15,000 hours per month in southwest Asia. The AAI RQ-7 Shadow 200 is contributing over 7000, the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator over 6000 (out of a global total of more than ...

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