UAV strike video

Placing personal at risk is eliminated with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. Surveying the country side,

the unmanned aerial vehicle transmits back live images and data

Pin pointing any ground activity supplies the operator with valuable information. Having a "eye in the sky" gives military operations and patrol units a technical advantage. UAV are also used in non military roles. They can reach hard to access area easily, and provide images and sound. For the hobbyist, small remote control helicopters with built in cameras that record are available. They were quite expensive when first introduced. A consumer can now purchase one for around 100 dollars. Great for aerial photographs and video of your property or project.

United States military UAV classifications

The modern concept of U.S. military UAVs is to have the various aircraft systems working together in support of personnel on the ground. The integration scheme is described in terms of a "Tier" system, and is used by military planners to designate the various individual aircraft elements in an overall usage plan for integrated operations. The Tiers do not refer to specific models of aircraft, but rather roles for which various models and their manufacturers competed. The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marine Corps each has its own tier system, and the two systems are integrated.

Unmanned aircraft system

UAS, or unmanned aircraft system, is the official U.S. Department of Defense term for an unmanned aerial vehicle. Coined by the Navy to reflect the fact that these complex systems include ground stations and other elements besides the actual aircraft, the term was first officially used in the DoD 2005 Unmanned Aircraft System Roadmap 2005–2030. Many people have mistakenly used the term Unmanned Aerial System, or Unmanned Air Vehicle System, as these designations were in provisional use at one time or another.

Military role of unmanned aircraft systems is growing at unprecedented rates. In 2005, tactical- and theater-level unmanned aircraft alone had flown over 100,000 flight hours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which they are organized under Task Force Liberty in Afghanistan and Task Force ODIN in Iraq. Rapid advances in technology are enabling more and more capability to be placed on smaller airframes which is spurring a large increase in the number of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (SUAS) being deployed on the battlefield. The use of SUAS in combat is so new that no formal DoD wide reporting procedures have been established to track SUAS flight hours. As the capabilities grow for all types of UAS, nations continue to subsidize their research and development leading to further advances enabling them to perform a multitude of missions. UAS no longer only perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Their roles have expanded to areas including electronic attack, strike missions, suppression and destruction of enemy air defense, network node or communications relay, combat search and rescue, and derivations of these themes.

When the Obama administration announced in December 2009 the deployment of 30,000 new troops in Afghanistan, there was already an increase of attacks by pilot-less Predator drones against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas, of which one probably killed a key member of Al Qaeda. However, neither Osama bin Laden nor Ayman al-Zawahiri was the likely target, according to reports. According to a report of the New America Foundation, armed drone strikes had dramatically increased under President Obama – even before his deployment decision. There were 43 such attacks between January and October 2009. The report draws on what it deems to be "credible" local and national media stories about the attacks. That compared with a total of 34 in all of 2008, President Bush’s last full year in office. Since 2006, drone-launched missiles allegedly had killed between 750 and 1,000 people in Pakistan, according to the report. Of these, about 20 people were said to be leaders of Al Qaeda, Taliban, and associated groups.