The Invention of Military Drones
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, James is the guest on our NEW sister podcast Patented, hosted by Dallas Campbell. Together, they talk us through the century-long history of military drones.
Drone technology has transformed the way we wage war today. They have been key in every major conflict since at least 2008, including the current war in Ukraine. But military drones have a much longer history than you might imagine, dating all the way back to the First World War.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Are we moving from warfare being a human pursuit to being a machine pursuit? |
| 0:05.6 | It's here that I start to worry about the future of warfare. Drone technology has absolutely transformed the way that war is waged. |
| 0:20.3 | They've been embraced by the military in part because they promise less destruction, more precision and better intelligence on the battlefield. |
| 0:28.0 | And they've been key in every recent conflict, including of course the current war in Ukraine. |
| 0:33.0 | But drones themselves have a much, much longer history than you might imagine. |
| 0:37.0 | Only a handful of years after the Wright brothers successfully nailed the first powered flight, we see the first uncrewed aerial systems |
| 0:45.6 | being developed for use in the First World War. |
| 0:48.9 | Today I am joined by history hits, very own James Rogers, host of our sister podcast, Warfare, to take us |
| 0:56.0 | through the 100-year history of military drones and how they shape conflicts today. |
| 1:02.3 | I'm your host Dallas Campbell. Welcome to |
| 1:04.6 | patented a podcast about the history of inventions from history hit. Oh, Welcome James Rogers to the show. It's lovely to have you here. James Rogers military |
| 1:35.2 | historian. Are you a military historian? I can stick with military historian. Yeah, that |
| 1:39.4 | works for me. You're more than a military historian, but that's kind of maybe where I think of you. |
| 1:43.6 | Hey listen drones I mean I should say as we're recording this that we are currently in day 14 of the Russian |
| 1:50.3 | invasion of Ukraine and so I guess sort of military things and |
| 1:53.6 | airstrikes are slightly unfortunately in the sort of public consciousness as it were |
| 1:59.4 | as when you think when you talk about drones I guess you're talking about them in |
| 2:02.4 | that sort of military perspective when you talk about drones I guess you're talking about them in that sort of military perspective |
| 2:03.9 | when I talk about drones I tend to think about filming because we use drones for cameras and that kind of stuff |
| 2:08.7 | so when we use the word drone what just frame it for us so it gives a bit of context of what we're talking about. |
| 2:14.3 | Oh how long have we got I mean that alone... We've got 20 minutes. |
| 2:18.1 | That definitional question is hard enough to start with. It is because I was it's really |
... |
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