Drones are ubiquitous now, but a relevant military use timeline can be found, which is relevant to the previous technology blogs:

What we do know is that modern drone warfare began in earnest in 1982, when Israel coordinated the use of battlefield UAVs alongside manned aircraft to wipe out the Syrian fleet with very minimal losses. The Israeli Air Force used military drones to recon the enemy’s position, to jam communications, and to act as decoys that would prevent the loss of pilot life.

The technology was nothing new, but the IAF figured out how to use drone technology in a way that would make operations more successful, and international interest in drone hardware picked up significantly. The US, for example, spent tens of millions of dollars on new drone contracts in 1984

https://www.dronethusiast.com/history-of-drones/

By 1992, Ronen Bergman, in his book ‘Rise and Kill First” relates:

At about 9,500 feet above the streets of Jibchit, a camera in the nose of a small, quiet aircraft panned the length of the procession. There was no pilot, but rather an operator controlling the plane from a trailer on the northern border in Israel. The images from the camera, in high resolution and real time, were beamed to a screen in the small AMAN war room overlooking a rose garden outside the Defense Ministry, in Tel Aviv.

It was, in 1992, a marvel of intelligence technology: a drone that put Israeli eyes on a surveillance target without risking any Israeli personnel. The drone’s camera continued the length of the procession. At the end, four vehicles were clearly visible—two Range Rovers and two Mercedes sedans. In Tel Aviv, intelligence officials watched as those four slipped away from the crowd, passed the hussainia, and stopped in a parking lot behind the building. “We’ve got him,” one of the analysts watching the video feed said. Two hundred miles away, intelligence operatives had a clear view of a target. “Suddenly,” an internal review of that morning later reported, “the scent of a hunt was in the air.”

EVER SINCE THE OPENING offensive of the Yom Kippur War, which had taken the Israelis completely by surprise, Major General Benjamin “Benny” Peled, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, had been haunted by failure. At the beginning of the war, in 1973, the air force had received more than half of the defense budget, and yet it completely collapsed during the initial Egyptian and Syrian attack. Peled believed that one of the main reasons for the failure was that important intelligence had reached him too late. If he’d known Egyptian forces were launching—if he could have seen, in real time, the preparations—his own forces would have been better able to respond. In the aftermath of that assault, Peled decided to develop a network of secret communications and real-time intelligence-gathering systems. It would be designed to serve the air force independent of the “Greens” (as the “Blues” of the IAF somewhat condescendingly called the ground forces, because of their olive drab uniforms). Using aircraft for that end would have been the obvious plan, but that was complicated by another trauma of the Yom Kippur War: The IAF had lost more than a quarter of its warplanes, and many of the rest were damaged and unfit for action. Furthermore, many of the IAF’s airmen, who until then had enjoyed an aura of invincibility, had been shot down and taken prisoner or killed.

But what if airplanes didn’t need pilots? Or the multi-million-dollar munitions systems? What if, Peled wondered, the IAF could remotely pilot smaller, cheaper aircraft equipped with only cameras and communications links? A decade earlier, when he ran the weapons department, Peled was the first to introduce drones into the air force, although at the time it seemed a fantastical idea. He was worried about the Arab forces’ acquisition of Soviet-made surface-to-air antiaircraft missiles, and, as a result, he “wanted to fill the air with decoys that would be very cheap, and with similar profiles as fighter planes on their radar screens.” These UAVs, an Israeli improvement on an American invention, were launched by rockets, and in order to return to the ground they would eject a parachute, which a helicopter with long poles fixed to its fuselage would then sweep up.

Later, the drones were also equipped with cameras. But after the 1973 war, Peled reached the conclusion that this was not enough. The launch and recovery systems were costly, clumsy, and very dangerous. Processing the photographed material took a long time, too. Hours elapsed between taking the pictures, developing the film, and finally transferring the photos to the intelligence analysts. And so, in the wake of the 1973 defeat, a new type of drone was developed. This drone could take off and land independently, it was controlled from a command caravan, and it had cameras that transmitted video footage in real time.

By 1982, drones were a key element in providing real-time intelligence for the top air force brass sitting in Canary, the command post deep underground in central Tel Aviv. They also played a key role in knocking out Syrian antiaircraft missile batteries in Lebanon. The drone that targeted Syrian defenses was the first model of the Scout (known in Israel as the Zahavan), made by Israel Aerospace Industries. The Israeli Air Force, hoping to convince the United States to cooperate in drone development, wanted to demonstrate to the Americans how effective its miniature, pilotless planes could be. When U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger visited the Middle East—first Beirut and then Tel Aviv—he met with the top IDF and Defense Ministry officials. He was then shown a video taken by an Israeli drone of his arrival in Beirut, and the movements of his motorcade in the Lebanese capital. Weinberger didn’t much appreciate the surveillance, but the members of his entourage were very impressed with the technology. Weinberger’s visit to Israel paved the way for a huge deal between Israel Aerospace Industries and the Pentagon for the sale of 175 upgraded Scout UAVs, which were given the name Pioneer in the United States. They were used by the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Army until 2007.

Improvements to the drones were made over the years to allow them to carry more fuel, and to update the cameras.

In 1990, Israel equipped its drone fleet with lasers so that they could emit a beam and designate a static target for warplanes. The upgrades to the drones were part of a larger technological push in the IDF, which in the late 1980s invested significant resources to acquire and develop precision ordnance—“smart bombs” that could hit their targets more accurately, making them more effective and less likely to inflict collateral damage. This process was accelerated when technology buff Ehud Barak, who wanted to build “a small, smart army,” became chief of staff in 1991, in effect shaping the Israeli war machine for the coming decades. Under his direction, the IAF’s Apache attack helicopters were equipped with laser-guided Hellfire missiles. At the same time, a meeting between the heads of the IAF operations department and Arieh Weisbrot, commander of the first IAF drone unit, Squadron 200, came up with the revolutionary idea of combining all of these technological advances into a single five-step process, to create a new and particularly deadly method of targeted killing. First, a drone would track a moving target, either a person or a vehicle. Second, the drone would transmit an image of the target directly to the operational command, providing a real-time connection with the decision-makers, right up until the order to fire. Third, the drone would designate the target with a laser beam that could be picked up by an Apache helicopter’s laser detector—a stage known as “passing the baton,” from the intelligence-gathering cycle to the operational cycle. Fourth, the Apache’s own laser would mark the target, which a Hellfire missile could then lock on to. Fifth, the Apache pilot would fire the missile and destroy the target. Combining and synchronizing both systems—intelligence and operations—was a major breakthrough.

Drones already had proven themselves invaluable in gathering information. But now they’d evolved from a support role into a direct combat tool. Squadron 200 began training with the Apache pilots of Squadron 113, the “Wasp” squadron, in late 1991. There were skeptics in the IAF, especially among pilots who’d been trained in, and had long practiced, specific combat tactics. The idea that flying robots could be effective in war seemed, to some, preposterous. But in December 1991, they tried a number of “dry runs,” using vehicles on Israel’s roads as targets. Three or four drones were launched, and a vehicle selected at random for them to track with their cameras, transmitting everything to the control caravan. Then the vehicle was “lit up” with a laser beam, and after a few miles the chase was joined by two Apaches, and the whole team would practice “passing the baton” as the Apaches’ sensors would lock on to the drone’s laser beam. At the moment the Apache indicated that the target was locked, the exercise ended. But simulating missile fire onto cars on a friendly road was one thing. Killing a live target in hostile territory was something else altogether.

20 years later, there is a timeline of CIA  targeted drone killings, here is the first and the latest in the list:

November 3, 2002, US drone strike on a vehicle in Marib province, Yemen. 

• Target: Qa’id Salim Sinan al-Harithi

The first drone targeted killing saw a CIA Predator drone operating out of Djibouti launch two missiles at a vehicle travelling through the desert in Marib province, Yemen.

………….

July 31, 2022, US drone strike on a compound in Kabul, Afghanistan

Target: Ayman Al-Zawahiri

https://dronewars.net/twenty-years-of-drone-targeted-killings/

The proliferation of drones in present day wars has made some people believe they should be banned as their use seems to be ushering in an era of permanent war:

Drone Wars UK works towards a long-term goal of an international ban on the use of armed drones. While drone warfare is often presented as a precise and risk-free solution to international security threats, there are significant dangers to global peace and security arising from their use. These include

• lowering the threshold for the use of armed force,
• expanding the use of targeted killing
• transferring the cost of armed conflict from soldiers to civilians
• ushering permanent war

Remote ‘risk free’ intervention through using armed drones is in danger of becoming not the last option, but the first. Besides the direct consequences on the ground, the normalisation of this type of response means that underlying political and social causes of conflicts go unaddressed. This in turn drastically reduces the chances of achieving just and sustainable peace and security.

See ‘The Danger of Drones’ for more details.

https://dronewars.net/our-work/

But military use is likely to build.

Drones have emerged as pivotal instruments in international conflicts, reshaping the landscape of modern warfare. Their capabilities for surveillance, targeted strikes, and real-time intelligence gathering have made them indispensable to contemporary military strategies.

As nations increasingly rely on drones for tactical advantages, the implications of their use—both strategic and ethical—demand comprehensive analysis. This article examines the multifaceted role of drones in international conflicts, highlighting historical trends and current case studies.

https://totalmilitaryinsight.com