4 – Drones
Drones might seem to be at the very forefront of military technology, but their roots go back far further than one might imagine. The state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used by the US Army today bear little resemblance to those used in the First World War, but the basic concept remains the same – a method of attacking the enemy from the sky without risking one’s own men. The modern definition of a UAV requires it to be able to return to base afterward, a limitation that the prototypes that were produced in the 1910s would certainly fall short of, but they were certainly a step further than the traditional missiles or torpedoes that were also in use at the time.
They flew under their own propulsion, sustained their own flight and offered a more penetrating range of attack than had ever been seen before – all characteristics that also mark out the current models of attack drones. The First World War drone was capable of traveling a massive 75 miles, a range well beyond the capacity of any artillery available elsewhere, and perfect for the circumstances of the Western Front, where the military top brass would be situated well behind the lines and in presumed safety. In practice, none were ever used in battle, but the idea would live on far longer than the prototype.
The key technological advance that made the drone possible was hardly a secret. Orville and Wilbur Wright, better known as the Wright brothers, had pioneered the idea of human flight back in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where they successfully managed a short flight in their self-devised and self-built craft, the Wright Flyer. The intervening decade had seen a proliferation of potential aviators and a speed of technological advancement that few could have dreamed possible.
The battlefields of the First World War were the first to see aerial warfare and the new heroes of the public back home were the fighter aces, with their exploits in the clouds broadcast widely. As one might expect from such a new technology, none of the generals really knew what they were doing and the casualty rate for those engaged in aerial combat was very high, so the idea of an unmanned bomber aircraft was very appealing.
The advance that allowed the drone to come into existence was not so much technological as it was cerebral. The basic mechanism was already there, but a few small tweaks modified it for a totally different purpose. Orville Wright was involved in the project – his brother had passed away before the war began – but the genius of the idea came from Charles Kettering, an inventor and airplane engineer from Ohio. He adapted the design that was used by airplanes with the key modification of removing the pilot. He built a fuselage from papier mache and wood and a propellor system, released from an existing airplane on a track and fired at the enemy.
A gyroscope maintained orientation and the propellor allowed the drone to fly itself for far longer than any ground or air missile could travel, with the payload released when an allotted number of engine revolutions had been achieved. This meant that, when atmospheric conditions and velocity had been factored in, the drone could bomb a target fairly accurately at no risk to the firing force.
The Kettering Bug, as it became known, was never to see action in the First World War but it represents the first attempt at unmanned aerial combat. The drones that the US Army and other militaries use today are its direct descendants, and they can draw their origins back to the very birth of flight.
