National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

* 1
od e d er e z
The IAF and the UAV Era
Israele
Oded, In your flying days-In how much time did you collect 300 flying
hours?” this was the question, and my answer: “Well Son, In my time,
“Say,
in flying fighters you made a lot of sorties but very short ones, and 300
hours would have taken about a year and a half (18 months)”. “Really?” responds the
young man “I did it in 3 weeks!”
That was a real conversation between me, a retired air force veteran and my
grandson, who is an active deputy squadron commander who operates UAV’s from
the same IAF base that I commanded a generation ago.
And this exchange of words symbolizes one of the greatest and most significant
breakthroughs in the history of the Israeli Air Force: The application and deployment
of the Unmanned Aircraft.
The following brief history of UAV’s is quoted from the Internet site http://www.
ufl.edu/uav/uav
The concept of unmanned aerial vehicles was first used in the American Civil
War, when the North and the South tried to launch balloons with explosive devices
that would fall into the other side’s ammunition depot and explode. Since we talk
about a period in which manned flying machines were not in existence – this historical
fact does not serve the issue – but it became one, when in WW2, the Japanese
tried to launch balloons with incendiary and other explosives with the idea that high
altitude winds would carry them to the US, where the dropping bombs would cause,
at least, panic. Apparently, both these ideas were not effective. The US did use a prototype
UAV called Operation Aphrodite in WW2. It was an attempt to use manned
vehicles in an unmanned mode. However, at that time the US did not have the technology
to launch or control the aircraft.
Today’s UAV’s owe much to the design of the cruise missiles that were used in
WW2 by the US and British forces. At the close of WW2, Chance Vought Aircraft,
a company with no missile experience, was contracted to develop new machines.
What won them the contract was that the proposed test missile would have a landing
gear, which would help save cost!
This was the beginning of the UAV.
In the 1960s, the US started to develop “drones”: unmanned vehicles built for
spying and reconnaissance. This was after the losses of U-2s over Russia and Cuba.
The first such drone was the “Firebee”: a jet propelled aircraft’ made by Ryan
* Brig. Gen. (ret), former Chief of IAF Intelligence.