There’s About to Be a Lot More Serial Killers in the World
The Origins of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The military history of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) goes back further than you might think. In 1849, Austrian forces had the water city of Venice surrounded. But their progress was slow and Captain Ludwig Kudriaffsky had an idea to fasten their surrender.

Burning balloons.

Note, these are probably not suitable for your child’s next birthday party. As for a gender reveal party — if you want to follow recent idiotic trends — then maybe.

Fast forward to WWI when British Archibald Low created the world’s first remote-operated airplanes. While the guise was to use them for anti-aircraft target practice, the real purpose was to attach big fat bombs on their front before kamikazing into enemies.

While these planes were never employed to do so, their development went far. He even went on to create the world’s first guided rocket in 1917. While the UK government wasn’t too excited about his spiffy new tech, the Germans seemed to be aware of the potential mass damage they could cause.

So much so that they tried to assassinate him twice, and failed.

In WWII, the V-1 rockets were largely based on Archibald’s designs, at least initially. Fortunately for the Allies, these were only deployed near the end of the war in June of 1944.

Even still, the Germans managed to launch 9,521 of the mechanical beasts into the UK from France’s invaded shores. Of these, 2,340 managed to hit London, killing at least 5,475 people and causing over 16,000 deaths.

Thankfully they weren’t deployed at the beginning, or that number would be drastically higher.
['J.J. Pryor']
['Politics', 'Internet of Things', 'Drones', 'Technology', 'War']