It's amazing how good remote control is these days? I have read about this before with local controllers doing the actual take-offs and landings before control is handed back to "pilots" in Nevada.
It makes you wonder how much latency might be an issue? ;-)
U.S. deploying first robotic aerial drone squadron
Posted Jul 18th 2007 1:02PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Robots
It looks like the unmanned aerial
drones now on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be getting a lot more company, with the U.S. reportedly set to deploy its first full-on "robotic" drone squadron. According to the AP, the US will be deploying an unspecified number of MQ-9 Reaper "hunter-killer" drones, which are about the size of a jet fighter and are able to fly at speeds of 300 mph and reach altitudes of 50,000 feet -- each of which can be controlled from a base in Nevada. While further details are obviously scarce, the drones will apparently be deployed to Afghanistan first, with the fleet expected to expand to Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring.
[Via
Slashdot]