Showing posts with label 19th. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 19th. Show all posts

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Terrorism 2024

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24-8-22 Hamas’ Exploitation of Schools - IDF > .24-4-8 Ruscia, America, & West: Security Concerns = Islamic Radicalism - TBN > .
24-4-8 [Hamiganda]: How Terrorists in Gaza Manipulate the World - IDF > .
24-2-25 Iran's Bold Claim on Antarctica & Egypt's Gaza Barrier | TBN > .  23-2-27 Alternate Techniques to Fight Pirates in Mid-Ocean - Fluctus > .
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23-10-10 Hamas: Gazan terrorist militants behind atrocities in Israel | ABC > .
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24-4-25 Red Sea | US Strategy Against the Houthis - Shipping > .
Resisting Terrorists - αλλο >> .

Most modern terrorist attacks occur in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria. 

This is your brain on terrorism - Vox > .


Versus Terrorism ..

Most terrorism experts would probably agree that terrorism is an ideologically non-specific tactic, used to achieve political change, and in play since prehistoric times. It is non-specific (neutral), although not necessarily acceptable, in that it has been used by militants embracing most political ideologies – except for pacifism – and by authoritarian as well as liberal states such as Great Britain, France and the USA.

Although no universally accepted definition exists, there is agreement about its main elements. Terrorism is the threat or use of violence, it is politically or ideologically motivated and the violence is used to communicate a message of political change and intimidation to individuals or groups beyond its immediate victims. In short, terrorism is best understood as violence used as a form of political communication manipulation.
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Although modern terrorism followed the emergence of modern mass politics and mass media, terrorist violence has probably been used as a political tactic since time immemorial. The Jewish Zealots and the Islamic Assassins were ancient terrorists. They used violence to communicate messages of freedom from opposition and resistance to submission.
...
Terrorism’s modern meaning and use to label an intentional political tactic came with the French Revolution. During The Terror, Robespierre described it as a virtuous form of violence, to be used by the new revolutionary democratic state against its domestic enemies.

Following this, the labels of terrorism and terrorists were used by 19th century newspapers to describe intimidation and violence by states against their subjects, such as “the terrorism practiced by the police” in Russia and the “oppressive system of military terrorism” in Poland.

Modern terrorism, which implies the systematic use of violence against the state, rather than by it, emerged in Europe in the 1870s. The person generally recognised as the first terrorist was the 26-year-old social revolutionary Vera Zasulich, who shot the Governor of St Petersburg in 1878 to protest the Russian state’s repression of domestic political protest.
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The new violent political practice was soon institutionalised with the emergence of organised terrorist groups. First came Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will), a group of Russian social revolutionaries and self-proclaimed terrorists, who in 1881 succeeded in assassinating Tsar Alexander II with a dynamite bomb.
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Britain's first bomb disposal expert: Colonel Vivian Majendie and the original ‘war on terror’.

On the last day of February 1884, the then home secretary Sir William Harcourt rose in the UK parliament to answer a question about a series of bomb attacks on two of London’s major railway stations. He read out details of an initial investigation of two bombs, one which had detonated at Victoria Station and another which had been discovered, unexploded, at Charing Cross.

The bombs, which had been deposited in the stations’ left luggage offices, were of a similar design, and resembled the remains of bombs that had detonated, Harcourt said, in Glasgow, Liverpool and elsewhere in London. The unexploded device, discovered by a vigilant ticket clerk at Charing Cross, and the remains of the bomb that had detonated at Victoria were rushed to the Woolwich Arsenal.
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It is almost impossible to pinpoint the very first act of terrorism carried out within British territory. The most famous incident in early modern history is probably the gunpowder plot of 1605 when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Lords. And although he is the best remembered (on November 5), Fawkes did not act alone. He was part of a larger network of 13 conspirators who sought to destroy parliament and trigger a popular uprising.

In the second half of the 19th century, European anarchism introduced the idea of “propaganda by deed” as a tactic of anti-government resistance. This consisted of the assassination of government officials and bomb attacks in public places such as cafes and theatres.

Although anarchist attacks were actually more common in continental Europe, England was an important hub for anarchist thought. The less restrictive laws of the United Kingdom made it a haven for radicals fleeing political repression in their own countries.

In the same period, the heavy death toll of the Great Famine in Ireland from 1846 to 1852 prompted calls for Irish home rule and resulted in the formation of networks of radical revolutionaries, the Fenians.

Although the largest Fenian campaigns were waged in Canada and in Ireland itself, attacks within England included the bombing of Clerkenwell Prison in London in 1867, in which 12 people were killed and more than 100 injured. The result was a severe backlash by British authorities and the public, which undermined the political reforms that would have made future attacks less likely.
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Recent acts of spectacular violence, such as the mail bombs sent by a tRUMP-supporter to American anti-tRUMP critics, or the mass killings by Canadian “incel” misogynist Alek Minassian, demonstrate a widespread reluctance among media outlets, politicians and authorities to label some acts of ideologically motivated violence as “terrorism”. Such hesitations might give the faulty impression that “terrorism” is reserved purely for anti-Western or Islamist political violence. That is a wrong and dangerous conception.

The first examples of people being labelled “terrorists” were almost exclusively reserved for acts of non-Western terrorism. When terrorist tactics were used against governments and civilians in Western Europe or the USA – by Fenians and anarchists or anti-colonial separatists in British India, for example – "terrorism" was generally not mentioned. Instead, such violence was more often described in terms of "outrage" or "assassination".

This is despite the fact that these groups used the same terrorist tactics and technologies as the Russian terrorists. The new terminology was apparently reserved for the Russian revolutionary cause. It was only after WW1 that these other forms of terrorism in and against Western governments started to more generally be labelled as "terrorism".



Monday, January 31, 2022

What Cost War?

† The Fallen of World War II - NeHa > .
† Number of Dead In WW2 | Great War In Numbers | Timeline > .
† Numbers of deaths per nation in WW2 | Stats > .WW1: Loss of Life in WWI Visualized - Real > .† Simulation of a Nuclear Blast in a Major City - NeHa > .23-11-17 America's 3 New Nukes (weapons they counter) - Sandboxx > .
23-9-11 All The Times We Nearly Blew Up The World - Veritasium > .23-8-15 What If? P00ti's Nuke Targets - Show > .
22-12-4 [Dare Pooti] Use Nuclear Weapons? - Jake Broe > .22-10-21 Response if Russia uses a nuclear weapon in Ukraine? - J K-L > .22-11-8 Predicted Impact of High-Altitude Nuclear EMP on Power Grid - Practical > .

Sunday, May 23, 2021

French Diplomacy

21-10-9 Les [Puériles] Français - Peter Zeihan > .
23-5-14 French Defence Strategy & Rearmament - strategic autonomy - Perun > .
23-1-3 Macron's Neo-Gaullism - plans for hegemony - Caspian Report > .
22-12-30 Most disappointing politicians - VisPol > .
22-7-26 France's Geostrategic Choices in Central Europe - gtbt > .
22-5-9 Macron's Plan to Revive France - VisPol > .

Foreign Relations of France: In the 19th century France built a new French colonial empire second only to the British Empire. It was humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, which marked the rise of Germany to dominance in Europe. France allied with Great Britain and Russia and was on the winning side of the First World War. If it was initially easily defeated early in the Second World War, Free France, through its Free French Forces and the Resistance, continued to fight against the Axis powers as an Allied nation and was ultimately considered one of the victors of the war, as the allocation of an French occupations zone in Germany and West Berlin testifies, as well as the status of permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It fought losing colonial wars in Indochina (ending in 1954) and Algeria (ending in 1962). The Fourth Republic collapsed and the Fifth Republic began in 1958 to the present. Under Charles De Gaulle it tried to block American and British influence on the European community. Since 1945, France has been a founding member of the United Nations, of NATO, and of the European Coal and Steel Community (the European Union's predecessor). As a charter member of the United Nations, France holds one of the permanent seats in the Security Council and is a member of most of its specialized and related agencies.

France is also a founding member of the Union for the Mediterranean and the La Francophonie and plays a key role, both in regional and in international affairs.

Charles de Gaulle: De Gaulle's foreign policy was centered around an attempt to limit the power and influence of both superpowers, and at the same time increase France's international prestige. De Gaulle hoped to move France from being a follower of the United States to becoming the leading nation of a large group of non-aligned countries. The nations de Gaulle looked at as potential participants in this group were those in France's traditional spheres of influence: Africa and the Middle East. The former French colonies in eastern and northern Africa were quite agreeable to these close relations with France. These nations had close economic and cultural ties to France, and they also had few other suitors amongst the major powers. This new orientation of French foreign policy also appealed strongly to the leaders of the Arab nations. None of them wanted to be dominated by either of the superpowers, and they supported France's policy of trying to balance the US and the USSR and to prevent either from becoming dominant in the region. The Middle Eastern leaders wanted to be free to pursue their own goals and objectives, and did not want to be chained to either alliance bloc. De Gaulle hoped to use this common foundation to build strong relations between the nations. He also hoped that good relations would improve France's trade with the region. De Gaulle also imagined that these allies would look up to the more powerful French nation, and would look to it in leadership in matters of foreign policy.

The end of the Algerian conflict in 1962 accomplished much in this regard. France could not portray itself as a leader of the oppressed nations of the world if it still was enforcing its colonial rule upon another nation. The battle against the Muslim separatists that France waged in favour of the minority of white settlers was an extremely unpopular one throughout the Muslim world. With the conflict raging it would have been close to impossible for France to have had positive relations with the nations of the Middle East. The Middle Eastern support for the FLN guerillas was another strain on relations that the end of the conflict removed. Most of the financial and material support for the FLN had come from the nations of the Middle East and North Africa. This was especially true of Nasser's Egypt, which had long supported the separatists. Egypt is also the most direct example of improved relations after the end of hostilities. The end of the war brought an immediate thaw to Franco-Egyptian relations, Egypt ended the trial of four French officers accused of espionage, and France ended its trade embargo against Egypt.

In 1967 de Gaulle completely overturned France's Israel policy. De Gaulle and his ministers reacted very harshly to Israel's actions in the Six-Day War. The French government and de Gaulle condemned Israel's treatment of refugees, warned that it was a mistake to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and also refused to recognize the Israeli control of Jerusalem. The French government continued to criticize Israel after the war and de Gaulle spoke out against other Israeli actions, such as the operations against the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon. France began to use its veto power to oppose Israel in the UN, and France sided with the Arab states on almost all issues brought to the international body. Most importantly of all, however, de Gaulle's government imposed an arms embargo on the Israeli state. The embargo was in fact applied to all the combatants, but very soon France began selling weaponry to the Arab states again. As early as 1970 France sold Libya a hundred Dassault Mirage fighter jets. However, after 1967 France continued to support Israel's right to exist, as well as Israel's many preferential agreements with France and the European Economic Community.

Emmanuel Macron, 2017+

Sophie Meunier in 2017 ponders whether France is still relevant in world affairs:
France does not have as much relative global clout as it used to. Decolonization ... diminished France’s territorial holdings and therefore its influence. Other countries acquired nuclear weapons and built up their armies. The message of “universal” values carried by French foreign policy has encountered much resistance, as other countries have developed following a different political trajectory than the one preached by France. By the 1990s, the country had become, in the words of Stanley Hoffmann, an “ordinary power, neither a basket case nor a challenger.” Public opinion, especially in the United States, no longer sees France as an essential power. The last time that its foreign policy put France back in the world spotlight was at the outset of the Iraq intervention...[with] France’s refusal to join the US-led coalition....In reality, however, France is still a highly relevant power in world affairs....France is a country of major military importance nowadays...., France also showed it mattered in world environmental affairs with....the Paris Agreement, a global accord to reduce carbon emissions. The election of DJT in 2016 may reinforce demands for France to step in and lead global environmental governance if the US disengages, as the new president has promised, from a variety of policies.
Polls indicate that American president Barack Obama was highly popular in France, but DJT has been extremely unpopular [true of most "sane" nations]. Natalie Nougayrède argues:
Yet behind this widespread revulsion lies a diplomatic opportunity. With the United States looking inward and DJT having torn up the traditional foreign policy rule book...Macron, is seeking to reinvigorate the European project as a way of restoring French leadership. French power is no substitute for American power, of course. But with the United States’ image, global role, and reliability newly uncertain, Europeans feel a void that someone must fill—and France thinks it should at least try to do just that.
In July 2019, the UN ambassadors from 22 nations, including France, signed a joint letter to the UNHRC condemning China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs as well as its mistreatment of other minority groups, urging the Chinese government to close the Xinjiang re-education camps.

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Glocalization, Neomedievalism

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Neo-Medievalism and the New World Order - Geopoliticus > .
23-9-1 Rise of economic nationalism | Business Beyond - DW > .
Sociopolitical Conflict

Globalization ⇔ Decoupling ..

The theory of Neomedievalism proposes that the international system is rapidly transforming into a world order similar to that which existed in Medieval Europe, with overlapping structures of authority and multiple loyalties of international actors, which is gradually eroding the power and agency of nation states.

There are two imagined futures in a Neomedieval worldview: one, of a coming anarchy, an era of systemic breakdown and perpetual wars; the second of a New Universalism in which new transnational regimes, which are secular version of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, will be constructed to bring order to the world.
 
Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism, new medievalism) is a term with a long history that has acquired specific technical senses in two branches of scholarship. In political theory about modern international relations, where the term is originally associated with Hedley Bull, it sees the political order of a globalized world as analogous to high-medieval Europe, where neither states nor the Church, nor other territorial powers, exercised full sovereignty, but instead participated in complex, overlapping and incomplete sovereignties

The idea of neomedievalism in political theory was first discussed in 1977 by theorist Hedley Bull in The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics to describe the erosion of state sovereignty in the contemporary globalized world:
It is also conceivable that sovereign states might disappear and be replaced not by a world government but by a modern and secular equivalent of the kind of universal political organisation that existed in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages. In that system no ruler or state was sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given territory and a given segment of the Christian population; each had to share authority with vassals beneath, and with the Pope and (in Germany and Italy) the Holy Roman Emperor above. The universal political order of Western Christendom represents an alternative to the system of states which does not yet embody universal government.
Thus Bull suggested society might move towards "a new mediaevalism" or a "neo-mediaeval form of universal political order", in which individual notions of rights and a growing sense of a "world common good" were undermining national sovereignty. He proposed that such a system might help "avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states by a structure of overlapping structures and cross-cutting loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society while at the same time avoiding the concentration inherent in a world government", though "if it were anything like the precedent of Western Christendom, it would contain more ubiquitous and continuous violence and insecurity than does the modern states system".

In this reading, globalization has resulted in an international system which resembles the medieval one, where political authority was exercised by a range of non-territorial and overlapping agents, such as religious bodies, principalities, empires and city-states, instead of by a single political authority in the form of a state which has complete sovereignty over its territory. Comparable processes characterising Bull's "new medievalism" include the increasing powers held by regional organisations such as the European Union, as well as the spread of sub-national and devolved governments, such as those of Scotland and Catalonia. These challenge the exclusive authority of the state. Private military companies, multinational corporations and the resurgence of worldwide religious movements (e.g. political Islam) similarly indicate a reduction in the role of the state and a decentralisation of power and authority.

Westphalian sovereignty, or state sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The principle underlies the modern international system of sovereign states and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which states that "nothing ... shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." According to the idea, every state, no matter how large or small, has an equal right to sovereignty. Political scientists have traced the concept to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War. The principle of non-interference was further developed in the 18th century. The Westphalian system reached its peak in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it has faced recent challenges from advocates of humanitarian intervention.

Stephen J. Kobrin in 1998 added the forces of the digital world economy to the picture of neomedievalism. In an article entitled "Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy" in the Journal of International Affairs, he argued that the sovereign state as we know it – defined within certain territorial borders – is about to change profoundly, if not to wither away, due in part to the digital world economy created by the Internet, suggesting that cyberspace is a trans-territorial domain operating outside of the jurisdiction of national law.

Anthony Clark Arend also argued in his 1999 book Legal Rules and International Society that the international system is moving toward a "neo-medieval" system. He claimed that the trends that Bull noted in 1977 had become even more pronounced by the end of the twentieth century. Arend argues that the emergence of a "neo-medieval" system would have profound implications for the creation and operation of international law.

Although Bull originally envisioned neomedievalism as a positive trend, it has its critics. Bruce Holsinger in Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror argues that neoconservatives "have exploited neomedievalism's conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends." Similarly, Philip G. Cerny's "Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma" (1998) also sees neomedievalism as a negative development and claims that the forces of globalization increasingly undermine nation-states and interstate forms of governance "by cross-cutting linkages among different economic sectors and social bonds," calling globalization a "durable disorder" which eventually leads to the emergence of the new security dilemmas that had analogies in the Middle Ages. Cerny identifies six characteristics of a neomedieval world that contribute to this disorder: multiple competing institutions; lack of exogenous territorializing pressures both on sub-national and international levels; uneven consolidation of new spaces, cleavages, conflicts and inequalities; fragmented loyalties and identities; extensive entrenchment of property rights; and spread of the "grey zones" outside the law as well as black economy.

Glocalization (a portmanteau of globalization and localization) is the "simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems." The notion of glocalization "represents a challenge to simplistic conceptions of globalization processes as linear expansions of territorial scales. Glocalization indicates that the growing importance of continental and global levels is occurring together with the increasing salience of local and regional levels."

Glocal, an adjective, by definition, is "reflecting or characterized by both local and global considerations." The term “glocal management” in a sense of “think globally, act locally” is used in the business strategies of companies, in particular, by Japanese companies that are expanding overseas.

The concept comes from the Japanese word dochakuka, which means global localization. It had referred to the adaptation of farming techniques to local conditions. It became a buzzword when Japanese business adopted it in the 1980s. The word stems from Manfred Lange, head of the German National Global Change Secretariat, who used "glocal" in reference to Heiner Benking's exhibit Blackbox Nature: Rubik's Cube of Ecology at an international science and policy conference.

"Glocalization" first appeared in a late 1980s publication of the Harvard Business Review. At a 1997 conference on "Globalization and Indigenous Culture", sociologist Roland Robertson stated that glocalization "means the simultaneity – the co-presence – of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies."

"Glocalization" entered use in the English-speaking world via Robertson in the 1990s, Canadian sociologists Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman in the late 1990s and Zygmunt BaumanErik Swyngedouw was another early adopter.

In literary theory regarding the use and abuse of texts and tropes from the Middle Ages in postmodernity, the term "neomedieval" was popularized by the Italian medievalist Umberto Eco in his 1986 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages".

Since the 1990s, "glocalization" has been productively theorized by several sociologists and other social scientists, and may be understood as a process that combines the concerns of localism with the forces of globalization, or a local adaptation and interpretation of global forces. As a theoretical framework, it is compatible with many of the concerns of postcolonial theory, and its impact is particularly recognizable in the digitization of music and other forms of cultural heritage. The concept has since been used in the fields of geography, sociology, and anthropology. It is also a prominent concept in business studies, particularly in the area of marketing goods and services to a heterogenous set of consumers.

Although the Westphalian system developed in early modern Europe, its staunchest defenders [users] can now be found in the non-Western world. The presidents of China and Russia issued a joint statement in 2001 vowing to "counter attempts to undermine the fundamental norms of the international law with the help of concepts such as 'humanitarian intervention' and 'limited sovereignty'". China and Russia have used their United Nations Security Council veto power to block what they see as [claim is] American violations of state sovereignty in Syria. Russia was left out of the original Westphalian system in 1648, but post-Soviet Russia has seen Westphalian sovereignty as a means to balance [oppose] American power by encouraging a multipolar world order [A pseudo-principle diametrically opposed to the military Sovietization of nations occupied and forcefully subsumed into the USSR.].

Some in the West also speak favorably of the Westphalian state. American political scientist Stephen Walt urged U.S. UNpresident Wanna-Be-Autocrat to return to Westphalian principles, calling it a "sensible course" for American foreign policy. American political commentator Pat Buchanan has also spoken in favor of the traditional nation-state.

Addendum to the video presentation -- emergence of Cyberspace as a realm where we might already be seeing Neomedieval structures of power developing and influencing the trajectory of global politics.

New World Order - End of Liberal International System? - https://youtu.be/90rjypFSLVg .

Spheres of Influence in the Cold War - https://youtu.be/tGKnwFNWmQ8 .

Podcast: Theatres of the New Cold War - https://youtu.be/cve8XyTxjiI .

Podcast: Outer Space and Fourth Dimension of Geopolitics - https://youtu.be/Ri3ag1wRIZA .

Americanization .
Cultural homogenization .

Monday, February 8, 2021

UAVs

2021- 5 Demand For Armed-Drones (UAVs) Is Surging - CNBC > .
> DEWs - Directed Energy Weapons >
23-9-24 Combat Drones & Future Air Warfare - Humans + Wingman - Perun > .
23-8-6 Turkish Strategy & R-U War - Arms, Drones, Economics - Perun > . skip > .
23-7-26 Ukraine tech sector goes to war | FT Doc > .
23-6-30 Directed Energy Weapons - Lasers vs Drones, Missiles - T&P > .
23-6-13 NATO IAMD | NATO Integrated Air and Missile Defence > .
23-6-13 Drones and the Dystopian Future of War - Journeyman > .
23-6-11 Rocket Roulette: Ruscia uses drones & missiles against Ukraine - U24 > .
23-6-7 Ukrainian Defense Tech Boom - War Startups - U24 > .
23-2-12 Small Drones & Loitering Munitions - Cheap Precision - Perun > .
22-11-16 Taiwan Pushes Drone Warfare to Counter Xina - Uncensored > .
22-11-11 Economics of Kamikaze Drones - nwyt > . skip > .
22-10-27 Pooti's [Desperate] Iranian Drones | Peter Zeihan, Ben Hodges > .
22-3-29 Military Drones; Decisive Factor in Russia-Ukraine war | DW > .
2013 Rise of the Drones (FULL doc) | NOVA | PBS > .
> Future Combat >>  >> Future >>>


UAVs include both autonomous (capable of operating without human input) drones and remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs). A UAV is capable of controlled, sustained level flight and is powered by a jet, reciprocating, or electric engine. In the twenty first century technology reached a point of sophistication that the UAV is now being given a greatly expanded role in many areas of aviation.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or uncrewed aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which include additionally a ground-based controller and a system of communications with the UAV. The flight of UAVs may operate under remote control by a human operator ― remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA) ― or with various degrees of autonomy, such as autopilot assistance, up to fully autonomous aircraft that does not allow human intervention.

Compared to crewed aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous" for humans. While drones originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly finding many more applications including aerial photography, product deliveries, agriculture, policing and surveillance, infrastructure inspections, science, smuggling, and drone racing.

A UAV differs from a cruise missile in that a UAV is intended to be recovered after its mission, while a cruise missile impacts its target. A military UAV may carry and fire munitions on board, while a cruise missile is a munition.

The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred in July 1849, serving as a balloon carrier (the precursor to the aircraft carrier) is the first offensive use of air power in naval aviation. The first pilotless aircraft were built during WW1. From a suggestion that A. M. Low’s expertise in early television and radio technology be used to develop a remotely controlled pilotless aircraft to attack the Zeppelins a remarkable succession of British drone weapons in 1917 and 1918 evolved. After WW1, three Standard E-1s were converted to drones. The Larynx was an early cruise missile in the form of a small monoplane aircraft that could be launched from a warship and flown under autopilot; it was tested 1927-9 by the Royal Navy. The early successes of pilotless aircraft led to the development of radio controlled pilotless target aircraft in Britain and the US in the 1930s. In 1931, the British developed the Fairey Queen radio-controlled target from the Fairey IIIF floatplane, building a small batch of three, and in 1935 followed up this experiment by producing larger numbers of another RC target, the "DH.82B Queen Bee", derived from the de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer.

The attitude towards UAVs, which were often seen as unreliable and expensive toys, changed dramatically with the Israeli Air Force’s victory over the Syrian Air Force in 1982. Israel’s coordinated use of UAVs alongside manned aircraft allowed the state to quickly destroy dozens of Syrian aircraft with minimal losses. Israeli drones were used as electronic decoys, electronic jammers as well as for real time video reconnaissance.

The US military is entering a new era in which UAVs will be critical to SIGINT payloads, or Electronic countermeasures systems should be in widespread use following 2010, with the UAVs controlled and relaying data back over high-bandwidth data links in real time, linked to ground, air, sea, and space platforms. The trend had been emerging before the American war in Afghanistan began in 2001, but was greatly accelerated by the use of UAVs in that conflict. The Predator RQ-1L UAV (General Atomics) was the first deployed UAV to the Balkans in 1995 Iraq in 1996 and was proved very effective in Operation Iraqi Freedom as well as Afghanistan.

Endurance UAVs for low-altitude and high-altitude operation, the latter sometimes referred to as "high-altitude long-endurance (HALE)" UAVs, are now in full service. On August 21, 1998, an AAI Aerosonde named Laima becomes the first UAV to cross the Atlantic Ocean, completing the flight in 26 hours. The idea of designing a UAV that could remain in the air for a long time has been around for decades, but only became an operational reality in the 21st century

The Government of Canada is considering the purchase of UAV's for arctic surveillance. The Canadian government wants to buy at least three high-altitude, unmanned aerial vehicles in what could be an attempt to salvage its Arctic sovereignty ambitions. The Canadian government wants to modify the existing Global Hawk drone, which can operate at 20,000 metres, to meet the rigours of flying in Canada's Far North.

Armed drones are growing in military importance as conflicts around the world have proven the utility of these effective tools of war. Demand is surging beyond the U.S. for the multibillion dollar armed-drone market. Companies in China, Turkey, and Russia, among others, have developed advanced remotely piloted aircraft that can use guided weapons on and off the battlefield. Over 100 states worldwide using military drones and that number is growing significantly. Over 20 states are using armed drones in conflicts or outside of armed conflicts.

The widespread use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States to target and kill insurgents jump started a new chapter in the history of conflict. These high flying and remotely piloted aircraft could engage targets with impunity while the operators were safely working in a ground control station. Keeping the crews out of danger also made the drones politically cheap to use over dangerous skies. Now more and more countries are gaining this military capability for their own purposes.

Although larger and more complex drones, like the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper are not cheap to develop or operate, smaller drones are becoming more ubiquitous in conflict zones. Limiting the proliferation of these smaller drones, and the ability to weaponize them, is a regulatory nightmare for government agencies around the world.

Drones are model airplanes with great sensors. All are dual use and have been used in the civilian realm. Drones have risen enormously in the civilian realm over the last five to 10 years. Controlling their export is very difficult.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...