Unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles 2 represent a major development in the area of both military and civilian aeronautics. Their use for observation and combat has become familiar to the public through the media reports on the Kosovo conflict (March-May 1999) and the military operations in Afghanistan (since 2001) and Iraq (March-April 2003). Their combat applications are of particular interest in that they presage a revolution in defence aeronautics: the use of machines to replace people for military combat operations.

What makes it possible to strive for that objective is the development of information and communication technologies and the exponential growth of computing power in particular. The air forces of the future will continue to need the skills and know-how of their flight crews, but these will become part of a broader and highly automated integrated system in which they will work side by side (until they are supplanted) with extremely sophisticated and increasingly powerful and autonomous machines. This will have repercussions not only for the aerospace sector, but also for the land and naval components of defence.