A target drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle, generally remote controlled, usually used in the training of anti-aircraft crews.
One of the earliest drones was the British DH.82 Queen Bee, a variant of the Tiger Moth trainer aircraft operational from 1935. Its name led to the present term "drone".
In their simplest form, target drones often resemble radio-controlled model aircraft. More modern drones may use countermeasures, radar, and similar systems to mimic manned aircraft.
More advanced drones are made from large, older missiles which have had their warheads removed.
In the United Kingdom, obsolete Royal Air Force and Royal Navy jet and propeller-powered aircraft (such as the Fairey Firefly, Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Sea Vixen used at RAE Llanbedr between the 1950s and 1990s) have also been modified into remote-controlled drones, but such modifications are costly. With a much larger budget, the U.S. military has been more likely to convert retired aircraft or older versions of still serving aircraft (e.g., QF-4 Phantom II and QF-16 Fighting Falcon) into remotely piloted targets for US Air Force, US Navy and US Marine Corps use as Full-Scale Aerial Targets.
List of target drones
Purpose built
Aerial Target Airspeed Queen Wasp AQM-127 SLAT Aviolanda AT-21 de Havilland Queen Bee DRDO Abhyas DRDO Fluffy DRDO Lakshya DRDO Ulka Denel Dynamics Skua Meggitt Banshee Aisheng Drone-2 GAF Jindivik GAF Turana HESA Karrar Mirach 100/5 MQM-170 TAI Şimşek TAI Turna Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher QinetiQ Banshee BQM-34 Firebee BQM-74 Chukar BQM-167 Skeeter Kratos BQM-177 Kratos MQM-178 Firejet NAI CK-1 Nord CT41 Karrar (UCAV) NCSIST Spark
Conversions
Curtiss Queen Seamew Douglas BT-2BR and BT-2BG de Havilland Vampire Fairey Queen Firefly U.Mk 8 and U.Mk 9 Meteor U.15, 16, and 21 MiG-15V Mil Mi-4UM Miles Queen Martinet F4U-4K Corsair F6F-5K Hellcat Ilyushin Il-28M PQ-8 Cadet PQ-13 Ercoupe PQ-14 Cadet QAH-1S Cobra QP-4B Privateer QB-17 Flying Fortress QT-33 Shooting Star QB-47 Stratojet QF-80 Shooting Star QF-86 Sabre QF-100 Super Sabre QF-102 and PQM-102 Delta Dagger QF-104 and UF-104J Starfighter QF-106 Delta Dart QF-4 Phantom II QF-16 Fighting Falcon QF-9 Cougar
References
External links RIM-2 Terrier SAM intercepts a F6F target drone