Customer Reviews

Attack of the Drones

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When the United States Air Force was set up independently from the United States Army (as the Army Air Corps which fought World War II) an agreement was made that the Army would no longer have any armed fixed wing aircraft. So even though the Army has had a number of aircraft that would have been suitable for arming they were prohibited.

This has caused considerable friction, as the Air Force has concentrated its efforts on the strategic aspects with concentrations on long range nuclear armed forces at the expense of the tactical ground support that the Army needs. The Army countered with arming its helicopters because they hadn't been considered in the original agreement.

The Air Force likewise has traditionally not supported drone aircraft. After all, the way for promotions in the Air Force is to fly planes in combat situations.

The realities of the situation in Afghanistan has forced some changes in these areas. For the first time there was a wide use of drone observation craft. On occassion these drones found targets that U.S. forces wanted to attack, but by the time a piloted aircraft could arrive to make the attack, the target was gone. Over opposition permission was given to hang some smart weapons on the drones. They were extremely successful.

This book does an excellent job of describing the development of drones since the 1940's. He reports on these early attempts at creating armed drones. He further gives a good introduction on the new craft that are under development.

As Bill Yenne emphasizes at the introduction section, the book is solely about UAV projects of USA. The book covers up to date information by the time of its creation (2004).

Attack of the Drones contains excdellent pictures of several UAVs of USA. It may be purchased just because of the picture content. But some of the pictures are not synchronous with the text, i.e. picture of a UAV may be seen a few pages before it is mentioned in the text.

The book claims to mention every project of USA (I write "claims" because I am not in a position to verify the coverage). I think more technical information could be provided, perhaps with some tables summarizing properties of the vehicles.

Although not perfect, it is certainly an enjoyable book to read, and it can be used as a reference about history of USA UAV projects.

this book was very very good worth reading again it takes you into the attack drones its informative and covers the current aircreaft dorones

I read this regular book, here in Brazil. At first, I must list some of good points of this book:
1-This book has paper of very good quality.
2-This book has many illustrations. In fact, more than the half of it are illustrations. Almost all of the photos are colored photos.
3-This book is very easy to understand. Any teenager can uderstand it.
4-This book is concise. In fact, I read all of it in just two days, without any effort.
5-About the extermination of Islamic gangsters by UCAV, this book is very good.
6-This book has many very good parts. One example is on page 11. We can read there: "Removing the pilot eliminates the need for pilot systems and interfaces, and allows for a smaller, simpler aircraft. No sorties are required for pilot training, and UCAVs can be placed in flight-ready storage for years, eliminating consumables, maintenance, and personel requirements."
I also found some problems in this book:
1-This book hasn't deepness about anything. No kind of UAV has enough data about it.
2-This book covers only American UAV programs. To example, there's nothing about Russian, Chinese or Iranian UAV programs.
3-There's lack of text. Too may illustration for little text.
4-Any kind of UAV or UCAV has its technical table. In some of UAV's text, there's some technical detalis, but none is complete. I had to go to wikipedia, to learn more about all UAV and UCAV focused in this regular book.
Even so, this book has value and I must give three stars for it.

This book was an enjoyable read about the history and development of American Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from the 1940's to present day. The book had technical details and color pictures of every American UAV - it reminded me of an encyclopedia or other reference book. While enjoyable, the book had a few quirks that I didn't like. Except for the mention of a few Israeli UAVs the book said nothing about non-American UAVs (there are quite a few). Second, the beautiful pictures often did not match up with the text. The text was talking about one UAV, but the image next to it was another. The book was kind of "dry." With a title of "Attack of the Drones" I was looking for some action and war shots - there was very little of either in this book. Instead, the book droned on for chapters mentioning individual UAVs, dates of service, technical dimensions, which UAV it replaced, and which UAV replaced it. This got boring after a while. The upside is that one can retrieve all the historical data and a nice picture of any American UAV - past or present. Overall I did like this book and recommend it to any fan of UAVs.