The UAV's of yesteryear

How come everyone talks about UAVs like they are a new invention? Does no-one seem to remeber the drones of the Vietnam era?
Whilst not as advanced in the sensors, range or ability to communicate from inflight they did have many other admirable qualities including survivability (sometimes they said only the serial number was recoverable upon return to base), looks and a range of wild stories about their exploits.
Many came back wrapped in vegetation,phone lines and with amazing gun camera footage.One even acheived ace status.The US Navy took to destroying them by “accident”, saying they mistook them for MiGs, just to **** of the the Air Force.
Here is a list of their greatest accomplishments

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Intercept of the SA-2 arming and proximity fusing signals. That was one of the most significant ELINT feats ever, and was the intent of the drone rebirth under projects “FireFly” and “Lightning Bug”.

The first photos of SA-2 missiles in NVN.

Photographed an SA-2 detonation only 20 feet away and lived to bring back the photos.

Photographed MIG-21D and E aircraft in NVN.

Photographic proof of Soviet helicopters in NVN.

Deployed first operational remote-controlled real-time COMINT collection system (before any other manned or unmanned systems).

Provided continuous low altitude detailed photography of areas denied politically to manned aircraft.

Launched Maverick and Hobo smart bombs from the drone with deadly accuracy.

Proved its ability to detect and out-maneuver both the SA-2 missiles and fighter aircraft.

Provided daily low altitude, detailed bomb damage assessment photography of the Linebacker II raids. It was the only source to do so.

Established a response record by flying 5 missions in 6 days with a single drone. Launched 27 missions in a 7 day period in support of Linebacker II and flew 91 drone sorties in a 30 day period in December 1972.

Flew a high altitude AQM-34R drone for 7.8 hours on an operational mission.

Other stories include that of one drone christened “Super Stupid Waterbug” that would ignore all attempts at initiaing recovery procedures until it was over water, where it would normally crash.Its most famous crash resulted in an Army Huey with the drones groundcrew onboard going to recover it after a water ladning.Unfortunatly a wave swamped the Huey and it sunk leaving seven people sitting on the floating drone.Whne the Navy turned up to rescue them no1 would explain how they fitted seven men in such a small plane.Another great story is that of when the Navy wanted its own drone programme.A drone recovery helicopter and crew was seconded to the Navy.Upon landing on the carrier the crew lept out with a flag and claimed the “island” for the USAF.