Drone War Vietnam

By David Axe
  • Subject: Aviation & Space | Summer 2024 Sale
  • Format:
    Hardcover
  • Pages:
    232
    pages
  • Illustrations:
    106 color and b/w illustrations
  • Published:
    September 15, 2021
  • ISBN-10:
    1526770261
  • ISBN-13:
    9781526770264
  • Product Dimensions:
    9.5 × 6.75 × 1 in
  • Product Weight:
    24 oz
Hardcover $44.95
Member Price $26.97 Save 40%
Book: Cover Type
Overview Author Reviews

Overview

In their fledgling efforts to send robots instead of human beings on the most dangerous aerial missions, U.S. operators in South-East Asia in the 1960s and '70s wrote the first chapter in the continuing tale of autonomous warfare.

While the use of drones is now commonplace in modern warfare, it was in its infancy during the Vietnam War, not to mention revolutionary and top secret. Drones would play an important—and today largely unheralded—role in the bloody, two-decade U.S. air war over Vietnam and surrounding countries. Drone aircraft spotted targets for manned U.S. bombers, jammed North Vietnamese radars and scattered propaganda leaflets, among other missions. 

Drone War Vietnam is based on military records, official histories and published first-hand accounts from early drone operators, as well as on a close survey of existing scholarship on the topic. 

About the Author

David Axe

David Axe is a writer, editor, and filmmaker living in Columbia, South Carolina. A former war correspondent, he has written for Vice, The Daily Beast, The Village Voice, and many other publications. He is the writer of the graphic novel War is Boring and the 2017 movie The Theta Girl.

More Stories From This Author View Biography

Editorial Reviews

“The primary attraction for Axe’s narrative is that it is well-illustrated with images that do not appear in other works on the topic. Many of these photos originated with the Ryan archives, now in possession of the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives. These include multiple perspectives of drone operators in DC-130 motherships and a Marine Corps CH-37 helicopter used in drone recovery operations that crashed in just such an attempt. As a visual record of this technological niche, Axe’s monograph is the best available in print.” —From Balloons to Drones