40 Amazing Facts About Drones

Here are 40 Amazing Drone facts.

1-5 Drone Facts

1. A 9000 member indigenous tribe in Guyana is fighting illegal logging of their land by filming the activity with a drone they built by watching DIY videos on YouTube and taking the footage to the Guyanese government. – Source

2. Disney is using “anti-drone” drones to prevent people from spying on the set of Star Wars Episode VIII. – Source

3. Before drone cameras existed, photographers used kite cameras to capture aerial views. – Source

4. In 2013, India’s army watched “Chinese spy drones” violating its air space for six months. They later found out they were actually watching Jupiter and Venus. – Source

5. Google donated 5 million dollars to a program that uses drones to track poachers in Africa and Asia. – Source

6-10 Drone Facts

6. Marc Gross uses Google Earth and drones to shoot elephants with Capsaicin paintballs, deterring them from poachers. – Source

7. Boeing is developing a spy drone that has a wingspan of 120 m and can remain airborne for 5 years at a time without having to land. – Source

8. Years before Kelly Johnson designed the SR-71 Blackbird, he designed an even faster drone called the X-7. It flew over 130 flights and exceeded Mach 4.3, and was developed into the AQM-60 drone. Both were made of Steel. – Source

9. A tourist controlled drone crashed into one of Yellowstone’s most delicate hot springs. Drones are now banned from all US National Parks. – Source

10. The Pentagon plans to seed the ocean floor with payloads of sensors, drones, and other devices, which will lay dormant waiting to be called into action to aid U.S. forces. This program is called “Upward Falling Payload.” – Source

11-15 Drone Facts

11. A Dutch police force is training eagles to combat drones. – Source

12. There is a drone big enough to carry a person. The electric-powered drone can be fully charged in two hours, carry up to 220 pounds and fly for 23 minutes. Costs $200,000 to $300,000. – Source

13. Iraqi insurgents intercepted video feeds of American Predator drones using a $26 piece of Russian software named SkyGrabber. – Source

14. Students from TU Delft developed an Ambulance Drone equipped with medical supplies, camera, and a speaker. The operator will then instruct the user through the speaker to use the equipment and save the person’s life, this supposedly would increase survival rates from 8% to 80%. – Source

15. The FAA estimates within 15 years there will be over 20,000 drones in the U.S. watching us from the skies. – Source

16-20 Drone Facts

16. A company was planning on using autonomous drones to deliver goods before Amazon. They are currently using their technology to quickly deliver medical supplies to areas without roads in Africa. – Source

17. A Dutch activist group used a drone to deliver “pregnancy termination” drugs to women in Poland because abortion is illegal in the country. – Source

18. 30% of all US military aircrafts are drones, a six-fold increase since 2005. – Source

19. Marilyn Monroe built remote controlled drones during WWII. – Source

20. The 1980s Iran-Iraq war was the only war in history that featured ballistic missile exchanges and battles between helicopters. It also saw the first ever use of aerial drones in combat. – Source

21-25 Drone Facts

21. The Pirate Bay planned to fly low orbit server drones to escape legal jurisdiction. – Source

22. SpaceX has two autonomous drone ships that serve as landing platforms for the Falcon 9 rocket and Elon Musk personally named them “just read the instructions” and “of course I still love you” as a nod to one of his favorite sci-fi authors. – Source

23. Retired fighter aircraft are converted to unmanned flying drones for target practice. – Source

24. DARPA created a hummingbird drone that looks and flies like the real thing and weighs less than an AA battery and carries a camera. – Source

25. There’s a man who turned his dead cat into a drone; then did the same to an ostrich, a shark, a rat, and more. – Source