After years of delay and shrinking budgets, NATO will buy its first ever spy drones later this year. But it's a tentative entry, at best, into the ranks of the unmanned systems revolution. The five new robotic spies won't actually join the transatlantic military alliance's air fleet until the end of the decade. NATO's member-states have their own drone fleets, of course: the United States waged a robotic war over Libya when NATO aided the Libyan revolution last year, and American drones are key to the NATO campaign in Afghanistan.
But the alliance itself doesn't jointly own or operate any drones. And it views the recent round of budget cuts that hack at European members' defense cash as an opportunity to change that.
•Oct 9, 2020
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