A (short) history of aerial drones

1783 - first aerial drone: Montgolfier brothers hot air balloon

1849 - first military use: Austrians attack Venice with balloon bombs

1917 – first remote controlled (and powered) aerial drone: the Sopworth Aerial Target developed by Archibald Low

1935 – first known use of the word drone to describe an unmanned vehicle: the US Navy’s remote control aerial targets by Commander Delmer Fahrney

1942 - first pulse jet drone: German V1 Bomb

1951 - first jet engine drone: the Ryan Model 147 Firebee

1956 - first rogue drone: Battle of Palmdale, California when a US Navy Grumman F-6F-5K drone went rogue over Los Angeles and the two USAF F-89D Scorpion jet fighters failed to shoot it down.

1959 first anti-submarine drone: Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH

1964 - first supersonic drone: the Lockheed D-21 reached Mach 3

1967 - first tactical reconnaissance UAV: used by Israel in the 1967 War of Attrition

1973 - first decoy drones - used Israel in the Yom Kippur War

1996 - first autonomous drone: Boeing Lockheed RQ-3 Darkstar?

2001 - first drone strike: General Atomics Predator in Afghanistan ordered by CIA

2004 - first hypersonic, and fastest drone:?NASA X-43A reached Mach 9.6

2019 – fastest electric drone: With a top speed of 163.5mph, the 1.76-pound DRL RacerX set the Guinness World Record for the Fastest Ground Speed by a battery-powered remote-controlled quadcopter.