DRONE STRIKE: Unmanned Aerial Warfare in the 21st Century

Saturday, Sept 23, 11:00 am

Presentation and Book Signing by Bill Yenne

Event included with Museum admission.

The idea of armed, combat-configured unmanned aerial vehicle, entered the Twenty-first Century much as the idea of military airplanes had entered the twentieth century – an untried and untested concept suddenly thrust into the spotlight in an unexpected global war. By 1999, few people outside the military recognized the potential of armed, unmanned flying vehicles, or Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) as they were called. Today, UCAVs form a vital arm of U.S. strike forces and are controlled from halfway around the world.

In this book, the author picks up the UCAV story where he left off in his 2010 Specialty book BIRDS OF PREY: Predators, Reapers and America’s Newest UAVs in Combat. Since that time, both technology and battlefield doctrine have evolved considerably and this book is a new window into that world, providing a detailed inside look into the present and future of robotic aerial warfare systems and technologies.

While Yenne’s first book on UCAVs covered the time period of early development through the end of the Twentieth Century, DRONE STRIKE take the reader from that time period through today’s latest technical wonders, covering such amazing unmanned aircraft capabilities as aerial refueling and landing aboard aircraft carriers even more accurately than manned aircraft. This book also contains recently declassified photographs of the latest U.S. Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles.

Author Bio and Location:

A prolific author, Bill Yenne has written more than three dozen books on historical topics, as well as several novels. He has contributed to encyclopedias of both world wars, and has been featured in documentaries on the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Smithsonian Channel and ARD German Television. The “Wall Street Journal” notes that Yenne writes “with a cinematic vividness,” and Gen. Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, called Yenne’s recent biography of Alexander the Great, the “best yet.” Yenne, whose books have been included in Amazon’s “100 Best Books of the Year,” currently lives in San Francisco, CA.