<P> The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred on August 22, 1849, when the Austrians attacked the Italian city of Venice with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives known as Austrian balloons . At least some of the balloons were launched from the Austrian ship Vulcano . Although some of the balloons worked and successfully managed to bomb The Republic, others were caught in a change of wind and blown back over Austrian lines . This occurred on the first launch as the wind was not in Austria's favor on July 12, 1849 The Austrians had been developing this system for 66 years, since the idea was hatched in 1783 . The Presse, of Vienna, Austria, stated: "Venice is to be bombarded by balloons, as the lagunes prevent the approaching of artillery . Five balloons, each measuring 5.7 meters in diameter, are in construction at Treviso . In a favorable wind the balloons will be launched and directed as near to Venice as possible, and on their being brought to vertical positions over the town, they will be fired by electro magnetism by means of a long isolated copper wire with a large galvanic battery placed on a building . The bomb falls perpendicularly, and explodes on reaching the ground ." Balloons do not generally meet today's definition of a UAV . Once winged aircraft had been invented, the effort to fly them unmanned for military purposes was not far behind . </P> <P> The first pilotless aircraft were built during and shortly after World War I. Leading the way, using A.M. Low's radio control techniques, was the Ruston Proctor Aerial Target of 1916 . If developed further it was to have been used against Zeppelins . Soon after, on September 12, the Hewitt - Sperry Automatic Airplane, otherwise known as the "flying bomb" made its first flight, demonstrating the concept of an unmanned aircraft . They were intended for use as "aerial torpedoes" an early version of today's cruise missiles . Control was achieved using gyroscopes developed by Elmer Sperry of the Sperry Gyroscope Company . </P> <P> Later, in November 1917, the Automatic Airplane was flown for representatives of the US Army . This led the army to commission a project to build an "aerial torpedo", resulting in the Kettering Bug which first flew in 1918 . While the Bug's revolutionary technology was successful, it was not in time to fight in the war, which ended before it could be fully developed and deployed . </P> <P> After World War I, three Standard E-1s were converted to drones . The Larynx was an early cruise missile in the form of a small monoplane aircraft that could be launched from a warship and flown under autopilot; it was tested between 1927 and 1929 by the Royal Navy . The early successes of pilotless aircraft led to the development of radio controlled pilotless target aircraft in Britain and the US in the 1930s . In 1931, the British developed the Fairey Queen radio - controlled target from the Fairey III F floatplane, building a small batch of three, and in 1935 followed up this experiment by producing larger numbers of another RC target, the "DH. 82B Queen Bee", derived from the De Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer . The name of "Queen Bee" is said to have led to the use of the term "drone" for pilotless aircraft, particularly when they are radio - controlled . During this period, the U.S. Navy, continuing work that reached back to 1917, was also experimenting with radio - controlled aircraft . In 1936, the head of this research group used the term "drone" to describe radio - controlled aerial targets . </P>

When did the us first start using drones