4. Supervisory Control of Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles from an Airborne Battle Management Command and Control Platform: Human Factors Issues

UAVs have been used by military forces since at least the War of Attrition – fought between Egypt and Israel between 1967 and 1970 – when the Israeli Army modified radio-controlled model aircraft to fly over the Suez Canal and take aerial photographs behind Egyptian lines (Bolia, 2004). Although the Israelis ill advisedly abandoned the concept before the Yom Kippur War, it was taken up by several nations in the ensuing decades, and today UAVs are regarded as a routine component of surveillance operations, having played a significant role in both Afghanistan and Iraq.