Drone War Vietnam

In their fledgling efforts to send robots instead of human beings on the most dangerous aerial missions, U.S. operators in South-East Asia in the 1960s and '70s wrote the first chapter in the continuing tale of autonomous warfare.

While the use of drones is now commonplace in modern warfare, it was in its infancy during the Vietnam War, not to mention revolutionary and top secret. Drones would play an important—and today largely unheralded—role in the bloody, two-decade U.S. air war over Vi...