Is there a difference between a drone and an airplane?

UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) refers to unmanned aircraft, which are unmanned airplanes maneuvered using radio remote control equipment and self-contained program control devices. There is no cockpit on board, but equipment such as autopilots and program control devices are installed. Ground, ship or mother plane remote control station personnel through the radar and other equipment, tracking, positioning, remote control, telemetry and digital transmission. It can take off like an ordinary airplane under radio remote control or be launched into the air by booster rockets, and can also be brought into the air by the mother plane to put into flight. When recovering, it can be used to land automatically in the same way as the landing process of an ordinary airplane, or it can be recovered by parachute or net by remote control. It can be used repeatedly. Widely used in aerial reconnaissance, surveillance, communication, anti-submarine, electronic jamming and so on.

Compared with manned aircraft, it has the advantages of small size, low cost, easy to use, low requirements for the combat environment, the battlefield survivability, etc., favored by the armies of the world. In several local wars, unmanned aircraft have played a remarkable role with their accurate, efficient and nimble reconnaissance, jamming, deception, search, calibration and combat in irregular conditions and other combat capabilities, and have triggered an endless stream of research on military academics, equipment technology and other related issues. It will become an important player on the stage of land, sea, air and sky wars in the 21st century along with the breeding arsenal of ships, unmanned tanks, robotic soldiers, computer virus weapons, space-based weapons, laser weapons, etc., which will have a more far-reaching impact on the future military struggles.

Some experts predicted that "the future air war, will be the stealth characteristics of unmanned aerial vehicles and air defense weapons between the combat." However, due to the unmanned aircraft is still a new thing in the field of military research, less combat experience, the technology is not perfect, so that its combat application is still limited to high-altitude electronic and photographic reconnaissance and other limited technology, and did not fully play out should be a huge battlefield influence and combat power.

Therefore, the world's major military countries are stepping up the development of unmanned aircraft. According to the test of actual combat and the needs of future combat, unmanned aircraft will be in more aspects of faster development.