This may look like a toy, but the bungee-launched RQ-14A Dragon Eye from a company called AeroVironment is a serious military tool. The U.S. Marine Corps has used the Dragon Eye in Afghanistan and Iraq for short-range recon, training its two real-time video cameras (one forward-facing, one side-angle, providing color, black-and-white, or infrared images) on the ground to find things like improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on roadways. It can also be used as a spotter for directing artillery or mortar fire.
In 2006, the Marines had nine Dragon Eyes in use in Iraq and had plans to purchase 324 systems through fiscal year 2008. This photo shows two Marines in a training exercise at Camp Lejeune, N.C., earlier in the decade, using what may have been a prototype of the UAV.
Photo by U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Hacker
Caption by
Jonathan Skillings
