More than a century ago, inventor Nikola Tesla saw the potential of remote-controlled weapons in war. In the 1890s, he used radio waves to steer a small boat before a crowd at Madison Square Garden, but when he tried to sell the idea of a remote-fired torpedo to the United States government, the official who listened to the inventor’s proposal “burst out laughing.” Tesla died penniless, a man ahead of his time. By World War I, the idea no longer seemed funny. Germany used Tesla’s invention to develop remote-controlled motorboats packed with exposives to protect its coast. In World War II, the country deployed the first cruise missile, the V-1, and a land torpedo known as Goliath, while the United States built its own fleet of unmanned planes for aviation training. In 1995, unmanned systems were linked to
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