Drones are hard at work in the sky and around the world. Some rescue swimmers in the ocean, while others deliver food and medical supplies to remote villages. Inside Drones introduces readers to the uses of drones, the hardware and software that make drones possible, and the future of drone technology. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Core Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

From drones the size of a fingertip to drones that can carry soldiers, from single rotorcraft to multi-rotorcraft to propeller craft drones, from remote-controlled drones to drones that fly autonomously, Drones features 43 of these complex and very different unmanned vehicles.

A mistake by Danny leads to one of the Professor';s most startling inventions—ISIT, the Invisibility Simulator with Intromittent Transmission—a dragonfly-like probe which could be piloted with a telepresence helmet and gauntlet gloves. They all get to try it out. Irene uses it for bird watching. Joe investigates a bee hive. And Danny discovers a bully plans to cheat in a spelling bee. But none of them realizes the ISIT has military possibilities—until a general tries to sieze it!

In the West, media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan is framed by military and political concerns, resulting in a simplistic picture of ageless barbarity, terrorist safe havens, and peoples in need of either punishment or salvation. Under the Drones looks beyond this limiting view to investigate real people on the ground, and to analyze the political, social, and economic forces that shape their lives. Understanding the complexity of life along the 1,600-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan can help America and its European allies realign their priorities in the region to address genuine problems, rather than fabricated ones. This volume explodes Western misunderstandings by revealing a land that abounds with human agency, perpetual innovation, and vibrant complexity. Through the work of historians and social scientists, the thirteen essays here explore the real and imagined presence of the Taliban; the animated sociopolitical identities expressed through traditions like Pakistani truck decoration; Sufism’s ambivalent position as an alternative to militancy; the long and contradictory history of Afghan media; and the simultaneous brutality and potential that heroin brings to women in the area. Moving past shifting conceptions of security, the authors expose the West’s prevailing perspective on the region as strategic, targeted, and alarmingly dehumanizing. Under the Drones is an essential antidote to contemporary media coverage and military concerns.

How small-scale drones, satellites, kites, and balloons are used by social movements for the greater good. Drones are famous for doing bad things: weaponized, they implement remote-control war; used for surveillance, they threaten civil liberties and violate privacy. In The Good Drone, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines a different range of uses: the deployment of drones for the greater good. Choi-Fitzpatrick analyzes the way small-scale drones--as well as satellites, kites, and balloons--are used for a great many things, including documenting human rights abuses, estimating demonstration crowd size, supporting anti-poaching advocacy, and advancing climate change research. In fact, he finds, small drones are used disproportionately for good; nonviolent prosocial uses predominate.

From filming movies to helping find people in danger, drones do it all. Emerging readers will discover important parts of drones and how these pieces work together so drones can fly.

This book makes a compelling case that lethal drone deployment as a counterterrorism tool and instrument of statecraft in targeted states engenders far-reaching consequences for US grand strategy. By examining how successive US administrations since 9/11 have deployed drones in pursuant of different typologies of US grand strategic objectives, the book probes the putative political and strategic goals drones supposedly advance, and the impact of its continued proliferation for US for international security. The book provides a powerful base of evidence for policy makers and researchers by pointing to the perils of deployment of drone technology beyond their immediate or short-term objectives. It also explores how non-state actors and authoritarian regimes such as armed groups are harnessing armed drone technologies for their own political and military ends, as well as the underlying implications for US grand strategy and international security at large.