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The Future of Military Aviation Is Unmanned

from the Seattle Times

PARIS -- On the edge of the airfield at Le Bourget, a Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighter looms with imposing menace. In front of it sits a dinky Boeing ScanEagle -- just 4 feet long with a 10-foot wingspan -- with model-airplane looks, a little rotor turned by a two-stroke engine, and a flimsy plastic airframe.

It's the little unmanned surveillance craft, not the high-performance fighter, that is part of the new wave in military aviation at this year's Paris Air Show.

The ScanEagle -- designed and built by Boeing-owned Insitu, of the Columbia River Gorge town of Bingen, Klickitat County -- has been battle-tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, and played a key role in the April rescue of U.S. containership captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates.