From: Ad 

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/us_unmanned_air.html

"The number of flying robots in the American armed forces' arsenal has
gone up by nearly 1400% in four years, military documents  show.  A
relatively-modest unmanned fleet of 217 machines has grown into a
3211-drone armada.

Most of the change has come in small, handheld unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) -- ones weighing 10 pounds, or less.  In 2002, there were only 90 of
the machines, used to peek around a corner or over a hill for enemy
activity.  By late last year, there were over 2800.  The most popular of
these UAVs in the Army's three-foot-long Raven.  It weighs about
four-and-a-half pounds, and good, hard toss will get it airborne,  where it
can loiter for a little over an hour, at nearly 1000 feet.

At the other end of the unmanned spectrum is the Global Hawk -- 44-feet
long, 8,500 pounds, and able to stay aloft at 60,000 feet for almost a
day-and-a-half at a stretch.   The military now has 13 of these UAVs in
its inventory -- almost double what it had in 2002.

Larger drones like Global Hawk and the missile-equipped Predator logged a
total of 160,000 flight hours in 2006.    That's an eight-fold
increase from 2002, when full-sized UAVs only put about 30,000 hours in the
air."


Adam

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