The US Navy has successfully catapulted a prototype drone from an aircraft carrier on Tuesday, which is the first step in a program designed to begin fielding drones on all Navy carriers between 2017 and 2020.
The flight serves as a milestone for the future of drone aviation, and US Navy officers have celebrated the success of its launch. But the flight of the unmanned aircraft, which is the size of a fighter jet, is likely to become the subject of criticism from those who believe drone usage hurts the US image – especially since drones are behind many civilian deaths on foreign grounds.
Human Rights Watch has particularly protested the development of drones that carry weapons and are fully autonomous, like the X-47B unmanned aircraft that the Navy launched from the USS George H.W. Bush
The Navy plans to release videos and photographs of the event, which Read Adm. Mat Winter wrote marks “an inflection point in history on how we will integrate manned and unmanned aircraft on carrier flight decks in the future.”
