Drone Technology and Systems: Bayraktar TB2, Shahed-136, FPV, Lancet, Switchblade and Reaper. Inside the Engineering of the Military Drones, UAVs and Kamikaze ... Modern Warface (Drone Warfare Series)

A $500 quadcopter destroys a $4.5 million tank. A $20,000 kamikaze Shahed forces a $4 million Patriot interceptor into the sky to stop it. In a single decade the combat drone went from a billion-dollar American monopoly to a weapon built in a Ukrainian basement from Chinese parts and open-source code — and rewrote the rules of war along the way. This is the book that explains exactly how the machines work.Drone Technology and Systems opens the airframe and walks you through every system of the modern combat drone, from the Bayraktar TB2 that stunned the world over Nagorno-Karabakh, to the Shahed-136 swarms crossing Kyiv at 3 a.m., the Lancet and Switchblade loitering munitions stalking armor in the Donbas, and the FPV quadcopter that has become the deadliest cheap weapon on the battlefield. Written for the educated general reader — no equations, no jargon for its own sake — it turns the most important weapon of the twenty-first century into something you can finally understand.Every chapter pairs technical depth with strategic context: the cost-exchange mathematics that is bankrupting traditional air defense, the electronic-warfare duel over GPS and the radio spectrum, the hard truth about "AI" and autonomous weapons, and the manufacturing race — through China's supply chain — that will decide who wins the drone age.Whether you are a military technology enthusiast, a defense analyst, or simply making sense of the war headlines — the complete picture of unmanned warfare.Inside this book, you'll discover:The Cost-Exchange Revolution — why a $500 drone beating a multimillion-dollar tank is not an accident but an engineering resultThe Builders — AeroVironment, Baykar, Iran's Shahed bureau, Russia's ZALA, Silicon Valley's Anduril, China's DJI, and the ten thousand Ukrainian workshops that broke a seventy-year arms monopolyAirframes and Aerodynamics — why the TB2 has the wings of a glider, the Shahed-136 looks like a paper airplane, and an FPV drone is the size of a dinner platePropulsion and Energy — the single number, specific energy, that decides how far, how fast, and how long every unmanned aircraft can flySensors and Payloads — the million-dollar camera turret, radar that sees through cloud and camouflage, and the $30 camera that kills tanks anywayNavigation in a Contested World — how a Shahed still reaches its target through the densest GPS jamming and spoofing ever deployed in warCommunications and Starlink — the invisible link that keeps a drone alive, why a Reaper's cost is partly a satellite bill, and the war being fought to cut the cordAutonomy and Military AI — what the "thinking drone" really does and does not do today, the truth behind Lavender and Project Maven, and the legal precipice of lethal autonomous weaponsWeapons and Strike Mechanics — Hellfire, Brimstone, MAM-L, shaped charges and top-attack, and why a Switchblade 600 is a completely different weapon from a Switchblade 300Counter-Drone Systems — lasers, high-power microwave, jammers, kinetic interceptors and even trained eagles, and the cost-per-engagement trap of stopping a cheap drone with an expensive missileManufacturing, Replicator and the Next Generation — loyal-wingman fighters, the Pentagon's race to mass-produce, and why the drone war is decided in the factoryEvery chapter opens with a first-person vignette and closes with a Fast Facts panel of specifications, costs, and combat figures.Thoroughly researched from open-source technical literature, defense reporting, and the open-source intelligence record of the war in Ukraine. Presented for educational and analytical purposes.The machines are already in the sky. Read more