Nowland’s death came in the same week that a police officer in the same state was found guilty of assault after an incident involving a 16-year-old boy from the country’s Indigenous community in 2020.

The surveillance UAVs of tomorrow may evolve into MAVs, or micro aerial vehicles, lilliputian spies so tiny they can take off and land in the palm of their operators' hands. The U.S., Great Britain, Korea, and Israel are developing MAVs for surveillance use in the future.

The success of the Firebee continued through the end of the Vietnam War. In the 1970s, while other countries began to develop their own advanced UAV systems, the U.S. set its sights on other kinds of UAVs.

State Police Commissioner Karen Webb told a news conference on Wednesday that the force was reviewing White’s employment after his conviction.

During World War I, the first UAVs took flight in the U.S. Though the success of UAVs in test flights was erratic, the military recognized their potential in combat. Armistice arrived before the prototype UAVs could be deployed in earnest.

SYDNEY, Australia — An Australian police officer who fatally shocked a 95-year-old care home resident with a Taser gun was found guilty of manslaughter on Wednesday.

The jury found White guilty of the manslaughter of Nowland after deliberating for almost a week, said a spokesperson for the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the state where the incident took place.

He is expected to be sentenced as early as this week. Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison in the state.

Kristian White was called to a care home in Cooma, a town about 90 minutes south of the capital, Canberra, in May 2023, after reports that resident Clare Nowland, who suffered from symptoms of dementia, was acting erratically.

“The policy and training is appropriate. The substance of this matter is about the application of the use of the equipment,” she said.

Years before the first manned airplane flight on December 17, 1903, primitive UAV technology was used for combat and surveillance in at least two wars.

During World War II, Nazi Germany's innovative V-1 demonstrated the formidable threat a UAV could pose in combat. America's attempts to eliminate the V-1 laid the groundwork for post-war UAV programs in the U.S.

The state’s police force is currently being sued by hundreds of music fans who allege they were illegally strip-searched by police officers at music festivals across the state from 2016 to 2022.

For more than a decade after the end of World War I, development of pilotless aircraft in the U.S. and abroad declined sharply. By the mid-to-late 1930s, new UAVs emerged as an important combat training tool.

With their strange silhouettes and awe-inspiring capabilities, today's UAVs, like this Predator, seem to have flown in from the future. But the Predator and the dozen other operational UAVs in the U.S. military arsenal owe their existence to the past. They are only the most recent and advanced installments in a century-old history of unmanned warfare and surveillance from the skies. Click on the UAV icons below to learn more about the Predator and some of its UAV ancestors. — Lexi Krock

During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the Israeli Air Force, an aggressive UAV developer, pioneered several important new UAVs, versions of which were integrated into the UAV fleets of many other countries, including the U.S.

From their early use as target drones and remotely piloted combat vehicles, UAVs took on a new role during the Vietnam War: stealth surveillance.

UAVs command a permanent and critical position in high-tech military arsenals today, from the U.S. and Europe to Asia and the Middle East. They also play peaceful roles as monitors of our Earth's environment.