so far, this thread is unmanned.

As opposed to manned drone?

Nuclear depth bomb? I had no idea that existed.

manned drone

Amirite?

OMFG did you see it vaporate that deckhand?!

unicron702: OMFG did you see it vaporate that deckhand?!

Vaporize.

That seals it, I'm going home.

Last summer at White Sands.

Uhm, that isn't the first one.

By a long shot.

Probably the first purpose-built one to see mass production, but unmanned drones go back at least as far as WWI. If you expand the term beyond aircraft it goes back even farther than that. There have been experiments with remote control ships almost since the invention of radio

FrancoFile: As opposed to manned drone?

Actually yeah, Joe Kennedy died trying to get one to its target (new window).

Great book.
The U.S. was a scary country back in the 50s & 60s.
It is a miracle that we didn't get ourselves into a nuclear war.

That book sucks ass, particularly the made-up parts.

Tesla demonstrated radio-controlled model boats in his day.

And there were many remote controlled drones in WWII... a young Norma Jean Baker worked at the factory that built some, and posed for a publicity picture. Heddy Lamarr held patents on some of the radio control systems designs for the early ones. Reginald Denney, the actor, was a huge figure in wartime drone development. Why so many Hollywood types got mixed up the the drone business, I can't explain.

Anyhow, to sum up, the article was poorly fact-checked crap.