Drones played an important and unheralded role in the U.S. air war over Vietnam and surrounding countries in the 1960s and ‘70s. Model 147 Lightning Bugs, based on the Q-2 target drone, spotted targets for manned bombers, jammed enemy radars and scattered propaganda leaflets. In 11 years of combat starting in 1964, USAF planes in Southeast Asia launched more than a thousand Lightning Bugs on more than 3,000 sorties.

The Vietnam drone war was waged by a misfit crew of contractors and airmen led by some of the era’s most ingenious engineers and managers. And for much of the conflict, they answered to one person. Bob Schwanhausser. The secretive chief of a secret war … with their own secrets to keep. Drone! is an audio adaptation of Drone War: Vietnam, a nonfiction book about the world’s first robot war. By David Axe, a filmmaker and reporter for Forbes.

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