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Cameras with Wings They look like remote-controlled airplanes, but they provide the military with eyes in the sky.

"Clearly, airborne ISR capability has become indispensible to successful ground and air combat operations, and the U.S. Air Force brings the lion's share to the battle," said Col. Eric Holdaway, director of intelligence for Air Force forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. With respect to combat operations, the ISR mission provides a level of planning, analysis and targeting support never seen before in the history of warfare.

(Camp Bucca, Iraq, March 19, 2009) - "There it is," said Staff Sgt. Jeff Tomkiewicz, 887th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron, as he pointed at a little, buzzing white dot in the sky. As the Raven B operator approached the small strip of sand of Camp Bucca's Burge Field, the tiny Raven B unmanned aircraft system hovered above the ground for a moment then unceremoniously fell to the ground, waiting for Sergeant Tomkiewicz to retrieve it.

KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq - RQ-11 Raven unmanned aerial vehicles may be easily mistaken for an unorthodox version of a model airplane, but Airmen here use the UAV to secure the base and surrounding neighborhoods. Weighing in at less than 5 pounds, the Raven is operated from the ground via a remote control unit that can send the aircraft 10 kilometers away at speeds up to 60 miles per hour.

At the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), a display of six unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) demonstrates what happens when the little airplanes of my childhood get serious. Take the five-pound, 45-inch wingspan AeroVironment RQ-14A "Dragon Eye." Launched by hand, or with a bungee cord, the tiny scout plane is controlled by GPS coordinates entered into its guidance system with a standard laptop computer.