African countries rapidly expanding use of UAVs, while South Africa lags

The number of applications for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)/unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in Africa is expanding rapidly, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) principal aeronautical engineer John Monk told the aviation session of the Southern African Transport Conference in Pretoria on Wednesday. (A UAV is the actual unmanned aircraft while a UAS is that aircraft plus datalink plus ground control station plus – in some cases – UAV launch and retrieval systems.) “UAS originally had three missions – [the] dull, dirty, and dangerous,” he noted. Today, they had very many more roles.