{"product_id":"reconnaissance-and-surveillance-drones-james-r-mitchell-9798184203003","title":"Reconnaissance and Surveillance Drones: How Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk and Bayraktar TB2 Brought Military ISR, Spy Drones, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1962 a U-2 spent six minutes over Cuba, and a few frames of film changed the world. Today a single drone gathers more imagery in a day than that entire U-2 fleet returned in a year, and a $2,000 quadcopter watches a city street for free. \u003cb\u003eAnd that turned out to be the easy part.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eReconnaissance and Surveillance Drones\u003c\/i\u003e is the complete story of how unmanned machines learned to watch the world, and of the harder problem behind the triumph: that seeing a thing on a screen and understanding what it is are not the same, and the gap between them is where wars are won, lost, and turned into tragedies. It follows the unblinking eye from a balloon over a battlefield to the Predator over Bosnia, the Reaper and Global Hawk across two decades of war, and the DJI Mavic that gave every Ukrainian squad its own air force. Written for the educated general reader, it turns the most important instrument of modern war into something you can finally see whole.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvery chapter pairs the technology with the human stakes: the analyst who knows a walled compound better than her own street, the \"swimming in sensors, drowning in data\" crisis no army can keep up with, the algorithm now trusted to decide what it sees, and the same eye, built for the battlefield, coming quietly home to the city.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhether you are a military-aviation enthusiast, a defense or intelligence analyst, or simply making sense of the drone-war and surveillance headlines, this is the complete picture of how the world learned to watch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eInside this book, you'll discover: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Unblinking Eye\u003c\/b\u003e: reconnaissance versus surveillance, and why the drone's real revolution was never a sharper lens but \u003ci\u003epersistence\u003c\/i\u003e: one eye held over one place for hours, then days, then forever\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Optical Eye\u003c\/b\u003e: full-motion video, the \"soda straw,\" and the wide-area sensors (Gorgon Stare, ARGUS-IS) that record a whole city and run a car bombing \u003ci\u003ebackwards\u003c\/i\u003e to the house it came from\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eRadar and the Invisible Spectrum\u003c\/b\u003e: synthetic-aperture radar and GMTI that see through cloud and darkness; signals intelligence, hyperspectral and LIDAR; and the fusion that turns three guesses into one target\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe High Watch\u003c\/b\u003e: the RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-4C Triton, the secret RQ-170 Sentinel and solar pseudo-satellites, and the $130-million drone Iran shot out of the sky in 2019\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Workhorses\u003c\/b\u003e: the MQ-9 Reaper, the IAI Heron, and the Bayraktar TB2 that gutted armies over Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eEyes in Every Hand\u003c\/b\u003e: the Raven, the palm-sized Black Hornet, and the off-the-shelf quadcopter that pushed reconnaissance down to the individual soldier\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Pattern of Life\u003c\/b\u003e: the stakeout from twenty thousand feet, the hunt for bin Laden at Abbottabad, and the wedding convoy that read exactly like a hostile one\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eFind, Fix and the Kill Chain\u003c\/b\u003e: drone-directed artillery in Ukraine, the reconnaissance-strike loop, and the battle-damage assessment that judges what was really hit\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Data Deluge and the Machine Analyst\u003c\/b\u003e: the enterprise drowning in video, Project Maven, Palantir and Anduril teaching software to watch, and the human-on-the-loop debate\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Contested Eye\u003c\/b\u003e: camouflage, decoys and \u003ci\u003emaskirovka\u003c\/i\u003e (the costly lesson of Kosovo, 1999), jamming, GPS spoofing, and the counter-reconnaissance doctrine built to blind the watcher\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Coming Panopticon\u003c\/b\u003e: sensor swarms, satellite constellations, open-source intelligence, and the day persistent surveillance is turned on the home city\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003eResearched from open-source technical literature, declassified assessments, defense reporting, and the open-source-intelligence record of recent wars. Presented for educational and analytical purposes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe eye is open now and it will not close again.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e James R. Mitchell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798184203003\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/24\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 246\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.74lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.52d","brand":"James R. Mitchell","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48853026734335,"sku":"9798184203003","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/reconnaissance-and-surveillance-drones-james-r-mitchell-9798184203003","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}