Will drone bases in the near future be staffed by robots?

C4ISRNET: If there is a poster child for light-footprint counterinsurgency, it’s the MQ-9 Reaper.

Flying over vast swaths of territory and launching missiles at small bands of suspected fighters, Reapers require relatively little on-the-ground support compared to what that same coverage would have required decades ago. Little support is not no support, however, and even drone bases take hundreds of people to run, support and maintain. It’s likely impossible to reduce the human presence at an airbase to zero, but a pair of technologies suggest a way that drone bases could drastically shrink their labor needs.

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