How new are military uncrewed aircraft studies?
Short answerThey are much older than they appear: the Royal Navy's Queen Bee target system reaches back to the interwar period.
NotesA comment about 1970s drone studies leads back to the Queen Bee system of the 1920s. The aircraft served as an uncrewed target and sits within the Royal Navy's interwar experimentation with air defence training. Its existence does not make modern remotely piloted systems identical to their predecessors. It does, however, warn against describing uncrewed aviation as an entirely recent invention.