The Minds Behind the US Drones

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The Predator drone is one of many unmanned aerial vehicles in the US military's arsenal. The vehicles can be in flight halfway across the world by a US-based controller.

How do unmanned flying robots detect and kill their targets? What is life like for the men and women of the US military controlling robotic airplanes in Afghanistan from a command center in Las Vegas?

We've heard a lot about drones, but less about how they really work, and who works them. In an upcoming documentary NOVA reveals the technologies and the people behind this twenty-first century warfare.

Missy Cummings is intimately familiar with drones, and she joined Kara Miller to talk about them.

GUEST:

• Missy Cummings is a professor of Aeronautics at MIT, and Director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory. She's also one of the US Navy's first female fighter pilots.