Just shortly before the US invaded Iraq in March 2003, the US air force tried to employ its unmanned

aircraft as aerial warfighters against Iraq. In December 2002, for the very first time the US air force attempted to engage Iraqi fighter jets with an unmanned craft, a propeller-driven drone called the 'Predator'. The aim was to thoroughly humiliate the Iraqi air force which at the time had already endured a very severe beating from countless pre-emptive strikes carried out by the western air forces. The US air force had been bombing Iraq virtually non-stop in 2002 and the Iraqi air force had no choice but to try to fight the US and allied pilots who were very well fed and well equipped. Seeing that the heroic Iraqi pilots were not cowed by the vastly superior western forces, the US decided to employ Predator drones against them. A number of the drones were hastily lashed with heat-seeking missiles and flown into Iraq. On December 23 2002, the first encounter between a Predator and an Iraqi fighter took place. The US drone operator locked onto the Iraq jet with the Predator's onboard IR sensor and fired a missile at the fighter. The Iraqi plane fired a missile at the drone at the same time. The Predator was destroyed by the larger missile fired by the fighter which escaped unharmed. Thus the first aerial clash between a US drone and an adversary produced a failure for the US air force. The dream of deeply humiliating the Iraqi air force was unrealised. But this has in no way discouraged the evil US air force from pursuing the use of unmanned aircraft or drones for future aerial combat tasks. The US is now developing many advanced models of combat-capable drones including those that qualify for classification as multirole attack craft.