The Croatian government announced on 13 September that the Croatian Armed Forces (CAF) would return to Pula airfield on the Istria peninsula, some 190 km southwest of Zagreb, after abandoning it in 2012.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to base 150 troops from the CAF’s support command, reserve infantry regiments of the Croatian Army, and a yet-to-be-established Centre for Unmanned Aerial Systems (CUAS) at the airfield.
The Zagreb-based daily newspaper Jutarnji List reported on 12 September that the CUAS would operate six Agriculture Ministry Aeronautics Defence Orbiter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) ordered in May and four existing Elbit Skylark 1 UAVs.
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In the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress set an objective of increasing the number of remote-controlled and unmanned systems in service with the US Army. The goal was that by 2015 a third of operational ground combat vehicles would be unmanned. However, this goal was not met. Scott Alexander reports
