The South African Air Force was flying surveillance UAVs in Angola and Mozambique in the 1970s and 1980s, also achieving the first flights of UAVs in controlled

The South African Air Force was flying surveillance UAVs in Angola and Mozambique in the 1970s and 1980s, also achieving the first flights of UAVs in controlled civilian aerospace in 1994 when military UAVs were used to monitor the country's first fully democratic election. It also had remote-controlled target drones, loitering anti-radiation drones & TV-guided boosted flying bombs in the same era, all of which meet this article's very loose definition. As others have pointed out the US and Israel have also operated surveillance UAVs for decades. The use of UAVs did not begin in Afghanistan in 2011.