Military drones are on the rise as more countries see their significance in countering terrorism. (Photo : Reuters)
The Obama administration announced on Tuesday its new policy permitting widespread export of commercial and military drones to its allied nations.
This landmark policy, the State Department says, will shape international standards for the use of unmanned weapon systems.
Under this new policy, the State Department will venture into supplying both commercial and armed drones to its allied nations. Strict conditions, however, are imposed.
Drone sale, the policy stated, must be made through government programs. Countries interested in the purchase must also abide to certain "end-use assurance", Reuters reported.
After being crafted for more than two years, the policy, as industry experts believed, could boost sales of U.S military and commercial drones amid the growing competitive global market.
U.S.-based weapon makers like General Atomics, Northrop Grumman Corp, and Textron Inc have been lobbying for the current administration to ease up its weapon export policy citing massive loses of weapon orders to other key players.
Countries like China, Russia, and Israel have been showing rapid advances in development of armed weapons and drone technology.
China alone have been developing its drone program and is currently supplying unmanned systems to countries like Pakistan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, Reuters reported.
For its part, the United States has been discreet in opening up its drone technology to the rest of the world.
A policy to loosen up its restrictions on sale of drones would, as the Washington Post reported, "help U.S. firms gain a larger foothold in the global drone market".
At the present, the global market for unmanned systems is estimated to worth over $6 billion a year, said Steve Zaloga, a resident senior analyst at the Teal Group Corp., an aerospace research company.
