A 1924 article by Winston Churchill imagined drone warfare: “Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings — nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke? Could not explosives even of the existing type be guided automatically in flying machines by wireless or other rays, without a human pilot, in ceaseless procession over a hostile city, arsenal, camp or dockyard?”
He called the article “Shall We All Commit Suicide?”
As Bruce Sterling points out, Churchill was a huge sf fan.
“Shall We All Commit Suicide?” or, Winston Churchill Imagines Drone Warfare, 1924
(Image: Predator Drone Aviation Nation Las Vegas, NV, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from davidrsmith’s photostream)