Scout drone

The scout drone is one of the most widely deployed units of the American army.

Background
It is a pusher-propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicle whose primary function is intelligence-gathering and detecting stealth units. Once launched from its parent vehicle, it will fly in random patterns (which cannot be directly altered by the battlefield command) not far from the parent vehicle. USA decided to upgrade its vehicle fleets with drone option after bitter experience in Iraq and Afghanistan when American cavalry forces simply found themselves blinded by a lack of direct support when handling threats like Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and sniper ambush.

Upgrades
"The new drone armor has been installed sir!"

- Crusader talking about upgrade

General ability

 * Main article: Spy Drone

Vehicle upgrade
The scout drone is available to any vehicle constructed at the War Factory, except the Sentry Drone. It is fair-priced and able to detect stealthed hostile units, extend the vision range of the vehicle it is assigned to, and allow that vehicle to better exploit its maximum weapon range. The destruction of the parent vehicle, however, will cause the drone to crash. As with all drones it will automatically benefit from the drone armour upgrade.

Changelog

 * Zero Hour patch 1.03: reduced effects of drone armour upgrade from 50% to 25%

Trivia
It physically somewhat resembles the American General Atomics MQ 1 Predator UAV, except it is much smaller, unarmed, and apparently does not require any specialized command vehicle to operate. It is possible that the drone is controlled by either an autonomous AI or an operator's miniature console within the drone's parent vehicle.