Editorial Note: Led by our Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
In our latest episode, we interview Dr Robert M. Farley about his latest book Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (2020). We discuss how intellectual property dominates the world of military aircraft technology. What happens when one country steals another’s aeroplane? Not just to fly it, but to mass-produce it? From the Wright Brothers to the Soviet version of the B-29, to the F-35, air power is all about intellectual property.
Dr Robert M. Farley is a senior lecturer in the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force and The Battleship Book.
Header Image: A Tupolev Tu-4 ‘Bull’ at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino, Russia. The Tu-4 was reversed engineered from the Boeing-B-29 Superfortress and first appeared after the Second World War. (Source: Wikimedia)
From Balloons to Drones 