When the first practical aircraft, hot-air and hydrogen balloons, were constructed in 1783, they were soon adopted for military operations. The French National Convention authorised the construction of a military tethered-balloon organisation in 1793, and on April 2, 1794, a company of "Aérostiers" was founded. Two months later, the first Military Aircraft reconnaissance from a balloon was conducted above Maubeuge. Before the Aérostiers were disbanded in 1799, their reports helped French troops win several battles and sieges. Similar reconnaissance balloons were later utilised by other armies, most notably the Union and Confederate troops during the American Civil War and the British in Africa from 1884 to 1901.
Real Military Aircraft began with the late-nineteenth-century perfection of the navigable airship and the aeroplane in the first decade of the twentieth century. On December 17, 1903, the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first powered, sustained, and controlled flight in an aeroplane. They believed such an aircraft would be primarily valuable for military reconnaissance. In February 1908, they obtained the first contract for a military aeroplane from the United States government, which required for an aircraft capable of carrying two people at a speed of at least 40 miles (65 km) per hour for a distance of 125 miles (200 km). In June 1909, they delivered "Airplane No. 1, Heavier-than-air Division, United States aerial fleet."
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