unmanned

adjective

un·​manned ˌən-ˈmand 

1

see usage paragraph below : not carrying, staffed, or performed by people : not manned

an unmanned railroad crossing

unmanned spaceflight

2

of a hawk : not trained

Usage of Manned and Unmanned

While manned and unmanned are still commonly used in news sources to describe spaceflights with and without human crews, respectively, NASA has since the early 21st century used and prescribed gender-neutral terms, preferring such descriptors as human, piloted, and crewed for the former, and unpiloted and uncrewed for the latter.

Examples of unmanned in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

What the bill would do At its core, the bill extends limited counter-unmanned aircraft system — or counter-UAS — authority beyond only federal agencies and some state and local law enforcement to include a subset of private infrastructure operators, under federal oversight. —Nicole Sganga, CBS News, 23 Apr. 2026

Programs like the Orca unmanned underwater vehicle and Hammerhead anti-submarine mines further show growing interest in this domain. —Sujita Sinha, Interesting Engineering, 23 Apr. 2026

Ukraine is making strides in developing and training AI models for unmanned systems using real battlefield data. —Ivana Kottasová, CNN Money, 20 Apr. 2026

As drones and other unmanned systems become bigger parts of defense budgets across the globe, Georgia is getting deeper into the growing sector. —J. Scott Trubey, AJC.com, 20 Apr. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1544, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for unmanned

• ampersand
• beforehand
• behindhand
• bottomland
• contraband
• countermand
• dixieland
• fairyland
• fatherland
• firebrand
• hinterland
• motherland

Kids Definition

unmanned

adjective

un·​manned ˌən-ˈmand 

ˈən-

: having no crew aboard

an unmanned spacecraft