The prototype, on show at a defense fair in Bogota, has a range of 150 kilometers (93 miles) and a carrying capacity of 100 kilograms (220 pounds), with future models set to hit the market in about two years, according to the Colombian Air Force.

Colombia, the only country in the Americas with a major internal conflict, received $230 million in U.S. military aid last year, down from $600 million a decade earlier, according to the Center for International Policy, a Washington D.C.-based think tank. Even if the government signs a peace deal with Marxist rebel groups, the drone will be needed, according to Air Force engineer Alejandro Vargas, who was involved with the aircraft’s development.

“Initially it will carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations,” Vargas said in an interview yesterday. “It can be used to monitor meteorological and volcanic activity, as well as oil pipelines and the drugs trade.”

In 2013, Colombia had about 48,000 hectares planted with coca, the raw material for making cocaine, which is enough to produce as much as 331 tons of the drug, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Smugglers ship the drugs to Central America and elsewhere via Colombia’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts.

The 22 foot-long drone, known as Iris, can fly for as long as eight hours at altitudes of 17,000 feet. It was developed by the state-controlled Corporacion de la Industria Aeronautica Colombiana SA, or CIAC.

Government negotiators have held talks with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in Cuba since late 2012, seeking a deal to end the country’s five-decade conflict.

The U.S. military’s use of drones spans from large remotely piloted aircraft including Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Global Hawk and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.’s Predator, which can carry out air strikes, to smaller surveillance craft such as Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Stalker and Boeing Co.’s ScanEagle, which is four feet long and can be launched from mobile units.