Baden-Powell was commissioned a lieutenant in the Scots Guards on 29 July 1882, and served with the Guards Camel Regiment in the Nile Expedition in Egypt and Sudan. Promotion to captain followed on 5 February 1896, and to major on 24 June 1899. He served with the 1st battalion of his regiment in South Africa during the Second Boer War, and was present at the battles of Belmont, Modder River, and Magersfontein. He was in the Relief Column that in May 1900 relieved the siege of Mafeking, where his elder brother was in command. A month after the end of the war in late May 1902, Baden-Powell returned home with his regiment in the SS Tagus. Baden-Powell was a military aviation pioneer and a Fellow and later President of the Royal Aeronautical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was one of the first to see the use of aviation in a military context. He also wrote, "Ballooning as a Sport", published in 1907 by William Blackwood and Sons. He built his first balloons and aircraft with his elder sister Agnes. He invented a man-carrying kite system which he called the Levitor. He also developed a collapsible military bicycle. He obtained one of the first British patents for a television system, "An electrical method of reproducing distant scenes visually", published 19 April 1921. He contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition entry on 'kite-flying'. He wrote "In savage isles and settled lands. Malaysia, Australasia and Polynesia, 1888-1891", published in 1892 by R.Bentley and Son, London. Among others, Baden-Powell recounts in his book a visit to Batavia, where he was a guest at the dinner party hosted by a leading local magnate, Khouw Yauw Kie, Kapitein der Chinezen.
Baden-Powell was the first who brought flying-based activities into Scouting in the form of kite and model aeroplane building. He can be considered the founder of Air Scouting even though he thought it was hardly feasible to have special 'Air Scouts'. Baden-Powell was President and later District Commissioner of a North London District, was District Commissioner of Sevenoaks District, Kent between 1918 and 1935, and was Headquarters Commissioner for Aviation from 1923, until his death in 1937.
