Coming soon! Killer Mini-drones

[unhappycamper]

Coming soon! Killer Mini-drones
September 15, 2008
Chicago Tribune

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- It may look like a futuristic arcade game, but it's a scene from an official Air Force animated video: Bad guys of indiscernible origin being shadowed, from a careful distance, by small robotic drones designed to resemble birds and insects.

When one of the bad guys opens his apartment door, a tiny robo-bug, looking like a garage door opener with wings, sneaks in to spy. In another scene, a bug -- the Air Force calls them Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs -- creeps into a sniper's roost and delivers a deadly shot to the back of his head.

It might sound far-fetched. But top Air Force officials believe that MAVs could be a significant part of the Defense Department's arsenal in the not-so-distant future.

Civilian researchers and airmen at the Air Force Research Laboratory, based at this installation just outside Dayton, have set a 2015 deadline to roll out the first generation of MAVs. This first group, they hope, will be the size of birds and able to operate several days without recharging.

"These are one of the assets that in the future could be a game-changer," said Mark Lewis, chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/coming-soon-killer-minidrones.html?col=1186032369229

[YOY]

1. Well that's evil...

Waiting for the people who've never played video games to associate this with them and attack in 3, 2, 1...