Category: To be used for Evil

The craft is only 12 inches tall and weighs in at 13 pounds so I wonder what kind of loiter time could be expected from it. Still, pretty cool. One question about all this cool high tech gear the fighter of the future will will be in charge of, will they be able to use it all? With all this nifty intel gear there may be an issue of info overload or better yet what if conflict of intel. What if an attack is planned using info from a high altitude UAV and then at the last moment new photos from a backpack sized UAV shows something totally different behind the hill? If all the info doesn’t get back to the commanders in time there could be quite a mess…

The objective of the MAV ACTD is to demonstrate a backpackable, affordable, easy-to-operate, and responsive reconnaissance and surveillance system. The system will provide the small unit with militarily useful real-time combat information of difficult to observe and/or distant areas or objects.
The system will also be employable in a variety of warfighting environments (for example: in complex topologies such as mountainous terrain; heavily forested areas; confined spaces; and high concentrations of civilians).

Carry Your Own Robotic Plane

UAV, military, robots,

I remember some guys at ASU working on these. I doubt these will be ending up at the army surplus store any time soon, but maybe someone will take some off the shelf parts and build up a nice little toy for under the Christmas tree. It would be a nifty tool for finding a good place to set up the tent or to find someone if they have wondered off.

“The Wasp has two cameras — one forward and one aft — that collect and feed live video or other information. It’s designed to follow a programmed or relayed route using Global Positioning System waypoints or other navigational systems,” C4ISR Journal says.

Defense Tech: ITSY-BITSY DRONE

UAV, robot, airplane, drone

I was reading ‘Blogs of War‘ tonight and happened across this note about ‘project Falcon’:

The Pentagon is developing a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials say.
This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads,The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

(More here on Xinhua)

I found some more info on it over at military.com:

You’ve got less than 2 hours to strike an HVT 9,000 miles away. Who are you going to call? How about the FALCON program? Initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force, the program hopes to give the U.S. a global prompt strike capability by using hypersonic sub-orbital vehicles — autonomous, remotely operated and reusable — to deliver its payload to targets worldwide.

(full text here: CRUISING IN OVERDRIVE: The FALCON Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle)
I’m going to group this into the same category as the new land robots with firearms mounted on them. It is something that if used for good could keep balance in the world, but if used for evil or against the common good, it could really screw up the planet. War should never become an easy option for anyone, but what can you do? Technology marches on, I can only hope that we gain the wisdom of the past so we can safeguard the future.
By the way, the flight opperations sound a lot like the old Dynasoar program on the ’50s. Up to 60km, glide and drop to 35Km and then boost up to 40Km and repeat until the target is reached.
If you ask me, getting 12,000 pounds of cargo 9000 miles in two hours would be the ‘killer app’ of the package delivery business. FalconFedEx anyone? (But then it wouln’t kill anyone and could never get the deep pocket funding that the military has. Baka.)