Military Continues Developing BugBots and CyBirds, with New Lethal Mission

Pretty damn awesome.

The U.S. military has been working for a while on tiny, buglike drones — to serve as miniature flying spies, Defense Department robot-makers say. But this video, from the Air Force Research Laboratory, shows that the military is also interested in turning these "Micro Air Vehicles," or MAVs, into biomorphic weapons that can lie in secret for weeks at a time — and then strike an adversary with lethal accuracy.

Vid (of a CGI demo, not of the actual flyin' death drones) at the link.

Also awesome: Army wants to put robotic sniper rifles on mini-blimps, to loiter over areas and deliver death from above.

Wired's skeptical of this one (how do you stabilize a gun hanging under a drifting blimp?), but it's nice to dream.

Thanks to Arthur.

Awesome Pics from the Military: Collected here.

And more here. You can keep changing the last number in the URL -- which begins at 2, but goes to 3, 4, etc. -- to see more pages of pics.

Thanks to West.

posted by Ace at 04:31 PM

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