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$10M For Unmanned Aircraft That Can Perch Like a Bird
coondoggie writes "Unmanned aircraft maker AeroVironment got an additional $5.4 million to further develop a diminutive aircraft that can fly into tight spaces undetected, perch and send live surveillance information to its handlers. Last Fall, AeroVironment, got $4.6 million initial funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the Stealthy, Persistent, Perch and Stare Air Vehicle System (SP2S), which is being built on the company's one-pound, 29-inch wingspan battery-powered Wasp unmanned system."
Wow there have been a lot of many month old dupes today.
Deploy: Lazorbeak. Mission: Scout Terrorists.
does its tail pipe pucker like a birds?
""Unmanned aircraft maker AeroVironment got an additional $5.4 million to further develop a diminutive aircraft that can fly into tight spaces undetected, perch and send live surveillance information to its handlers."
I'm reminded of the Transformer's "Lazerbeak".
And their robot bird could turn into a cassette tape too. For easy playback, no less.
How awesome was that?
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Quoth the SP2S, "nevermore" and nothing more.
at what point does the US military stop looking like a human defense force and start looking looking like alien invaders from a robot planet?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Ten million is not expensive for an aerospace contractor, there are some missiles parked under planes costing over 20 times 10 million that in the air force that are worth more than that each - and they are *disposable*.
Will it drop bird poop on your surveillance target? I mean how suspicious would a bird be if it didn't do that?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
a "one-pound, 29-inch wingspan battery-powered Wasp MANNED system"
Now that would be amazing!
to perching sharks >= )?!
One day unmanned aircraft will deliver pizza's to our door. Replacing delivery drivers that keep getting lost.
Upon reading the title, my first reaction was that there was a meeting that went something like
In the future I expect robots that can
A 450 gram, 29-inch wing span, battery powered vehicle ISN'T MANNED???? WTF?
Sweet babby Jebus!
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I know twitter has been getting popular lately, but i think a $10m spyplane that perches is taking things a bit too literally.
Just shows you're a bigger asshole than he is.
Didn't the Stainless Steel Rat already use one?
rewriting history since 2109
I was just going to ignore this but then I noticed people modding you up. Sure missiles are expensive but not THAT expensive. I remember reading that a Tomahawk cost about $1M, and it is a very sophisticated missile with inertial and GPS guidance, long distance jet engine, variable geometry airframe and rocket booster. I seriously doubt some missiles cost "over 20 times 10 million". Not even nukes (although they *might* be in the tens of millions).
If you're talking development costs, sure that could be very expensive. But then development costs are not "disposable".
Could perch on a power line and recharge its batteries for round the clock operations. Scary.
Really liked your article.. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Sujja ------ FTP Client
"Dad! You won't believe what I just caught with my BB-gun!"
Table-ized A.I.
until they combine this technology with camouflage technology.
And it can post its surveillance reports to the Internet in under 140 characters. This bird will tweet!
I just got done reading Philip Dick's Vulcan's Hammer, where a rogue AI starts manufacturing little flying spy robots. That perch.
Can I not read ONE sci-fi novel without someone trying to make it a hideous reality?
Maybe that's why Hollywood is pumping out the PKD films like there's no tomorrow... to prepare us for the pink mind-control lasers. And the flapples. I still don't know what an effing flapple is, and I have gobs of PKD novels and short stories sitting around my conapt.
crappy triceratops
A 450 gram, 29-inch wing span, battery powered vehicle ISN'T MANNED???? WTF?
Sweet babby Jebus!
In order to maintain airspeed velocity, a manned SP2S would need to beat its wings 43 times every second, am I right?
In related news AeroVironment has announced that they will be dividing their SP2S project into two branches, one to follow more stationary targets and the other to track people traveling over large distances. The more stationary version will be known as the African Stealthy, Persistent, Perch and Stare Air Vehicle System (ASP2S) and its migratory cousin with be known as the European SP2S or ESP2S.
Ten million is not expensive for an aerospace contractor
...and just WTF is wrong with a helicopter?
You're not going to get near the speed/agility of a bird for $10M.
Far better to put grasping feet on a helo and be done with it.
I believe it's not far away the day that such aircrafts would be undetected not only by radars but also by sight(like the cloaking technology of Romulans in Star Trek).
Until the skies turn blue...
Until the air of freedom strikes us...
Are the keywords here "Perch and grip" ? Don't we already have unmanned airborne spy hover vehicles? heck I'm sure I could build a mini-hot-air-balloon-with-steering-fans-type drone that transmits surveillance for under $1M. From what I saw on National Geographic channel, it'd be very easy to build a hot-air-balloon with "perch and grip" technology if we just emulate birds...
blog.idigitall.com
Why can't they just train real birds to perch and randomly attach cameras or whatever to things. Swallows come to mind, I'd have to check. I don't remember if African or European would be best.
Manned flying dinosaurs are SO much cooler. Vote for sky riders today! :D
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The robot war machines will be the next generation of weapons of mass destruction.
Soon we will see swarms of poisonous digital mosquitoes, mechanical snakes with nuclear warheads, which can enter the land unnoticed, robot-fish, which enters a lake via a small river and poisons the whole lake, and so on and so forth.
Let us note now how it all started.
I would suggest to ban by an international law all military robots. While there are not so many of them yet. It would be more difficult and expensive when there are armies of millions military robots.
The definition is simple: no military equipment without a responsible human physically attached to it.
In the 50s it would have been much easier to ban nuclear weapons while there were only few of them around, not hundreds of thousand as it is now.
This definitely sounds like Lazerbeak, with the reporting to its handlers and all. BUT, in terms of cool ships that perch, there can be only one: Hawk's fighter, from Buck Rogers. That series had easily some of the coolest space tech ever, rivalling White Stars in B5 and BSG's Mk I Vipers (which were designed by the same guy). I loved that series, and BSG and all too, but Hawk's fighter (and that whole Hawk character concept) just blew me away as a kid.
I'm really surprised how hard it is to find example of his ship online. I'm sure the entire episodes are available somewhere, but this is the best page I can find:
http://www.tvacres.com/aliens_hawk.htm
http://www.tvacres.com/images/spacecraft_hawk_fighter4.jpg
Watchbird
That's it...*eyeball*... Hold still.. *squeeze*... Hold still... *squeeze*... Keep perching... *breathe out*... *squeeze* *POP*... Gotcha!
Iraqi 1- Hey man, have you noticed that bird just sitting there staring at us for the past hour?? I don't think it's even made a sound!
Iraqi 2- Yeah.. I've also been googleing to see when the last time a California Condor was even remotely close to here...
Wouldn't information/technology like this be much more helpful if it was kept quiet? If enemies know what to look for, it makes it harder to go undetected... Before news like this broke, nobody would pay any attention to a bird fluttering around, but now people are going to be armed with bird hunting rifles all around sensitive areas. Ha.
As a sidenote, this is a general beef I have with things like this, not just the perching (but unmanned, who'da thought?) surveillance aircraft. I'm torn between my geeky desire to know about these things, and the thought that it'd probably be much more effective if it was kept under wraps.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Perch, and get shot.
Keep flying, not as much of an easy target.
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Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
But what if they are "true perching birds" instead?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scalzi/1970031768/in/set-72157603091357751/
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I think I'm gonna get one!!! I'll paint it pink and use it for sending love letters.
This is the sort of thing that Wyat Cenack (sp?), senior military analyst on The Daily Show, described as RFC projects. "Really F***ing Cool."
Yes, this is all cool and impressive and all, but hang on a second. Why does the US still put so much faith in technology to fix all the world's problems?
I remember reading an article in The Economist years ago about an American-developed mine clearing system. It was a huge, expensively developed, bulldozer. Er, yes, a bulldozer. It had a few bells and whistles and looked like something dropped out of an Imperial Star Destroyer, but trust me, it was just a bulldozer. Well they found that it was less effective than the tried and tested British method of a trained guy with a metal detector and a big stick poking into the ground. I'll let you guess which was cheaper and more effective.
If the British had adopted in Northern Ireland the same tactics that the USA is adopting now in different parts of the world, the troubles in Northern Ireland would still be going strong, we'd have gone as far as full on civil war, and the Brits would be looking to the UN for support because they'd have pissed off so many Irish Republicans that bomb alerts in London would be a daily occurrence.
Air strikes in residential areas? Sending in troops to act as policemen when they can't even speak the local language? What the hell are they thinking? Do they seriously think that the battle for the hearts and minds of muslims is going to be won by UAVs, robotic birds, satellites, tanks, and legions of soldiers occupying other peoples' countries as if their sovereignty counts for nothing? Do they think the reaction will be any different than their own reaction would be if Iranian troops were occupying San Diego, bursting into peoples' homes in search of militants, and calling in air strikes to wedding receptions?
They need to learn a few lessons from the British. An insurgency and a poisonous militant mindset is not defeated by a standing army. It's defeated behind the scenes by the intelligence services, by infiltration, away from the prying eyes of the media and it's done for the purpose of getting the job done, not in public for the purpose of winning votes. The only thing done in public is consistent repudiation of violence as a means of achieving political aims, education about the futility of violence and how it achieves nothing but heartbreak for all involved (viewer discretion advised), and providing a peaceful political alternative to the physical force method. It's less glamorous and the boys don't get to play with their toys, but it's a lot more effective.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
So the leet-speak phonetic translation of that codename is "spazzes", yes?
We have an abundant supply of birds pre-configured with BOTH perching AND the ability to fit into small places!
Just rig some mind control device to them and presto! An added side effect is camouflage as a freakin' bird!
Downside would be peta freaks.
Alternatively Birds with Freakin' Lasers attached to their heads! Muahahaha!
Would that count as biological warfare?
Self-refueling. Finds earthworms and seeds, converts to ethanol.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Just train a squadron of real birds with cameras on 'em.
Heck, connect probes to their brains so you can guide them.
Fuel? No problem, let 'em eat stuff.
Trouble is, ordinary kinetic weapons don't scale down all that well to applications where size and weight are at a real premium {...}. The only mechanisms that do scale down are toxins and pathogens, which are what pretty much all dangerous animals of that scale and smaller use.
Biologic weapons ? Come on ! This is /. !
You completely missed the opportunity to speculate on mounting weaponized *LASERs* on these beasts.
(And paint shark motifs on the sides of the drone)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]