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Drones Within a Drone Riding a Balloon

Posted by Soulskill on from the unidentifiable-flying-object dept.

smitty777 writes "Given the U.S.'s recent drone issues, what is the new recipe for sending a drone over another country of interest? Simple, just take a balloon and attach a Tempest drone to the bottom of it. Now, attach two more CICADA drones to that. The balloon climbs to over 55k feet, then drops the first drone, which can travel another 11 miles or so. It then deploys the CICADA drones. These unpowered gliders slip past radar undetected and start sending back information. There are future plans to mount many (count hundreds) of the CICADA glider drones to the Tempest in the future. The article quotes the flight engineer describing the process as 'straightforward.'"

9 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing new by sethstorm · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's just drones, all the way down.

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    1. Re:Nothing new by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Yo Dawg"

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    2. Re:Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      I heard you like drones, so I put a drone on your drone you so can drone while droning

  2. Yo Dawg.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I heard you like drones, so I put drones in your drones so you can spy on stuff while you spy on other stuff.

  3. Awesome! by jdavidb · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think everybody should have this, and then everybody can watch to make sure that nobody is up to no good.

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  4. CICADA? by towelie-ban · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought cicadas weren't due back until 2021?

  5. I was wondering what had happened to by jd2112 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wile E. Coyote. It appears he has found a job as an engineer at a defense contractor.

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  6. Woah. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    the CICADA's logic boards serve as its wings, while inside are gyroscopes, GPS circuits, and a batch of sensors driven by a custom algorithm.

    A custom algorithm? Like, they wrote some software? These defence contractors are pretty far out, I would have expected them to just load her up with Microsoft Word and hope for the best..

  7. Re:Uh oh, sounds like a great assassination weapon by the_fat_kid · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'd like you to have a seat over here...
    How long have you been a terrorist agent?
    Who else is in your cell?
    Did my wife send you?

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