Image credit: Wired
By Katie Drummond
Come spring, there’ll be a new drone in the Special Ops arsenal of annihilation. Call it … the Robotic Russian Doll of Death.
Researchers from Naval Air Systems Command, Eglin Air Force Base, and engineering company Navmar Applied Science Corporation are already toiling away at the drone’s design, InsideDefense.com is reporting.
And it’s wild: essentially one deadly drone shoved inside a bigger, more benign one. The petite, 13-foot Tigershark drone, already used for surveillance and reconnaissance, will be outfitted with an even smaller drone — developed by Air Force researchers under the Precision Acquisition and Weaponized System program — that doubles as a warhead. The baby drone would detach from its Tigershark mother and relay real-time video to ground support as it was directed toward a target and then detonated on impact.
It’s an idea that U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has been interested in pursuing for years. In 2007, SOCOM’s Col. Jim Geurts expressed an urgent need for smaller, more targeted weaponry, so that “the guy in the truck evaporates and the two trucks next to him don’t get blown out and the windows in the house don’t get blown out.”
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/socom-warhead-drones/
