Posted on 04/16/2016 11:42:17 AM PDT by Mariner
Six months in the making, DARPA's Gremlins program is finally getting off the ground -- and that statement probably requires a bit of explaining.
"DARPA" is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the "mad scientists" division of the Pentagon, responsible for funding and developing leading-edge technologies that can be employed in warfare. Respectively, "Gremlins" is one such technology.
As previously revealed by DARPA, Gremlins aims to develop fleets of "low-cost, reusable unmanned air systems" (aka drones) that can be launched from other aircraft, perform their missions, and then return to land back aboard their motherships -- an acrobatic feat to be performed entirely midair. While Gremlins will be too small to engage in combat operations, the drones will be equipped with sensors and electronic equipment capable of performing surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and also electronic warfare -- jamming, spoofing, and otherwise frustrating opposing radar systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at fool.com ...
Gizmo GA GA!
Too bad that this concept went through its initial concept validation in 2005.
While briefing at the SecDef level DARPA said that the technology wouldn’t be available for a decade. They were a little miffed when they were shown a slide briefing of the flight demonstration/evaluation which took place over the East Coast of Florida. Have the photo set with enough background to identify two probable test sites.
Same concepts and same “mother” aircraft. The drone was an available system being operated by the US Navy from their subs.
But DAPA was right - - they didn’t get to it for a decade.
Maybe they can build and use these as projectile weapons. No explosives. A razor sharp spike on the nose. Individually seek and destroy HVTs with any collateral damage. Ramming Speed!
You are so correct. The large-scale attempted hacking by (for one) Chinese hackers has been going on for 20 years. Back then, it was stupidly obvious where the attempts were coming from but of course we could never admit nor acknowledge our detection of same. I guess the idea is that since the effort would not require the expenditure of billions in research dollars, the idea is no damned good, so to perfect it, even though the tech is at this point off-the-shelf and even though the benefits would be fairly immediate and important requires a decade of screwing around. With a new bureaucracy and a staff of many hundreds. When two teenagers could whip it out in a few weekends.
They're working out all the bugs in the AI software and will put a truly effective system in the skies before you know it...and before any of the bad guys know what hit them.
It'll be like watching Tomahawks in the first Gulf War fly through the window. Nobody had ever seen such a thing before.
Once the coordination software becomes available, you’ll be able to buy the app and a starter kit of 20 micro-drones with a mother ship carrier drone on Amazon for a hundred bucks.
Each drone will carry a dozen of those. Their range only has to be about a mile.
“Maybe they can build and use these as projectile weapons.”
“Each drone will carry a dozen of those.”
Dipped in pig blood please.
Then there's the story of SUS we dropped, small sticks of dynamite used for underwater active ranging until one crew wired five of them together, but that's another story...
I was VQ-3.
VP. I don’t think VQ did ASW.
That has to violate the Geneva convention.
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