Is that a swam of locusts? No, it's a swarm of killer robots! Run for the hills!
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Instead of expecting a swarm of bugs, the enemies of "freedom" can soon expect to see a swarm of hive-mind micro-drones targeting them.
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“This is the kind of cutting-edge innovation that will keep us a step ahead of our adversaries," said Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.
The Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office successfully tested a swarm of 103 'Perdix' micro-drones, all released from the air by three F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, this past October although the official DoD report only came out on January 9th.
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The micro-drones measure about 6 inches long, and successfully demonstrated they can withstand "speeds of Mach 0.6, temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius, and large shocks—encountered during ejection from fighter flare dispensers."
The drones use artificial intelligence to arrive at collective decision-making, arrange themselves and specific flying formations, and even self-repair.
They were tested over China Lake, California
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The goal is to develop fully autonomous systems to take over and accomplish missions that were previously carried out by larger and more expensive drones.
"Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature"
Each Perdix unit collaborates with every other unit, where there is no leader in the swarm which allows it to gracefully adapt to new members and touring the collective.
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The hopes from military strategists is that these tiny drones will be cheap to produce and will overwhelm an opponent's defenses through greater numbers.
This technology was originally created by MIT in 2013, and its further development draws inspiration from the commercial smartphone industry.
The military strives to merge existing commercial technologies (like micro-drones and artificial intelligence) into the design of new weapons. The current design is in its sixth generation of development, and the goal is to produce the Perdix micro-drone in batches of up to 1,000 units at a time. The Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) and Defense Industrial Unit-Experimental, or DIUx, are teaming up to find companies that can mass produce these drones.
It seems President Obama's term in office will also end with drones in the news as he gave his farewell speech last night.
He was awarded the "Nobel Peace Prize" pretty much as soon as he got into office while having already signed off on the execution of people around the world through drone strikes.
Obama ends his presidency with 26,171 bombs dropped in 2016 alone! What a "peaceful" guy indeed :/
References:
- DoD shows off its first successful micro-drone swarm launch
- Department of Defense Announces Successful Micro-Drone Demonstration
- Pentagon successfully tests micro-drone swarm
- Swarm of micro-drones with 'hive mind' dropped from fighter jets in US military test
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2017-01-11, 12:02pm