Army "Future": Fewer Drones

The other day, Inside Defense broke the news that the Army was shaving billions off of its massive modernization program, Future Combat Systems. Now, we're starting to get some details. Turns out the drones are the ones getting the axe.

FCS originally envisioned four types and sizes of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, buzzing over soldiers' heads. The littlest ones would join platoons. Slightly bigger drones would be assigned to companies. Batallion commanders would supervise an even larger UAV. And the biggest of 'em all -- an armed, robotic helicopter -- would work for the brigade.

Those four classes of UAVs are now being trimmed down to two; just the tiniest and the most gargantuan drones will remain. There will still be other robotic planes in the Army's arsenal -- the hand-held Ravens, the Shadows, and the big, high-flying, bad-ass Warriors.

But the move is the latest in a series of efforts to scale down the once-grandiose FCS vision. First to go were the all-electric, laser-firing, next-gen fighting vehicles. Then, the requirement that those vehicles fit into a C-130 transport plane. And after that, the high-tech uniforms that were supposed to electronically tie the grunts to the larger Army. With the vehicles' designs still very much in flux -- and with the network connecting all of those drones and vehicles together still facing major roadblocks -- who knows what will be left, when FCS finally deploys?

UPDATE 3:55 AM: Speaking of those little Raven drones, it looks like the Marines will start using 'em, too. Inside Defense says that the Corps has given up on its own mini-UAV, the Dragon Eye. During the Iraq invasion, Marines found the drone "too flimsy," and didn't stay in the air nearly long enough. Some fixes were made. But the things still had a nasty habit of "break[ing] apart upon repeated landings." So it's out with the Dragon Eyes. In with the sturdier Ravens.

Bots, Grunts, Choppers Team up for Air Assaults

The Army's 25th Infantry Division's Combat Aviation Brigade has put together a pretty unusual cast to hunt Iraqi insurgents: chopper pilots, sensor analysts, foot soldiers, Navy bomb techs... and three-foot tall robots.

The forms a kind of rapid reaction force in the sky, Stars & Stripes reports. They call the missions "Lightning Strikes."

Commanders and ground troops have long complained that efforts to capture insurgents on the ground are often stymied by the noise and visibility of their vehicles. Helicopter pilots have also complained that they have observed suspicious activities from the air, but have been unable to summon ground troops quickly enough to investigate.

The Lightning Strike missions are aimed at solving both those problems. The 25th Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade staged its first such mission in Iraq this week when it launched a team of Kiowa and Black Hawk helicopters containing a number of foot soldiers, ordnance technicians and a bomb disposal robot...

The missions differ from traditional air assaults or raids in that they are not flying to a specific target. Instead, the aircraft go out in search of suspicious activity in an area that hasn’t seen a heavy coalition presence.

At the same time, the team is essentially on call to respond to situations observed by other units in other areas. Commanders give the example of tracking down and stopping a vehicle that was seen fleeing a bombing or an attack...

The mission was part of a larger, ongoing operation in northern Iraq dubbed Snake Hunter. The operation involves the creative use of military aircraft in the fight against roadside bombs, and is aimed at intercepting insurgents before they fully arm and conceal the explosives.

“If an [improvised explosive device] has already blown up, then the initiative is already with the enemy,” Tate said. “We’re trying to work ‘left of the boom.’ We want to interdict before the [bomb] blows up.”

Army units have been dropping from the sky with 100-pound, three-feet-high, bomb-fighting Talon 'bots for more than a year. But only on select missions. During attack raids, similar to these "Lightning Strikes," "we left the robots in the garage," one air assault veteran tells Defense Tech. But that was then.

Iran Drone Stalks U.S. Carrier?

There's supposed to be a protective bubble around American aircraft carriers, both on the sea, and in the air. Come too close, and you will get smoked.

Or, at least, that's the idea. But the Iranians are now claiming that they've punctured this bubble, with an robotic plane. Let's hope that the footage is fake, as some are saying.

Iran's Arabic language television station broadcast footage it claimed showed a US aircraft carrier cruising in Gulf waters it said was taken by an unmanned Iranian drone.

The brief minute-long film, which was shown on Al-Alam television's evening news bulletin, showed wobbly aerial footage of an aircraft carrier stacked with war planes as it sailed.

The television's anchor said the film, the property of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, showed a vessel from "the US fleet in the Persian Gulf".

"A source in the Revolutionary Guard said the drone carried out its mission without US fighter pilots reaching it," the television said.

It said there were 10 such films taken by the drone which showed "more precise information and details about military equipment, foreign forces, and their activities in the Persian Gulf."

The station did not name the vessel nor did it say when the footage was shot.

The broadcast comes near the end of Iran's latest 10-day war games, "Great Prophet II", which military chiefs have said were aimed at showing off Iran's defensive prowess and testing new military hardware.

UPDATE 12:37 PM: "Iran is sustaining the insurgency against British and American forces in Iraq by supplying terrorists with weapons and cash," according to the Daily Telegraph.

Feds Flail Flying Saucer Friend

Yesterday's raids on the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon's daughter and pals is bad news for the Republican party, of course. But it's really, really bad news for the Russian flying saucer community, Wonkette reminds us -- pointing to one of my own dang articles.

Long before he started pushing kooky theories about Saddam's WMD and military data mining, Weldon -- a fluent Russian speaker -- was one a one-man quest to find jobs for former Soviet scientists and engineers. "It keeps them from otherwise working with the bad guys around the world," he told me, for a 2003 Wired News story.

The employment process seemed to begin by getting these Russian firms, like the Saratov aviation company, to hire Weldon's daughter as a lobbyist. Meanwhile, the Congressman would convince arms of the U.S. military to take on projects by the ex-Sovs.

In Saratov's case, Weldon was particularly impressed with "Ekip" -- a flying saucer, relying on vacuum shell for its lift.

"The fact that they had put together a full-scale prototype -- with very limited resources, because of the cutbacks in the military-industrial base -- that was remarkable to me," Weldon said.

So Weldon asked some folks at the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, to take on the saucer project. The initial prototype was supposed to be 500 pounds -- just a speck compared with the 12-ton craft that Saratov claims to have successfully test flown in the early 1990s.

If memory serves, NAVAIR wound up abandoning the project after a while. And if Admiral Joe Sestak winds up beating Weldon in next month's election, it may be a very, very long time before the saucer takes flight.

(Big ups: Haninah)

Questions Still Surround Mystery Drone

When I wrote with some skepticism about the BattleHog attack drone last week, American Dynamics -- the enigmatic makers of the unmanned combat aerial vehicle, or UCAV -- responded with a huffy comment, a link to their website, and an invitation to visit. After e-mailing and calling them, the drone-builders still remain as mysterious as before.

The question remains: can an unknown outfit really come up with a world-beating UCAV? You don't have to be Boeing or Lockheed, of course, to dream up a brilliant design, or to build an advanced aircraft. But you have to be more than a mom-and-pop outfit, too.

In their comments, "Mark K." from American Dynamics says the company is more substantial than it might initially appear. The fact that the phone company lists the business as a "home security and technology services consultancy" -- that's Verizon's description, not Mark & Co.'s. Further, the company has signed an agreement to buy Eagle’s Nest airport in April. The airport continues to serve Atlantic City and Long beach Island, but part of it is now used as a flight testing area for American Dynamics aircraft. This was apparently the site of the BattleHog’s debut flight - but we have not seen any photos yet.

The company web site mentions American Dynamics' previous work on high-speed hull suspension systems for boats, as well as the BattleHog 100X drone and the WorkHog, a civil version for anyone wanting a 3,000 lb spy plane.

But there’s more: an "advanced hybrid power platform" for ground vehicles, and an even more ambitious drone, the S1K UAS – "a large payload, deep strike Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle." Given that the larger BattleHog 350Xis a stealthy attack craft carrying 10,000 lb internally, the S1K must be a real monster.

Even the sky is not the limit for American Dynamics. Since 2001 they have been working on a Single Stage Orbital Vehicle, inteded to repalce the multi-stage rockets used for putting satellites into orbit today. You couldn't accuse them of failing to think big.

They have a down-to-earth side, too -- with "Integrated Smart Home Systems" which will

help make your home into an active partner in managing your busy lifestyle through the use of automated lighting controls, environmental controls, auxiliary device controls, home theater controls, home security controls, home computer networking, and more.

It’s quite a portfolio for a small and obscure company, but little of it has actually made it to the production stage. The only actual product is the suspension system, as far as we know, and the space rockets and stealth planes remain on the drawing board.

As for BattleHog - we're still waiting to see the evidence. Over to you, American Dynamics...

-- David Hambling

UPDATE 1:40 PM: Thanks to Todd in the comments for digging up the pic.

Congo Drone Crash Kills

As if things weren't enough of a Hobbesian nightmare in the Democratic Republic of Congo, comes this horrible news: a Belgian drone fell from the skies over the Congolese capital city of Kinshasa, "killing one woman and injuring [at least] two others," according to Flight International. It's "believed to be the world's first case of a civilian being killed by a crashing military UAV," or unmanned aerial vehicle.

The Hunter-B drone's "forward and rear engines cut out for unknown reasons just after taking off... [then it] burst into flames when it hit the ground," says South Africa's News 24.

"It is too soon to give reasons as to why the engines cut out," Belgian Lieutenant-Colonel Yves Vermeer, the head of the Eufor [European Union force] UAV unit, added, but said that it was "unlikely" to have been shot down.

On July 28, two days before the first round of the presidential election in the DRC, another UAV was lost when it was shot down over the capital by small-calibre gunfire, injuring eight people.

That one was replaced, so Eufor now has three UAVs left, all provided by the Belgian armed forces, together with light-armoured vehicles, and combat and transport helicopters.

The EU force is made up of about 2 300 soldiers drawn from 20 member states plus Turkey with 1 100 based in Kinshasa and 1 200 backing up in Gabon.

They are there until November 30 to provide security for the presidential and legislative elections in the DRC.

While waiting "to discover the exact causes of the accident, Eufor has suspended all UAV flights," said its spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Thierry Fusalba.

How Israel's Drones Fought the War, Part II

Israeli military chiefs are being taken out to the woodshed for relying on airpower during the summer campaign in Lebanon. "But after-action data and battlefield imagery are revealing great advances in the ability to respond to asymmetric threats," says Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome. Thanks largely to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), "more than 90 percent of the medium-range missile launchers used by Hizbollah were destroyed almost immediately after they fired their first weapon."

By the third night [of the war], the IAF [Israeli Air Force] attained full operational capability of the world’s first Boost Phase Launch Intercept (BPLI) force [maybe it's more of a "a search and destroy operation," as Bill noted in the comments -- ed.] a tightly linked network of manned aircraft and UAVs that saturated the airspace to hunt and immediately kill small, mobile, medium-range missile launchers.

It didn't work against the terror group's teeny-tiny Katyusha rockets. But Israel’s BPLI capability did managed to knock out "more than 100 launchers during the more-than month-long war." UAVs "like the Elbit Hermes 450S Zik, the Shoval (Heron-1/Crusher) and Searcher-2 built by Israel Aircraft Industries" did the lion's share of the work.

“This was the first large-scale use of UAVs, not only for providing a continuous presence over the entire battle area, but in [assisting the direction and delivery of] smart munitions to these very small, well hidden, moving targets,” said Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired IAF major general and former director of Israeli defense research and development...

“This is not like a targeted killing where we have two weeks to plan,” Ben-Israel said. “Here, there’s only a matter of seconds between the time the terrorists emerged to launch these missiles to the time when they returned to their hiding places among innocent civilians. Those medium-range missile launchers became suicide launchers. They were destroyed either before or immediately after they fired their first missile.”

The Israeli Air Force also got better about detecting -- and taking out -- Hezbollah drones. By tweaking "multiple radars never designed to detect such small, slow-moving, pinpoint targets.... F-16C fighter pilots on air patrol [were able] to blast the [unmanned] offenders from Israeli and Lebanese skies with Python-5 dogfighting missiles."

According to Israeli military data, Hizbollah launched four Iranian-made Ababil UAVs during the war. One apparently exploded upon launch; another penetrated Israeli airspace, but crashed just south of the Lebanon border; and the other two were downed over the sea southwest of Haifa and near the area of Tzur in southern Lebanon.

Remnants of the downed drones showed that at least one was equipped with nearly 10 kilograms of explosives, which Israeli intelligence sources believe was destined for Tel Aviv. According to officials here, the UAV that crashed upon launch may have carried a payload of up to 50 kilograms.

Examination of cockpit imagery from one of the engagements shows detection of the target at extremely short range — close enough for the pilot to actually see the UAV. From an extraordinarily low altitude of less than 2,000 feet and at very low speed, the pilot launched his Python-5, which immediately arched and locked on to its target. Imagery shows the missile maneuvering at nearly 90 degrees for a matter of seconds before blasting the gnat-sized target with its explosive warhead.

“This is an historic first for us, and professionals will understand how complicated the mission is. It’s not the classic engagement of an F-16 versus a MiG, where you have a competing aircraft and radar. In this scenario, it’s not plane against plane, but rather network against an asymmetrical target you can barely see,” said the senior IAF official.

BattleHog Drone's Story Stinks

Could a home security consultant operating out of a Manhattan apartment have built the latest and greatest killer drone?

That's what Flight International has reported, in a series of recent articles. According to the magazine, Stefan Amraly and his American Dynamics corporation have put together a new style of unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) – a vertical takeoff and landing machine designed to operate in ‘urban canyons’ and other close terrain.

The BattleHog 100X demonstrator is, supposedly, a 3200-pound aircraft with a 17-foot wingspan, and a weapons load that can include two Hellfires or rocket pods and an M134 minigun.

One of the unusual features is that it has no control surfaces: it is directed entirely by changing the speed and pitch of a ducted fan mounted in the fuselage, a patented item known as “High Torque Aerial Lift.” Toughness is a key selling point: the Kevlar-reinforced composite airframe is designed to withstand 7.62mm rounds from 50m (165ft), as well as near-misses from RPGs. With no moving parts to damage, this could make it an extremely difficult drone to bring down. (And if it does come down it’s specially strengthened to take heavy landings).

Trial flights, including a hover test, allegedly took place in July. BattleHog 100X is claimed to have an endurance of above more than eight hours with a cruising speed of over 200 miles per hour. A bigger version is said to be scheduled for flights in 2008. This will have a 40 foot span and a maximum weight of 16,800kg, including 4,500kg of payload. Armament will include J-DAM guided bombs and AIM-120 AMRAAMs in internal bays, plus a 20mm cannon.

That is, if the Flight International reports are on the money. The BattleHog's makers, American Dynamics, is previously known only from its work on high speed naval vessels, the magazine says. And its CEO, Stefan Amarly, has a business card that "cites a seventh floor office on Broadway in New York City. The same company name and address is identified in the current New York yellow pages business telephone directory as a home security and technology services consultancy." I couldn’t find any information at all about American Dynamics on the Internet. And their odd-ball construction techniques only add to the air of mystery:

American Dynamics took the unusual step of assembling the vehicle inside a black cloth enclosure to prevent its being seen before exhibition opening. Those same screens were again erected to prevent viewing during its disassembly by three people after exhibition closure.

It will be interesting to see how this one pans out. A tough UCAV built to survive in urban environments and engaging the enemy from very close range with a heavy load of weapons has a lot going for it. VTOL means that BattleHogs could be parked close to the battle area and called up when required at short notice – though the eight-hour endurance gives substantial loiter time too. On the other hand, you've got to wonder about something from an unknown supplier based on radical new technology... one that looks a little too much like the flying Hunter/Killer robots in the Terminator movies.

-- David Hambling

Eagle Eyes for Drones & Missiles

In recent years, increasing numbers of military-backed researchers have been borrowing from nature, effectively leveraging millions of years of evolutionary progress. Until we have machines that are as smart, agile and flexible as animals we will have plenty to learn – and robots will increasingly come to resemble living things.

The latest trick learned from nature is called "foveal imaging." Here's how I described it for New Scientist:

Inside an animal's eye, an area at the centre of the retina known as the fovea has a higher concentration of light-sensitive cells than surrounding regions. Showing only the centre of a viewpoint in high focus prevents the brain from being overloaded by high-resolution information.

Now, a computer system that mimics this approach using hardware and software is being developed by Nova Sensors, a company based in California, US. It uses a "detection tracking algorithm" to identify windows of interest within a picture, applying tricks such as motion-tracking, tonal analysis and facial recognition.

Unmanned air vehicles need to carry out real-time target detection and tracking, but are limited by bandwidth and processing power restrictions. That’s where foveal imaging offers big benefits: makers Nova Sensors estimate that for a typical 1024x1024 pixel application, their approach reduces the processor throughput by a factor of 15, and cuts the bandwidth requirement by a factor of five.

Just like digital cameras, infrared sensors are offering more and more detailed images – from los-res, grainy shots to megapixel and beyond. But while these detailed images are nice, it's kind of a waste to expend processor power to make sure every leaf in a tree comes through clear. Instead, you want detail only where it matters, which is what the foveal system provides. It also has the unique advantage that if another enemy does appear out of the foliage, he will be picked up as an ‘area of interest’ and a new high-resolution window will form to show him with crystal clarity.

Take the picture above, for instance. The left panel shows output in 'full resolution' mode, like a conventional imager; the right panel shows foveal regions on one and two eyes, shown in different background resolution conditions.

The high-res windows can also following moving targets - “The ability to 'fly' numerous foveal windows around the large format FPA [Focal Plane Array] for tracking and surveillance applications is a new capability in the industry,” according to Mark Massie, Nova Sensors’ president.

The system is particularly suitable for tracking moving objects, can produce almost perfectly stabilized images from a moving platform, and recognize pre-defined objects. These are all very handy for UAVs -- moving platforms which spend a lot of time following moving targets and looking for defined objects like trucks or people.

The Air Force is also very interested in foveal sensors for munitions, since they provide new capabilities in for terminal guidance. But ultimately, foveal systems will have much wider applications. All sorts of video applications, from videophones to baby monitoring to home security, will benefit from this technology. I suspect that this will be like the many technologies discussed in Weapons Grade where a military development paves the way for a technology which becomes ubiquitous.

-- David Hambling

'Invisible' Boomerang 'Bot

It's nice to have a set of robotic eyes in the sky. But surveillance drones tend to be loud, and rather obvious, as they keep watch above a Middle Eastern city. Many guerilla types know by now to avoid the things.

That's why a small company out of Minneapolis, VeraTech Areo, has built a hand-held spy drone that it says is practically invisible. Battery powered and shaped like a boomerang, the "Phantom Sentinel" unmanned aeiral vehicle (UAV) "is in constant motion and the center of [its] mass is located outside of the fuselage," Catherine MacRae Hockmuth tells us in the current issue of Defense Technology International. "As the aircraft spins, it disappears from vision," an AeroTech fact sheet adds.

Even better, the company promises, is that the folding, backpack-ready drone "has a uniquely minimal cross section allowing it to 'slice' through even the most adverse weather conditions that would keep conventional UAV systems on the ground. The rotational inertia generated in flight allows the UAV to self level and maintain a very high degree of stability, even while hovering."

There don't seem to be any military orders for the Phantom, yet. But the company does have a patents for its hard-to-spot flights -- and a wacky, techno-themed video, too.

Drones, Blimps Lose Out in Border War

For those of you hoping for hordes of drones and blimps to start patrolling the Mexican and Canadian borders, there's bad news this morning. "After a face-off among large military contractors, the Boeing Company was picked by the Homeland Security Department to lead a high-tech effort to secure borders," the Times reports. And unlike proposals from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, Boeing's plan for the Secure Border Initiative, or SBInet, doesn't rely that much on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or airships.

"Boeing's proposal relied heavily on a network of 1,800 towers, most of which would need to be erected along the borders with Mexico and Canada. Each tower would be equipped with a variety of sensors, including cameras and heat and motion detectors," the Washington Post notes. Boeing teamed up for the project with an Israeli company that built a bunch of the imaging equipment used in Israel's controversial fence along the West Bank. That gear, Boeing said, would be less risky and expensive than UAVs or airships -- even though both have been used to watch over southern Arizona for illegals.

But, not to worry: the Times says that there are still a few drones in the Boeing plan -- "small, relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched from a pickup truck by an agent in the field and then fly for, perhaps, 90 minutes." I'm guessing the paper means these drones here.

"Homeland Security has been criticized harshly in recent years for initiatives that have either failed or far exceeded their budgets. In one case, cameras that the department installed on the borders broke down in bad weather," the Post observes.

"The administration has spent $429 million of the taxpayer's money to try and secure our borders with two already-abandoned border security programs," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss). He expressed concern that the same thing will happen to SBInet.

Mindful of that record, Boeing emphasized that all its technology has been proven to work. "The low-risk approach is probably going to carry weight here."

"The contract will at least initially be much more limited than some industry officials had expected, valued at $80 million instead of the $2 billion estimate given for the six-year deal," the Times writes.

Attack Of The Genius Robot Cockroach Swarm

I have seen some radical ideas for attacking deep bunkers, but this beats 'em all...

Having previously looked at Deep Digger and the Supercavitating penetrator, I was intrigued by an Air Force research Laboratory program called “Creative Robots to Defeat Deeply Buried Underground Targets” After finally getting clearance, I was able to interview Stephen Thaler of Imagination Engines Inc, the man behind the project. Thaler is evangelical about his brand of artificial intelligence, and the result is a piece in Wired News - "Experimental AI Powers Robot Army."

It’s quite a project. The idea is to develop software to make a collection of robots smart enough to break into, explore and neutralize deep bunkers. The challenges are gigantic.

The robots have to deal with an unspecified number of unknown obstacles as they travel via cable runs, air ducts, service pipes or other channels, dealing with grilles, bars, doors or other checks.

Then they need to correctly identify the target (waste bin, or WMD container?), which is easy for people but hard for robots – and this task requires being out of radio contact.

They have to act in concert and help rather than hinder each other, co-ordinating their efforts to explore and map the facility.

And all the time they have to be able to avoid, outwit or defeat the human defenders of the bunker, whose tactics, numbers and abilities cannot be predicted.

Thaler’s believes his software can do all this. It’s an unusual neural network with the ability to ‘dream up’ new ideas, exploring likely approaches before putting them into action. For example, give it a set of robotic limbs and it will quickly find the most effective way of using them – a video here shows a six-legged robot figuring out how to walk from scratch with no programming in eight minutes flat.

Imagination Engines’ capabilities also extend to sensors. Thaler describes products including a million-pixel array which can interpret input ‘an order of magnitude’ faster than any comparable system and another with formidable powers of recognition, such as distinguishing a T-72 from an Abrams. There is no programming involved: just show the system the two different objects and it figures out how to tell them apart.

The most guarded aspect of the Creative Robots is their tactical intelligence, which seems to be considerable – Thaler describes them as "Machiavellian" in how devious they can be. The Creativity Machine's ability to explore the entire range of possibilities means that in principle it could dream up any tactic that a human could, and more besides.

Within the next few months the software toolkit for Creative Robots will be available for the military. It will run on any standard hardware, turning a pack of dumb robots into smart team players capable of carrying out missions on their own. Thaler believes their speed makes Creative Robots superior to those that rely on human control, “performing at near-human levels of intelligence at Terahertz clock rates, while our joy-stick controlled robots are performing effectively at the 4 Hz clock rates characteristic of the brain.”

The possibilities for civilian use are tremendous. There are a vast number of ‘hard problems’ involved in getting robots to interact with the everyday world which require intelligence. Thaler believes that he has the solution. Look out for a host of commercial and industrial applications.

Dean Vieau, a consultant with many years of experience in the fields of Controls and Machine Vision, is an enthusiastic supporter. In one case study he carried out, Vieau found that a solution using Imagination Engines software was twenty times faster to develop and a hundred times cheaper than the existing approach.

“Imagination Engines represents a significant advancement in the realms of AI. Not just esoteric academic conjecture but real world paths to concrete results.”

As usual the military are developing world-changing technology that will filter down to the rest of us later. But are we really ready for killer robots yet?

“There is a reluctance to entrust lethal missions to autonomous robots,” says Thaler. “However, the bad guys may not share the same reservations. The escalation is inevitable.”

-- David Hambling

Predators to the Rescue

Where Hurricane Katrina hit last year, the Air Force wanted to send in Predator drones, to serve as robotic spotters for search-and-rescue teams. The Federal Aviation Administration, still squeamish about drones flying in civilian airspace, negged the plan, however -- too much risk of a crash with a manned aircraft, the bureaucrats said.

But a new deal between the flyboys and the FAA should allow the Predators to pitch in, the next time disaster hits.

"A Predator would be limited to flying in restricted airspace at an altitude of 19,000 feet," Defense News reports. "Other aircraft would be expected to stay out of the Predator’s way."

On short notice, the four disassembled [Predators] and their trailer-like control center could be loaded into a C-17 Globemaster III transport plane or on trucks and dispatched to the disaster region...

From an airfield as far as 150 miles from the search area, a team of two pilots and two sensor operators would handle the Predators’ takeoffs and landings.

Back at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., pilots and sensor operators would fly the search-and-rescue phase of the sortie and be in radio or phone contact with recovery operations workers. The Air Force uses a similar split operation for flights over Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a disaster zone, Air Force tactical air control parties and others could use laptop computers hooked up to small antennas to view live Predator images and talk with the crews flying the aircraft.

In addition to sending pictures from its thermal imaging and video cameras, the Predator can also determine location coordinates for rescuers. For example, the Predator can provide an approximate Global Positioning System map coordinate for anything it sees. At night, the aircraft’s laser spotter can mark areas for rescuers wearing night-vision goggles.

Funky Drone Down for the Count

Even in the sometimes-wacky world of next-generation drones, Boeing's X-50A Dragonfly was a bit of an oddball. Helicopter-ish blades "that operated on the same principle as a rotating lawn sprinkler" would spin, to lift the thing off of the ground. Then, the blades would lock in place, forming a wing, so the 18-foot, 1500-pound, turbofan-powered Dragonfly could buzz around fast, like an airplane.

Officials at Darpa were hoping that the machine would provide "a high-speed, rapid response capability from a VTOL [vertical take-off and landing] air vehicle with significant range and stealth improvements."

But for now, those hopes have been dashed. The program has been axed, Aero-Net News reports. "The decision marks the end of the $51.8 million program, with Boeing using the leftover funds to compile a report on just what went wrong."

Right from the start, the Dragonfly was troubled. More standard, VTOL plane combos, like the tilt-rotor Osprey and Harrier jump jet, were tough enough to handle. But the X-50A's "canard rotor/wing" was particularly tricky. In copter mode, it called for "exhaust from the aircraft's turbofan engine [to be] directed up the rotor assembly and through outlets at the rotor tips to cause the rotor to spin," Aviation Week notes. "For fixed-wing flight, the exhaust was directed out the aircraft's tail, causing the rotor to stop spinning and act as a wing, while additional lift was provided by the aircraft's fuselage."

The Dragonfly's first test flight -- in December, 2003 -- came a year later than expected. Another flight, fifteen months after, ended disastrously; cross-coupling in the rotor controls caused the drone to crash.

A second, back-up vehicle was enlisted. And in December, 2005, the Dragonfly successfully flew. But by April of this year, there was more bad news: another crash. "18 minutes in," Aero-Net News says, "the prototype once again lost control during a transition attempt [from fixed-wing flight to rotor]."

DARPA says the second prototype was lost due to poor low-speed control authority, as well as extreme sensitivity to wake strength off the vehicle's rotor. The agency states the accident occurred after rotor wake hit the fuselage, and caused the Dragonfly's nose to pitch up violently -- and in excess of the abilities of the control system to recover.

How Israel's Drones Fought the War

Israel pioneered the art of using drones in combat. So it's a little surprising that the robotic spy planes got so little play in the accounts of the Sabras' recent conflict with Hezbollah. Flight International tries to fix that, with a detail-rich report card on how the Israeli unmanned air force performed.

With the outbreak of hostilities on 12 July, the air force focused its efforts on suppressing Hezbollah's launch capabilities, cutting off its resupply routes from Syria and destroying the fully Hezbollah-controlled quarter of Beirut. UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] served as the eyes and ears for these operations, launching from bases in central and northern Israel and also from landing strips usually employed by crop-spraying aircraft after rockets landed near air force facilities in northern Israel...

Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) sources say the air force's recently delivered Heron 1 UAVs performed "beyond expectation" during the war, and demonstrated the full extent of the type's endurance while flying day and night missions over enemy territory. Heron air vehicles flew hundreds of sorties and amassed thousands of flight hours carrying 250kg (550lb) payloads comprising a variety of sensors. IAI says the medium-altitiude, long-endurance vehicle provided unmatched reliability, with no mission aborts.

Air force sources say the Heron was used mainly for electronic-intelligence missions over Lebanon. The service's IAI Searcher 2s also flew thousands of mission hours with excellent reliability, IAI says.

The air force also accumulated 15,000 flight hours with its Elbit Systems Hermes 450 UAVs in the conflict, flying round-the-clock missions with the type, which had previously recorded an annual usage rate of 10,000h. Three Hermes 450s crashed during the war: two as a result of technical problems and one due to operator error, with air force Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters having subsequently bombed the wreckage. Lebanese sources quoted in the Arab language press say the Hermes 450 was also used for precision attack missions. The Israeli air force declines to comment...

Sources say Hezbollah was ready for the UAVs and in many cases camouflaged rocket launchers, particularly with the use of special "carpets" that absorbed the sun's heat and radiated it at night to affect the efficiency of Israeli thermal sensors. "In many cases we had to detect the launch flash to determine the location of the launcher," says an air force source.

As well as highlighting the need for improved sensors, the campaign has prompted the Israeli air and defence forces to work together on an operating concept that will allow their UAVs to combine to provide a more detailed picture of an area of interest. "We will need improved optical payloads for day and night and a joint operational pattern between the Hermes 450 and the Skylark mini UAV," says one source. Another lesson learned is the need to equip tactical UAVs with countermeasures similar to those carried by manned aircraft.

Robotic Frisbees of Death

It ain't easy, picking out evil-doers in the urban canyons of the Middle East; there are so many places to hide. Taking 'em out can be even harder, what with all those noncombatants hanging nearby. But the Air Force thinks it might have an answer to this most vexing problem in counter-insurgency: frisbees.

Not just any frisbees, mind you. Robotic frisbees. Heavily armed robotic frisbees.

The Air Force recently tapped Triton Systems, out of Chelmsford, Mass, to develop such a "Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munition."

"The 3-D maneuverability of the Frisbee-UAV [unammned aerial vehicle] will provide revolutionary tactical access and lethality against hostiles hiding in upper story locations and/or defiladed behind obstacles," the company promises.

The circular drones will be lanuched "from munitions dispensers or by means of a simple mechanism similar to a shotgun target (skeet) launcher," Triton adds. Once in the air, they'll be tele-operated by soldiers on the ground. Or, if needed, the fightin' frisbees will pilot themselves as they hunt for guerrillas.

Once they catch up to the baddies, the drones will use a series of armor-piercing explosives, shooting jets of molten metal, to eliminate their targets. And these MEFP [Multiple Explosively Formed Penetrator] "warheads will be controllable so as to provide a single large fragment (bunker-buster) or tailorable pattern of smaller fragments (unprotected infantry or light utility vehicles)." The decision of whether to go bunker-buster or infantry-annihilator mode can either be determined by the drones' human operators, "or autonomous target classification routine built into the UAV."

Now, Triton's Frisbee-UAV concept isn't the first time roboticists have looked into disc-shaped drones. From 1992 to 1998, the Navy experimented with a set of unmanned, 250-pound, six-foot-diameter flying saucers. In 2002, Norweigan researchers showed off plans for a circular flying robot "inspired at least partly by the design of Star Trek's USS Enterprise," New Scientist noted.

Around the same time, at the University of Manchester, Jonathan Potts studied how best to control UAVs "based on the Frisbee TM sports disc shape."

"The Frisbee disc has proven its potential on the sports field as a platform for short free-flights," Potts wrote back in an '01 paper. Without "predefined flight orientation," a Frisbee drone "offers novel flight characteristics and manoeuvrability. It is potentially suitable for a variety of mission objectives fulfilling surveillance, communications, munitions and/or airborne radar warning systems."

These days, Potts is focusing less on Frisbee-shaped robots -- and more on Frisbee competitors. "In recent years Jonny has applied his scientific knowledge to develop a range of sports discs with improved aerodynamic performance," says the website of his new company, which makes a line of "super-durable" spinners for $16 apiece. Explosives and robotic controls are not included.

J-UCAS Takes Another Hit

Hot on the heels of the Air Force's February withdrawal from the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) and the Navy's takeover of the promising program, the attack drone is about to take another hit.

"[A] co-worker who has good friend in the congressional budget office says the UCAS-D (as they call J-UCAS now) is headed for a $200 million plus cut next year," reports a Defense Tech source.

What this will mean for Boeing and Northrop Grumman (each of which is building demonstrators) remains to be seen.

Then there's this puzzling piece of news from the Farnborough air show, as reported by Flight International:

The U.S. Navy has begun studying the need for a new stealthy strike aircraft -- a mission that was once to have been performed by the A-12, cancelled in 1991. "They will do a formal analysis of alternatives at some point," says Chris Chadwick, Boeing vice- president and general manager global strike systems.

This is another stealth strike aircraft on top of the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning? Will it be manned? Is this just another repackaging of N-UCAS, like what the Air Force did in turning J-UCAS into its new Long Range Strike study?

Color me confused.

--David Axe

Slate Takes on Mirsad-1

Dan Kois at Slate called the other day with some questions about drones, especially the Hezbollah model that Israel reportedly shot down on Monday. Today his story on the subject went live:

The Hezbollah drone, an Iranian-built Mirsad-1, is somewhere between a Raven and a Predator in size and less sophisticated than either. The Mirsad-1 cannot communicate around the globe via satellite technology, and it has no internal GPS navigation system. As a result, the Hezbollah drone was probably operated from a high hilltop by one or two people with joysticks and a laptop—with a drone like this one, it's imperative that the operator never lose direct line of sight.

Let's give Dan some clickage love here.

--David Axe

Killer Swarms: The New Generation

I have an article in this month’s BBC Focus magazine –- “the world's best science and technology monthly” -- about swarming robots. Previously I've looked at the potential for the deployment of large numbers of battlefield UAVs, but this goes into some detail about what flocking and swarming behavior actually mean and how they are being applied to robotics.

Nature is way ahead of us here. A flock of a thousand starlings can maneuver together with ease, changing flight plans from moment to moment, and without any central control. The methods they use are remarkably subtle and effective, and researchers are borrowing these from nature to enable multiple UAVs to operate in the same airspace without the risk of collision. The pioneering first flight of a flock of Onyx guided parachutes last year was a small milestone in unmanned flight.

Swarms are a level up from flocks. With swarms there is communication between individuals – known as stigmergy – and the result is incredibly complex, ‘intelligent’ behavior. This is what iRobots Swarmbots are are about. The Swarmbots have already shown their ability to co-operatively explore and navigate, for example searching an area in the most efficient way without central co-ordination.

But greater levels of integration are possible than nautre can achieve. The article includes an interview with Prof Owen Holland who is building Gridswarm:

Imagine a large group of small unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles that can fly with the agility of a flock of starlings in a city square at dusk. Imagine linking their onboard computers together across a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless network and configuring them to form an enormous distributed parallel computer. Imagine using this huge computational resource to process the sensory data gathered by the swarm, and to direct its collective actions. You have now grasped the idea of a flying gridswarm.

The latest incarnation of this concept is the Ultraswarm an indoor flying cluster computer composed of miniature robot helicopters.

Although the article concentrates on civilian applications, from space explorartion to firefighting and domestic cleaning, most of the really advanced work in this area is military.

Swarms are extremely robust, have a high level of built-in redundancy and are well suited to complex and rapidly-changing environments. Swarming robots are a natural for the battlefield. Because the individual elements can be made small and cheap, swarms can consist of a very large number of units – and the success of this approach in nature hints at how effective it is.

UAV swarms are likely to arrive sooner rather than later. Check out the Killer Bee It’s a flying wing with a span of less than seven feet and an airframe made of three components. Its thick wing means it can be released from aircraft at high speeds. It has eight-hour endurance with a twenty-pound payload.

A unique feature of the KillerBee’s geometry is that it can be stacked. Numerous planes can be stored in a small space. This, plus the ability to air-deploy the KillerBee at high speeds, means an airplane can release a single KillerBee for a close look at a dangerous target, or it can release a swarm of KillerBees to overwhelm the defenses of a target.

As recounted in my book, Weapons Grade, things are likely to develop extremely quickly over the next few years, with swarming systems producing a transformation comparable to precision weapons. There are no technological barriers, just cultural ones.

The new paradigm for air power is coming, and it's about to kick the door down.

-- David Hambling

UPDATE: Contradictory reports over whether the drone shot down by the IDF yesterday carried a warhead. Certainly Hezbollah are aware of the possibilities.
"You can load the Mirsad plane with a quantity of explosives ranging from 40 to 50 kilos and send it to its target," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is quoted as saying in November 2004. "Do you want a power plant, water plant, military base? Anything!"
Range of the Mirsad-1 is likely to be well over 100 Km.

Inside Global Hawk

The 18th Reconnaissance Squadron -- newest operators of the spiffy Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk drone -- offered me total access during a visit last week. I was impressed with the bird before my visit; I left even more so.

Nearly a decade after its inception, the Air Force is finally migrating the Global Hawk drone from demonstration to production; the 18th standing up at Beale Air Force Base in northern California in May is just one aspect of this transition. Co-located 12th RS flies operational missions while the 18th trains pilots, sensor operators and maintainers. Now the Reserve 13th RS and the California Air National Guard have begun contributing crews to the active-duty squadrons. All this represents the "regularization" of Global Hawk ops.

Meanwhile, Global Hawk production is ramping up at Northrop Grumman's Palmdale, California, plant, with around 17 aircraft worth $70 mil apiece under assembly for the Air Force. These are in addition to the seven (cheaper) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration aircraft delivered from 1998, three of which were lost in accidents. The Navy has taken delivery of two RQ-4As to explore its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance concept. One A model flown by the 12th RS is deployed to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A maintenance trainer A model is permanently parked in the 18th RS hangar on the same ramp space occupied by the 9th RW's Lockheed Martin U-2S Dragon Ladies. Finally, the first RQ-4Bs with longer wings and more payload capability begin rolling off the production line in late August. The Air Force plans to field more than 50 Global Hawks by 2015.

The seemingly modest size of the projected RQ-4 fleet belies its enormous potential. The aircraft can orbit at up to 65,000 feet for as many as 30 hours while simultaneously carrying an Electro-Optical camera, an Infra-Red camera and a Synthetic Aperture Radar with Moving Target Indicator. Sensor data is relayed via satellite to a ground station (see pic at left) for processing and dissemination, giving theater commanders a multi-spectral bird's-eye view of the battlefield.

The aircraft's endurance means it can do the work of many older (manned) aircraft such as the U-2, according to 18th RS commander Colonel Christopher Jella. Due to the limited endurances of the human body and traditional life-support systems, a U-2 force would need at least three aircraft and as many as 10 pilots to maintain a 24-hour orbit -- and it would do so at greater cost while risking those pilots' lives. Two Global Hawks could provide indefinite constant surveillance of a battlefield while risking no lives. While there are no cost savings in personnel (the Global Hawk community maintains a high pilot-to-aircraft ration in order to limit its crews to four-hour shifts), by cutting back on take-offs and landings (where most wear and tear occurs) Global Hawk operations reduce maintenance costs by over a given period versus manned aircraft.

A rough calculus indicates that 50 Global Hawks might do the work of more than 100 U-2s. Considering that today's U-2 force numbers slightly more than 30 aircraft, this means a tremendous leap in the U.S. Air Force's surveillance capability. With the U.S. Navy, Australia, Germany and the U.K., among others, considering RQ-4 purchases, one imagines a robust future surveillance constellation for democratic nations.

During my visit, I got to poke around the containerized Mission Control Element, where pilots and sensor operators crew (via Ku-band satellite datalink; see pic at right) aircraft that might be flying on the other side of the globe. I also checked out the similar Launch and Recovery Element, which takes off and lands the bird from its deployed location using a line-of-sight datalink. Plus there was a visit to the 18th RS hangar, where maintainers toiled on the squadron's RQ-4A. To call this remote-controlled plane BIG is an understatement.

There has been a lot of Congressional waffling on the Air Force's recent request to retire the U-2 in favor of the Global Hawk. I was skeptical of the proposal myself until my visit. The U-2 is an impressive aircraft in its own right, but with Global Hawks rolling off the production line and proving themselves overseas, the old Dragon Lady's days are numbered.

Check out some sweet pics at my Flickr!

--David Axe

Who Killed the Killer Drone? (Redux)

Lockheed Martin's recent unveiling of its Polecat UAV might be related to the nascent Air Force program to field a new bomber by 2018. But then, it might not. Some industry insiders believe the Air Force is bent on keeping pilots in bomber cockpits, no matter what.

After years of steady growth in funding, development and operational use, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have begun to rival — and, in some cases, exceed — the capability of manned aircraft.

The rapid maturing of military UAVs into armed unmanned combat aerial vehicles was seen in one of the most promising armed drone programs, the joint unmanned air combat system, or J-UCAS.

J-UCAS began its life at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1998. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman built jet-powered demonstrators: the X-45C and the X-47B, respectively. The X-45 was equipped for in-flight refueling and optimized for Air Force missions that demanded a high degree of stealth. The X-47 was less stealthy, but longer-ranged and designed to operate from Navy aircraft carrier decks.

After seven years of successful design and testing, in November 2005, the Defense Department transferred J-UCAS to a joint Air Force and Navy office and scheduled a fly-off between the demonstrators.

But then, in February 2006, the Pentagon ordered the Navy to take over J-UCAS. Air Force killer drone funding was redirected to a new, vaguely defined, "next-generation long-range strike" development program that, according to observers, is likely to include a mix of unmanned and manned bomber aircraft.

Just months after its graduation from fringe research status to major procurement program, J-UCAS had been downgraded to Navy UCAS, or N-UCAS. The X-47 was largely unaffected, but the X-45 had lost its sponsor and, it seemed at first, any hope of ever reaching production.

One Boeing employee who worked on the X-45 program said the Air Force’s about-face was a long time coming. He asked to not be quoted by name because his views do not reflect the company’s official stance.

"We knew even from early 1999 and the original X-45A UCAV contract that we were fighting a political, cultural and budget prejudice that could kill us," said the employee. Many of the Boeing workers from the X-45 program, he said, were angered by the abrupt cancellation of J-UCAS just when they were nearly "on the cusp of making history in the aviation world."

He speculated that the Air Force’s decision to withdraw from the program was partly financial — mostly to ensure that the J-UCAS would not drain any procurement funds from high-profile manned aviation programs such as the F-22 and the F-35 fighter jets. Another possible explanation for the Air Force backing away from J-UCAS, the Boeing employee said, is that the X-45 was running headlong against the Air Force’s pilot culture that prefers dropping bombs from cockpits, rather than from ground control centers.

Read more in my feature on the late J-UCAS in this month's National Defense Magazine. The piece is co-written with National Defense editor Sandra Erwin.

--David Axe

P.S. -- Big thanks to the Defense Tech readers who stopped by the San Diego Comic Con last weekend to save me from hours of talking about Spiderman's new costume with sweaty geeks in weird hats.

Israeli Drone Attacks Own Troops

The Israeli Air Force "revealed on Tuesday that it had prevented a severe disaster" when it stopped an armed drone that was "shooting at Israeli troops."

"A senior Air Force officer said that the UAV opened fire on ground troops operating in Bint Jbeil after receiving the coordinates from the Golani Brigade," according to the Jerusalem Post. "The fire was stopped when the IAF realized the mistake. No one was wounded in the incident."

This is the first time I've heard of a UAV attacking friendly forces. There's no word on what kind of drone was being used. But I've seen at least one Israeli-designed unmanned plane -- the Hunter -- rigged up with high explosive Viper Strike anti-tank rounds.

High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled

Lockheed Martin has pulled the lid off of a secret, stealthy, high-flying drone. Built and flown by its famous "Skunk Works" division, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could serve as a model for a new generation of robotic aircraft that hits targets halfway around the world.

With a 90-foot wingspan and a tailless design, the "Polecat" UAV looks like a smaller version of the B-2 stealth bomber. And like the B-2, the drone has been built to be stealthy and sneaky. But the twin-engine Polecat is "90 percent composite materials, rather than metal," the L.A. Daily News notes. "The vehicle is also made from less than 200 parts," adds Aviation Week. "Adhesives are used rather than rivets, decreasing the amount of labor needed to construct it -- that approach also contributed to a lower radar cross section inherent in the design."

The Polecat has taken two subsonic flights, around 15,000 ft. But, eventually, the idea is to fly it 60,000 and higher -- and break the sound barrier. Up there, contrails don't form, Jane's observes, so the plane can stay hidden even better. Plus, Lockheed wants to see how its composites hold up at high altitudes.

Skunk Works is also trying to rig Polecat up with "a fully autonomous flight control and mission-handling system that will allow future UAVs to conduct their missions, from take-off to landing, without the intervention of human operators," Jane's adds.

Already hard at work on a number of shape-shifting planes, Lockheed is working on ways for the Polecat and future UAVs to alter their structure -- and change their roles mid-mission, Jane's continues. An "extended-wing long-loitering [recon] planform" could suddenly change into "a swept-wing attack configuration."

The addition of a tail, for example, that could morph from a horizontal into a vertical configuration - to allow a laminar-flow wing to fly and manoeuvre without undue risk in the thin air above 60,000 ft. A morphing tail might also be a desirable feature for a carrier-borne UAV.

The company built the plane with $27 million of its own money over an 18-month period. But with the Air Force already pouring money in to high-altitude drone development -- and looking to put a new, multi-billion dollar fleet of long-range bombers in the air by 2018, that could be money extremely well spent.

UPDATE 2:49 PM: Lockheed is doing more than building giant drones. The company is making itty-bitty, teeny-weeny UAVs, too. Darpa just gave Lockheed a $1.7 million, 10-month contract to build a drone "similar in size and shape to a maple tree seed."

A chemical rocket enclosed in its one-bladed wing will power a sensor payload module more than 1,100 yards. Delivered from a hover and weighing up to 0.07 ounces, the module will be interchangeable based on mission requirements. Besides controlling lift and pitch, the wing will also house telemetry, communications, navigation, imaging sensors, and battery power. The NAV [nano air vehicle] will be about 1.5 inches long and have a maximum takeoff weight of about 0.35 ounces.

In typical operation, a warfighter will launch the NAV and fly it toward the target by viewing its flight path through a camera embedded in the wing. Like a maple tree seed, the one-bladed device will rotate in flight, but its camera will provide a stable forward view and transmit images back to a small, hand-held display. As the system matures, a simple autopilot aboard the NAV will provide limited autonomous operations. Once the NAV delivers its payload, it will return to the warfighter for collection and refurbishment.

UPDATE 07/24/06 4:06 PM: It turns out this secret UAV wasn't built, -- it was printed, New Scientist notes.

In rapid prototyping, a three-dimensional design for a part - a wing strut, say - is fed from a computer-aided design (CAD) system to a microwave-oven-sized chamber dubbed a 3D printer. Inside the chamber, a computer steers two finely focussed, powerful laser beams at a polymer or metal powder, sintering it and fusing it layer by layer to form complex, solid 3D shapes.

The technique is widely used in industry to make prototype parts - to see if, for instance, they are the right shape and thickness for the job in hand. Now the strength of parts printed this way has improved so much that they can be used as working components.

About 90 per cent of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.

(Big ups: Eric)

Iran Missile Drone Bomb Hits Israelis, U.A.V. Pioneers

UPDATE 07/15/06 11:19 AM: There's an old saw about war: that first reports are always wrong. Looks like that the case about this unmanned plane attack. "A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon," Fox News reports.

The attack on Friday night had raised widespread concern in the Israeli military because initial information indicated that the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.

But the army's investigation into the attack, which left four Israeli sailors missing, showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Another Hezbollah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it.

UPDATE 07/15/06 12:29 PM: Bill Roggio is now throwing cold water on the missile theory. "The use of a ground based anti-ship missile system in these attacks, while certainly a possibility, is unlikely as the characteristics of this system would certainly have been detected by the Israeli Defense Forces," he writes. "A UAV launched missile system, on the other hand, would be a more stealthy system. The UAVs are difficult to detect as they can fly in below radar, [and] can be flown by remote visual methods."

Stay tuned.

"An unmanned Hezbollah aircraft rigged with explosives slammed into an Israeli warship late Friday, causing heavy damage to the vessel," the AP reports. It's the first time the terrorist group -- any terrorist group -- has used a drone in combat, as far as I know.

Hezbollah has flown simple "Misrad-1" unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, twice before, in November 2004 and April 2005. But those were reconnaissance flights, last just a couple of minutes each. And the drones were spotted fairly quickly, both times.

But, as Defense Tech noted in the Spring, the UAV had the potential to be much, much worse -- "a suicide bomber on steroids, basically."

That's what seems to have happened around 8:30pm Friday night to a Saar 5 navy gunship, ten miles off of the Lebanese coast, according to Ynetnews.

It was reported that the stern of an Israeli navy war ship suffered a direct hit in an attack by Hizbullah, which damaged the helicopter landing pad area. The hit caused a conflagration, which was extinguished. No one was hurt in the fire.

Shortly afterwards, crewmembers assessed the damage to the ship and discovered the hit was more severe than originally thought, and had caused damage to the ship’s internal operating systems...

Four crewmembers are reported to be missing.

There's more than bit of irony in Israel being hit with drone attacks. For years, the Israeli military was the world's leader in unmanned aviation. During the first Gulf War, Iraqi troops surrendered to Israel-made, American-run Pioneer UAVs. U.S. Army drone mechanics had to learn Hebrew, to repair their Israeli drones.

But in recent years, the rest of the world has caught up. "Some 32 nations are developing or manufacturing more than 250 models" of UAVs, according to the Defense Department.

In response, Pentagon extreme science arm Darpa has launched a $5 million per year effort to build a drone-killing UAV. But the results of that effort are still years away. For now, more conventional methods will have to be used to guard against terrorists' robotic air force.

(Big ups: SMT)

Ja! German Bot Spies By Satellite

Check it out, frauleins: The German Federal Armed Forces are experimenting with a prototype, satellite-controlled robot that can go on recon missions, while its human operator hangs out in Berlin.

The satellite link, which can transmit video at 2 Mbps and receive control channel data up to 128 Kbps, makes the RoboScout something of an oddball in the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) world. As Peter J. Brown notes in the latest issue of Via Satellite magazine, satellite signals are easy to lose in the urban canyons and forested areas where UGVs are likely to operate. Plus, the uneven ground can cause the 'bots to tilt by 20 or 30 degrees in one direction or another -- which means locking onto a satellite gets even trickier. Most robot-makers go for radio-control, instead.

RoboScout was one of more than 20 UGVs shown off during May's European Land-Robot Trial -- sort of a Continental answer to Darpa's Grand Challenge, but without the "'winners' and 'losers,'" the organizers note. The machines were put through a series of obstacles during their time under the Bundeswehr's care in Hammelburg -- "stairs, narrow passes, and collapsed ceilings... as well as ditches, fences and fire." And from the looks of the couple-thousand pictures taken at the event, RoboScout (and many of the other UGVs) handled themselves rather well. Achtung!

Robo-Doggie's New Pal

Defense Tech loves robots, of course. But our favorite of 'bot of all is the four-legged mechanical pack mules known as the BigDog. We've been barking about the robo-fido, ever since it was a sketch on a drawing pad.

So imagine the joy at Defense Tech HQ when we learned that there was a new puppy in the mechanical litter -- a second BigDog. The two bots were running around Marine Corps Air Station New River recently -- along with an exoskeleton-clad marine and a new trauma pod.

The roboteers at Boston Dynamics have been training the 165-pound, two-and-a-half foot-tall BigDogs to carry gear for soldiers and marines over uneven terrain. So far, they've gotten the pooches to "run at a rate of 3.3 mph, climb a 35 degree slope and carry a 120 pound load," according to Marine Corps News. The bots have proved sturdy enough to take a big kick, and keep on walkin'.

Maybe it's this sturdiness that's inspiring some to think about the BigDogs are most than just mechanical beasts of burden. This article -- and take this a can of salty Alpo -- says Darpa "is considering plans such as weaponizing the BigDog robots."

Down, boy. Down.

(Big ups: BB)

Enter the BomBot

One of the nice things about being editor of Defense Tech is that people occasionally show up at your apartment with military robots. Take last Friday, for example, when Bradley DeRoos and Alex Gizis dragged one of their brand-new BomBots into my dining room.

600 of the machines have already shipped to troops in Iraq. Another 1800 are being built. And if the BomBots look more like toy trucks than military-grade hardware well, there's a reason for that. That's exactly what the things are.

Gizis spent several years designing bad-ass digital controllers for RC cars -- the fastest of their kind, working in the 2.4 GHz band. They transmit drivers' orders in a hurry. And the controllers send all kinds of telemetry data back, like engine temperature and battery strength.

It all worked so well, Gizis figured the military might be interested in some cheap, remote-controlled bomb-spotters. The current crop of ordinance-disposal robots cost $100,000 or more, he knew. Even the smaller, dumbed-down Marcbots, used on route patrol, can run about $15,000 each. Maybe, Gizis thought, he could come up with something cheaper.

So Gizis started playing around with Traxxas E-maxx RC trucks, to see if they could do the job. At the same time, some Air Force Research Laboratory engineers (working with the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division) were also fiddling with E-maxxes, to handle the same duties. But they couldn't get the radios to work.

Eventually, everyone was brought together by the National Center for Defense Robotics. And within a couple of months, the first BomBots were being sent off to Iraq for testing.

At 15 pounds, 22 inches high, the miniature truck isn't exactly bomb-proof. It doesn't have to be be. At $5,000 a pop -- dirt cheap, by military standards -- the bot becomes a sound investment even if it's blown sky-high after the fourth or fifth use. You could even imagine the BomBots keeping up with Humvees on route patrol, since the machines have a top speed of 35 miles per hour and a range of 1500 feet.

Now, Gizis claims the trucks are also going to be used for bomb disposal, as well as bomb spotting. And that's a little harder to imagine -- despite the nifty, six-inch loading bay, big enough to dump off a C4 brick. EOD techs tend to be pretty particular about where they place their bang. The BomBots don't have the dexterity to pull off much precision. But for a souped-up RC truck, the machines are pretty cool.

Who's that at the door now, I wonder?

Senators Love Robots

The Senate Armed Service Committee loves drones. They're so smitten, in fact, that they're trying to force the Pentagon to prove why any new weapons system should be manned at all. Check out this snippet from the Committee's version of the 2007 Defense budget:

The Secretary of Defense shall... develop a policy applicable throughout the Department of Defense on research, development, test, and evaluation, procurement, and operation of unmanned systems [which] shall include the... preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems, including a requirement under any such program for the development of a manned system for a certification that an unmanned system is incapable of meeting program requirements. (emphasis mine)

Now, this unmanned romance began a long time ago. Six years back, SASC Chairman John Warner called for one third of all military vehicles -- both in the air and on the ground -- to be robotic by 2015. Nobody expected it to happen, literally. But, as National Journal noted at the time, "Warner has already achieved his first objective. He has fired his shotgun into the heavens and gotten everybody's attention."

How Does That Grab Ya?

Ever tried one of those mechanical cranes where you try to pick up a teddy bear? They look easy but they’re next to impossible because mechanical manipulators are so awkward at handling irregular objects. But this week in New Scientist I report on a new DARPA development which will make robots a lot more dextrous.

DARPA’s OCTOR (sOft robotiC manipulaTORs) program is building a new type of robot limb patterned after an elephant’s trunk or octopus arm. It’s flexible, fast, and can handle fragile objects and reach into narrow spaces, as well as coping with a range of different sizes, as this 55 Mb video shows The current Octarms use an industrial Pentium processor board and a 24-volt electro-pneumatic pressure system. They are mainly built with off-the-shelf components, with much of the work going into modelling the behaviour of the system and designing software for kinematics (movement control), and the operator interface.

The strength of the arm is governed by actuator pressure and diameter. The current Octarm is pneumatic and works at 60 psi, but in principle a 2000 psi hydraulic system would be possible which would be far more powerful. The design is scaleable; small six-inch Octarms have been built, and a 20-foot tentacle is certainly possible - all it would take is funding. A vehicle-mounted Octarm capable of tearing down walls or shifting rubble would be worth seeing…

A team including Bill Kier from the University of North Carolina and Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory provided the biological research behind the Octarm. They found that octopus arms in nature have transverse and longitudinal muscles as well as two sets of helically-wound muscles which spiral around the arm, giving the ability to shorten, lengthen, rotate or bend at nearly any angle.

The taper – also borrowed from the octopus - means it can reach into narrow spaces, and helps with handling objects of many sizes. Small objects can be grasped with the thin end section of the Octarm, with larger and heavier objects the thicker and more powerful base sections come into play. Existing manipulators tend to me limited in the range of sizes they can deal with because their grippers can only open to a certain width.

Hanlon and colleagues are working on further improvements to the Octarm, using a range of biological models for inspiration, so later versions may take advantage of refinements observed in animal systems.

The latest demonstration featured an Octarm mounted on a Talon robot carrying out a variety of tasks, including retrieving a dummy and working underwater. Military applications may include reconnaissance (there’s a camera at the end of the Octarm) and IED disposal, but there are host of civil applications where Octarms should be able to outperform existing designs.

The Octarm project is another one of DARPA’s Biodynotics – biologically-inspired robotics – programs, and it’s interesting to see how leveraging techniques perfected in nature brings rapid improvements in robotics. It’s also interesting to see how much of this is led by the military. This follows the same path as early computing described in my book Weapons Grade, which shows how the military were responsible for introducing major innovations in both hardware and software including digital electronic computing and the silicon chip.

Octarm joins other well-publicized creations like the BigDog prototype for a robotic mule , Carnegie Mellon’s snakebot and DARPA’s robot flying insects and RoboLobster - and I can guarantee more some even more surprising innovations where these came from. Stay tuned!

-- David Hambling.

Who Killed the Killer Drone - and Why?

In November, with great fanfare, the U.S. Navy and Air Force took over Darpa's biggest, most promising killer drone program, Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems, or J-UCAS. The idea was to develop a single family of weaponized drones operating from land and from carrier decks, backing up and ultimately replacing manned fighter jets. According to Dr. Michael S. Francis, J-UCAS Director, the program promised "a transformational shift in the operational application of airpower in the 21st century combat environment."

Two months later, the 2007 defense budget split the program into separate Air Force and Navy programs. J-UCAS was dead. "We start joint, but we never carry it across the goal line for some reason," Rear Adm. Timothy Heely told Aviation Week after the decision was announced.

I'm on the UAV beat for National Defense. In recent weeks I've spoken to many Air Force and Navy UAV program managers and operators -- and none have given me a straight answer on why J-UCAS went extinct.

Janes has an idea: The Air Force and Navy drifted further and further apart on what their unmanned combat planes (the X-45 and X-47, respectively) should do. The gap got so wide, the one-size-fits-all approach stopped making sense.

[The] USAF decided that its present conception no longer met that service's long-term needs. USAF ambitions are for a long-range strike aircraft embracing stealth, endurance, ISR [or Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] and attack capabilities, and, while the projected [J-UCAS vehicle] clearly offered the first and last of these, there was seen to be a mismatch between the aircraft's range/endurance and its modest 4,500 lb weapon load.

Janes is on to something. A few weeks ago, somebody leaked Air Force plans to fold its half of the former J-UCAS program into its Long-Range Strike study, which is looking at ways to replace B-1s, B-2s and B-52s. Air Force Magazine explains:

[Long-Range Strike] would replace the Joint Unmanned Combat Aircraft System--slated for termination--with a larger, faster unmanned bomber. The aircraft would have to cover very long distances and be able to loiter in the target area with a good-sized bomb load.

Note that "good-sized bomb load" part. Last week, Navy Capt. Steven Wright told me that the Navy wanted J-UCAS not for strategic bombing, but initially for penetrating ISR and, later, for close air support -- both missions that require smallish, fast, medium-range aircraft like today's manned F/A-18s.

Air Force again:

The qualities the Air Force wanted in a next-generation strike aircraft were trending toward a larger and larger platform, equipped with a sizable bomb load and able to loiter in enemy territory for long periods, with periodic refuelings from a tanker. The size of the objective Air Force version of J-UCAS had been upped several times, and likely would have been enlarged again.

And that meant parting ways with the Navy and its smaller, tactical armed drone.

Defense Tech sources have another theory: that the Air Force killed its combat drone, Boeing's X-45, to keep it from competing with its manned fighter jet of the future, the Joint Strike Fighter.

The reason that was given (strictly off the record) [by Air Force officials] was that we were expected to be simply too good in key areas and that we would have caused massive disruption to the efforts to "keep… JSF sold." If we had flown and things like survivability had been evenly assessed on a small scale and Congress had gotten ahold of the data, JSF would have been in serious trouble.

And what was this shocking data?

Say the mission is to take out a SAM [surface-to-air missile] site using a Small Diameter Bomb. That SDB has the same standoff launch max range regardless of the platform releasing it. Given that the state of the art for Low Observable (LO) design and material is much the same between the qualified aircraft designers in the U.S., how LO your system is largely a function of shape and cross section. Compare the shapes and profiles of the F-35 [JSF] and the X-45C. Who do you think is going to have the higher probably of being killed? Of course that "kill" in the JSF case means body bags and in the case of a X-45C, just the lost aircraft and far fewer of them.

The Navy's Capt. Wright says that both the X-45 and X-47 J-UCAS demonstrators will continue development under the Navy UCAS program. Carrier trials are expected in 2011. Meanwhile, the Air Force will start from scratch or piggyback its UCAS/Long-Range Strike vehicle on an existing classified platform, perhaps the one mentioned by David Hambling here a few weeks back.

For more, check out Noah's January post on how the killer drone program got bumped off.

-- David Axe

UPDATE 5:40 PM: Not everyone in the Defense Department is sold on the idea of turning J-UCAS into a strike plane -- or on the idea of the new aircract, period. As Inside Defense notes, "Internal squabbling between two camps within the Pentagon is delaying the formal start of a study aimed at helping the Air Force shape its effort to field a new long-range bomber."

It's On: Grand Challenge 3

"Just months after awarding $2 million for a sport utility vehicle that drove itself over more than 100 miles of open road, the Pentagon on Monday unveiled a bigger, richer challenge for self-driving vehicles that can negotiate city traffic," MSNBC's Alan Boyle reports.

This time around, [DARPA Grand Challenge] autonomous vehicles would run a simulated military supply mission in a mock urban area. To succeed, the vehicles would have to complete a 60-mile course safely in less than six hours, obeying traffic laws and avoiding obstacles while they merge with moving traffic, negotiate intersections and even pull into and back out of parking spaces...

The top prize would be $2 million once again, but DARPA would also offer a second prize of $500,000 and a third prize of $250,000. DARPA also will make funding available for contenders before the finals, through two tracks:

* Teams could submit detailed proposals for up to $1 million in technology development funds, with the government obtaining limited licensing rights to the resulting technologies. The selected teams would proceed to a semifinal known as the National Qualification Event.

* Teams could participate in a series of qualifying tests, just as competitors did in the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenges. The teams selected for the National Qualification Event would get $50,000, and the teams that are successful at that event will get $100,000 and a spot in the November 2007 finals.

Terrorists' Unmanned Air Force

The bad guys can use drones too. While billions have been spent on ballistic missile defense, little attention has been given to the more imminent threat posed by unmanned air vehicles in the hands of terrorists or rogue states.

Building a ballistic missile is a big deal. They take a lot of development – it really is rocket science – which is expensive and hard to keep secret. At best, you’ll end up with something like a Scud missile with a range of a few hundred miles and limited accuracy. You would not be able to aim at an individual building.

Unmanned air vehicles are another matter. They are small, cheap and you could buy one tomorrow. Short-range versions with video cameras are common, but thanks to GPS and Google Earth you can also put one to within a few yards of your aim point from long range. Very long range – in 2003 a TAM-5 UAV with a six-foot wingspan was flown over 1880 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. One scenario features a mass drone attack launched from a tanker or freighter well out in international waters.

Eugene Miasnikov of the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at MIPT, calls the UAV a suicide bomber on steroids, basically. Unlike a suicide bomber, a drone can easily penetrate security and threaten otherwise safe areas (eg the Green Zone) or reach crowded public places like spots stadiums. Dense crowds would lead to large numbers of casualties from fragmentation bombs, and an attack by multiple UAVs could cause panic and further injuries in the crowd. And don't even get us started about chemical, biological or ‘dirty bomb’ radioactive payloads.

Already, there have been a number of terrorists using (or, at least, intending on using) UAVs. Bin Laden had a plan to assassinate President Bush at the G8 summit, the FARC in Colombia bought drones. Hezbollah flew a "Mirsad-1" drone over Israeli territory in 2004.

Another paper by Dennis M. Gormley, on UAVs and Cruise Missiles as Possible Terrorist Weapons draws similar conclusions about the ease with which such weapons can be used and the difficulty of intercepting small, slow aircraft. He notes a significant incident in Iraq:

Moreover, two Iraqi ultra-light aircraft managed to fly directly over the 3rd Infantry Division’s logistical encampment and disappeared before orders could be arranged to fire at them. Even the use of expensive airborne reconnaissance systems such as AWACS would not help. Their radars intentionally eliminate slow-flying targets on or near the ground to prevent their data processing and display systems from being overtaxed.

One solution to the threat of hostile UAVs is DARPA’s Peregrine. This is a drone-killing drone, designed with dual propulsion mode to combine long loiter time on patrol with a dash capability for intercept. Spending on Peregrine has gone up from nothing in 2004 to $1.4m in ‘05 and $5m in the coming year. In Popular Mechanics, Noah and friends tried designing one of the drone-fighters. The one here was provided by The Mad Planeman whose blog tinkers with aircraft design.

But killing drones isn't the hard part, really. It's detecting and identifying before they can do damage that poses the biggest challenge. As Miasnikov points out if they are launched a few miles from their target there may be only minutes to react.

Those with long memories or an interest in esoteric weapons will recall that we have been here before. During WWII the US came under attack from thousands of small, long-range unmanned aircraft – Japanese ‘Fugo’ balloon bombs. Thirty feet across and made of mulberry paper, each carried three incendiary bombs to the US mainland all the way from Japan. Although they were dismissed at the time, tremendous resources were put into countering them. And although they did little damage, the Fugos were originally intended to carry biological agents, which would have made them a far more serious threat.

How great the threat is this time remains to be seen.

-- David Hambling

UPDATE 2:46 PM: There is no doubt that cheap and plentiful drones will be everywhere in future, used for everything from newsgathering to traffic control and fighting forest fires. The way will be led, as usual, by military...There’s a section on them in my book, Weapons Grade.

UPDATE 05/02/06 8:56 AM: Just how cheap and easy are these UAVs to build? Well, as CF points out, the Society of Automotive Engineers holds a drone-making contest every year for students. The machines cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 to build, he says. And the winning plane can generally haul between 30 and 40 pounds -- with just a 1.5 horsepower engine.

Darpa's Smart, Mean, Off-Road Drone

By the time you read this, Carnegie Mellon roboticists and Darpa chieftains will be rolling out their latest mechanical warrior: a six-and-half-ton, six-wheeled unmanned behemoth called Crusher.

Back in October, I took a look at the bot as it was being built, in a restored brick-and-chestnut mill on the banks of Pittsburgh's Allegheny River. Even as an aluminum-titanium skeleton, the machine left an impression -- something that looked ready to chew up all kinds of terrain. The clever, almost leg-like way the wheels attached would allow Crusher (like its predecessor, Carnegie's Spinner robot) to climb steps bigger than four feet, and tackle slopes with a 40 degree grade. In-hub electric motors, powered by a VW Jetta's turbo diesel engine, wouldn't hurt, either.

Carnegie and Darpa will be talking up Crusher's off-road toughness today. And they'll crow about the robot's brains and eyes -- the machine is part of a $35 million, Darpa-backed effort to make robots more autonomous. A few weeks before I visited Pittsburgh, Spinner used eight laser range-finders and four pairs of stereo cameras to help travel 26 miles of tough terrain, completely on its own. Crusher's 18-foot, telescoping mast, packed with sensors, should only make this both more perceptive.

But what today's presenters probably won't talk about much is that Crusher is designed to be mean, too. It's an "unmanned ground combat vehicle," a prototype for the military's next generation of armed robots. Crusher has been equipped with a Rafael Mini-Typhoon gun mount, which holds a "simulated" .50 caliber rifle.

"We’re developing Crusher," Carnegie's John Bares said in a statement, "to show people what can be done and pave the way for the future."

And in that future, the robots can go anywhere, think for themselves, and carry guns.

UPDATE 6:04 PM: Alan Boyle reports on Crusher's "Hollywood-style rollout."

Two Crusher prototypes made their entrance amid music, video and flashing lights — and one of them proceeded over to the center's obstacle course, rolling over wrecked cars and other obstacles... Crusher also demonstrated a tight U-turn maneuver inside a garage.

Air Force's Secret Drone Program Revealed

Sharp-eyed Nick Cook of Janes has spotted a new classified UAV program. He refers to this Pentagon budget document which says "the J-UCAS program to split into two separate programs: one Air Force classified program and a navy UCAV [unmanned combat air vehicle] program". Some $1.7 billion is to be spent on these developments over five years.

The new craft is referred to as Penetrating High Altitude Endurance (PHAE), and is thought to be able to cruise at 70,000-80,000 ft, similar to the U-2 (Global Hawk has a ceiling of 65,000 ft). ‘Penetrating’ means operating over defended territory, so unlike Global Hawk high degree of stealth will be essential. Being derived from the armed J-UCAS program, strike missions and SEAD are also possible. Cook says:

One report refers to the aircraft using engines from an inventory that has been in storage since the 1970s. This almost certainly refers to the General Electric J97-GE-3 engine for the Teledyne Ryan AQM-91 Compass Arrow UAV (a project terminated in 1971). In 1998, a NASA paper reported that 24 J97 engines were in storage at the agency's Ames research centre...the J97 was rated at around 25 kN and the new UAV is probably a twin-engine design.

Compass Arrow, otherwise known as the Ryan Model 154 Firefly, weighed in at 5,000 lbs with a wingspan of 48 feet and carried a payload of over 300 lb. It was very stealthy for its day, with rounded fuselage and inward-canted tailfins, with a coating of RAM (radar absorbing material) to reduce radar returns. The engine was mounted above the fuselage to minimize the infrared signature.

Compass Arrow could cruise at 80,000 feet, and was intended to be used over China. For political reasons it was mothballed without ever being used.

Compass Arrow Arrow was single-engined, so a twin-engined PHAE is likely to be somewhat bigger.

The PHAE concept has been studied before , with a view to roles including countering WMD, attacking fixed and mobile targets, and suppressing air defences. It’s not clear what weapons might be used from this sort of altitude, though a guided kinetic penetrator would make quite an impact from sixteen miles up. A stealthier approach would be for PHAE to act as a ‘mothership’ for smaller UAVs (such as the 100 lb Dominator) killer UAV or miniature munitions. The US Navy has already experimented with launching the FINDER UAV from a Predator drone for close-in reconnaisance, as well as the miniature CICADA Close-in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft which would be dropped in large numbers for electronic attack.

The endurance of PHAE will be limited by fuel supply; serious long-endurance drones with mission times measured in weeks or months will be solar powered. High-altitude long-endurance drones will find many more applications in both the civilian and military worlds - there’s more on this topic in my book Weapons Grade.

-- David Hambling

UPDATE – Check out the new Special Report on Weapons & Warfare on the New Scientist magazine website, a feast of dozens of weapons tech articles with an ‘instant expert’ overview by a DefenseTech regular.

Predator Educates Global Hawk

Every Army battalion commander, Air Force targeting cell and special operations team in Iraq wants access to a Predator drone at all times. The demand for these versatile little birds has skyrocketed in recent years. To meet the demand, General Atomics is rolling Predators off the production line as fast as it can. But there's a mismatch on the Air Force side of things. The Predator squadrons have suffered chronic manpower shortages, meaning they've got the birds, but no one to fly them.

It's a matter of planning. The Air Force didn't foresee just how popular Predator would be, so it didn't lay the groundwork for a rapid expansion of Predator infrastructure. Now the service is playing catch-up, struggling to meet warfighter's requirements for on-station Predators while training up new operators and forming new squadrons to fly factory-fresh aircraft. It's a huge mess.

"I learned a lot from Predator and what they were doing," says Col. Christopher Jella, commander of the new 18th Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. This year the 18th became that second operational squadron to fly the Global Hawk, Predator's high-altitude, long-endurance, unarmed cousin. According to Jella, the Global Hawk community has had none of the Predator's problems. The two Global Hawk squadrons are, if anything, over-staffed. "We've gotten ahead of the wavefront."

It helps that the Global Hawk community has fewer aircraft and needs fewer operators. Still, Jella explains, proper planning is vital when you're standing up any new system: "We said several years ago, this system is coming, it's got a lot of steam behind it. I can see where the production line drops airplanes. I said we need to get ahead of this. So I started hiring folks two years ago and bringing them here."

Predator and Global Hawk promise to greatly improve the U.S. military's ability to get intel into the right hands at the right time -- but only if the Air Force can keep operators in seats and birds in the air. The service has plans to iron out Predator's problems, according to Pentagon spokespeople. The plan seems to include throwing a lot of money at the problem. For the sakes of all those battalion commanders and their soldiers on the ground in Iraq, I hope it works.

Mr. Roboto's Orbiting Dojo

Most of Defense Tech's new crop of bloggers are loaded with security or technical experience: former platoon leaders, missile defense engineers, homeland defense analysts, insider magazine editors. Steven Snell, on the hand hand, is just your average, garden-variety maniac. But I'm loving this Brit's snarky wit. And I'm hoping this is the first of many posts for the site.

Not since the Beastie Boys Intergalactic video have I been this excited about robots fighting.

Defense Tech has detailed the Pentagon's numerous efforts to deal with a possible rumble in space before. As you may have guessed, they've been trying to cram everything from exotic micro-satellites to combat-ready marines into orbit. But even the blue-sky research brains at DARPA are behind the times when it comes to the coolest thing since naked Counter-Strike.

New Scientist's tech blog reports:

A mini-satellite carrying several small humanoid robots will (hopefully) be launched into space in October 2010. Once safely in orbit, the satellite will release its robotic passengers, who will proceed to fight each other in the vacuum of space.

That's what organizers of ROBO-ONE, the annual Japanese robot fighting tournament hope to see in just a few years. The official ROBO-ONE site (translated) describes the competition as a "grapple athletic meet by the two-legged robot". In short, its not your usual arena match with competitive dad wrenching the controls from his teary-eyed child mid-battle.

Is any of this actually possible? And will it be before my robot learns his own moves ? Frankly, maybe. Let's face it, robots fighting in space is pretty Rumsfeld . And if you combine the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's recent achievements and the popularity of home made robot kits in Tokyo, we could be watching a very good scrap.

-- Steven Snell

Drone Swarm for Maximum Harm

(There's a section on the impact of cheap, numerous unmanned aircraft in my book Weapons Grade, now in paperback. Here's one man's vision of what they could mean.)

The awesome future of air power is just around the corner – but the Air Force doesn't want it. That’s the word from Gregory Jenkins of the USAF’s Air Armament Center, self-styled 'heretic' and architect of a concept he calls Just In Time Strike Augmentation (JITSA).

There are many fleeting targets on the modern battlefield that appear briefly and are gone. Think Saddam Hussein’s entourage slipping from one hideout to the next, or a Transporter-Erector-Launcher moving into firing position, or a pickup full of insurgents fleeing after staging a mortar attack. An air strike that takes five minutes to arrive is useless in these situations.

Jenkins’ vision is a networked battlespace with unmanned aircraft maintaining continuous surveillance over a wide area. At the cutting edge is Boeing’s Air Dominator, a 100 lb drone with a 12-foot span which looks like a model aircraft. I interviewed the people involved in the Dominator program two years ago here. Although Boeing say they have nothing new to report, there have been enhancements since then. A special lightweight fuel cell could bring its endurance to over 40 hours, and there’s a sophisticated new vision system for mid-air refueling to increase endurance even further. Each Dominator will carry out up to three attacks using munitions similar to but more versatile than the BLU-108 Skeet . (Some sources claim this has been increased to eight submunitions; Boeing say it’s still three).

Above all it will be cheap, so unlike the solitary MQ-1 Predator drones, Dominator will be used in packs, with a large number of hunter-killers accompanied by a few 'gateway' vehicles providing networked communications and refuelling. Each craft folds away into a pod just eight inches square and four feet long for transport and launch. The plan calls for two dozen or so were to be delivered by an F/A-22 Raptor jet at high speed, but Jenkins is thinking much bigger.

You don’t need a stealthy, high-performance aircraft to deliver something that can travel hundreds of miles on its own. In the JITSA scheme Dominators would be packed in pallets of twenty on a C-17 transport plane, with thirty pallets in all – that’s a total of six hundred drones. A loadmaster would handle the individual release of as many as needed. It’s something akin to a British FOAS concept of replacing bombers with a transport plane packed with palletized cruise missiles.

Once in position, the swarm would maintain air dominance over a wide area, providing both of continuous surveillance and instant reaction. Jenkins estimates that any target in the kill zone could be hit within 2-4 minutes maximum. None of those fleeting targets would escape.

Against a conventional force, Jenkins calls the JITSA system a ‘back breaker’, destroying armor, artillery and air defences on a massive scale, not to mention taking out air forces on the ground.

Dominators can also tackle targets that would normally take much larger munitions by being smarter. You might need a 2000 lb laser guided bomb to destroy a bridge, but a few Dominators can simply destroy vehicles attempting to use it. The bridge is denied to the enemy just as well, and you don’t have to rebuild afterwards.

The system can also neutralize deep bunkers which are invulnerable to the heaviest bombs. Missiles or stores of WMD are not going to harm anyone if they are stuck underground with a swarm of Dominators overhead 24/7, ready to attack anything the minute it emerges. Underground command centres become prisons.

The kill decision will always be delegated to a human operator using a mobile control set, so in the example above the bridge could be selectively closed to military vehicles.

JITSA is much bigger than I’ve described here – Jenkins has detailed a true net-centric concept, with additional tiers and other aircraft types providing extra capabilities. It doesn’t even have to be based on Dominators, any networked loitering UAV would do.

The Air Force is going head with Dominator, but not in the swarms Jenkins would like to see. So why is JITSA “not a USAF-endorsed concept at this time,” with no funds allocated? In a world of multi-billion dollar programs, it offers outstanding capability for a modest outlay and minimal development. Perhaps a system based on something that looks like a toy and has no requirement for manned combat aircraft is not too popular with the blue suits. Or perhaps the idea of pilots demoted to delivery-truck drivers does not fit their vision.

So JITSA is still on the shelf. But even if the US does not buy into the concept, that doesn’t mean nobody else will. And what might happen then would be anybody’s guess.

Thanks to SSgt. Ryan Hansen, AAC Public Affairs and Marguerite Ozburn at Boeing for their help.

-- David Hambling

Drones Over L.A.

Whadya get when geek diva (and Defense Tech shooting partner) Xeni Jardin meets up with exotic weapons godfather Sid Heal? Well, that's when then drones start flying over L.A.

For years, Sid, a commander in the L.A. Sheriff's Department, has been pushing novel means for fighting crime and controlling crowds. We're talking everything from super sonic blasters to slippery foams. Naturally, he's into UAVs, too. "Just this week, the [LASD] began using a drone called SkySeer for rescue operations and tracking 'persons of interest' during foot pursuits," Xeni writes.

On board the SkySeer's four-pound body is a GPS tracking system and tiny cameras that shoot digital video, then send it wirelessly back to the ground. Heal says the plan is to send that footage back to a networked command and control center, where deputies can monitor the footage remotely. Video may also be introduced as evidence in criminal trials.

Check out Xeni's pics from the scene, and her radio report of the meet-up, too.

iRobots Sell, But Who's Buying?

Someone must be using them, I guess. Otherwise, why would Naval Sea Systems Command buy another $26 million worth of iRobot's explosive-disposal machines? But I've never met a bomb squad technician who actually bothered with one of the things. Too flimsy, they all say. Too hard to operate.

The Baghdad Bomb Squad used their iRobots to decorate their shop. Not far away, at the U.S. military's central robot depot for Iraq, the iRobots sat on shelves, serenely gathering dust, while Foster-Miller's Talon robots would come back, scarred and in pieces, after being chewed up by a bomb.

Foster-Miller, though, doesn't have the PR megaphone that iRobot does. It doesn't have a cute, little household machine to go along with its battlefield models. And when you go to military trade shows, you only see Foster-Miller sporadically. iRobot always seems to have a booth. Maybe there's a connection, somewhere in there, to that big sale?

(Big ups: JQP)

UPDATE 1:50 PM: Of course. I shoulda figured. "Sen. John Kerry Visits iRobot to Congratulate Company on $26 Million U.S. Navy Contract."

"Great Robot Race": Geeky Fun

If you're enough of a dork to be reading this site, you're enough of a dork to enjoy PBS' "The Great Robot Race," airing next Tuesday night.

The show does a nice job setting up the main rivalry of last fall's Darpa Grand Challenge, the $2 million unmanned raly across the Mojave Desert. Domineering, jerky genius Red Whittaker and his hyper-funded Carnegie Mellon team comes charging out of one corner. Likeably bland Sebastian Thrun and his nerdy Stanford crew ambles out of the other.

And there's more than a difference in personalities. Whittaker builds his bots, more or less from the ground up. Thrun gets his pretty much of-the-shelf from Volkswagen, so he can concentrate on software instead. Carnegie Mellon uses a laser mounted to a gimbal to help its robots see; it works like a human head, constantly on watch. Stanford opts to keep its lasers static; but combines them with video data, to put together a more complex picutre of what's in front of the driverless car.

By now, it's no secret which team came out ahead. But still, there's a geeky thrill watching the race's pivotal moment through the eyes of Stanley, the Stanford machine. That alone is worth checking out the hour-long documentary.

Like most shows of its kind, "The Great Robot Race" could've done better at balancing out its animated schematics and techie explanations with real human drama. And there was plenty to be had during the Grand Challenge; Thrun and Whittaker were colleagues until just a few months before the race. But the show ends on a gee-whiz-science-is-awesome, let's-all-hug moment, instead of with the obvious friction between the Carnegie and Stanford camps. Why set up a rivalry with no tension? Worse, "The Great Robot Race" leaves out perhaps the most fascinating story of the whole event: the Gray Team from New Orleans, a group of insurance company amateurs who nearly beat Stanford and Carnegie both, despite having its shop wrecked by Katrina.

Drone Doggie Wobbles, Doesn't Fall Down

Damn it. Beaten to the punch, by my own people.

Months ago, I got a hold of an insane video of the walking, four-legged BigDog robot. But I had been holding off on showing it, until the magazine article about the 'bot came out.

While I was twiddling my thumbs, Defense Tech contributor David Hambling talked to BigDog's masters, and checked out an updated version of the video for himself. In the latest New Scientist, he's written about this machine so "surefooted it can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick."

Check out how the BigDog stumbles, and then gets its footing back. It's the most natural motion I've ever seen a robot make.

“Internal force sensors detect the ground variations and compensate for them,” says company president and project manager Marc Raibert. “And BigDog's active balance allows it to maintain stability when we disturb it."

This active balance is maintained by four legs, each with three joints powered by actuators and a fourth "springy" joint. All the joints are controlled by an onboard PC processor...

The legs on the next version of BigDog, V3, will each have an additional powered joint and will be able to take on even steeper slopes and rougher terrain at higher speed, its makers say.

"Half of the earth's surface is inaccessible to wheels and tracks. But people and animals can walk anywhere," Raibert told me a while back. "We wanted a vehicle that could do the same."

UPDATE 03/04/06 10:40 PM: Robot schmobot, says RC. New Scientist says that "the latest version of BigDog can handle slopes of 35°... The hydraulics are driven by a two-stroke single-cylinder petrol engine, and it can carry over 40 kg, about 30% of its bodyweight. The robot can follow a simple path on its own, or can be remotely controlled."

"Compare this to the llama," notes RC, "which has the following characteristics:"

Life span: About 20 years
Average height:45" at shoulder, 5-6' at the head
Average weight:250-400 lbs.
A conditioned llama can carry approximately 25% to 30% of its body weight.

I'll take the llama because:

1. It doesn't require gas or batteries.
2. Service life of 15 years+.
3. No maintenance or spare parts required!
4. It's self aware.

Robo-Copter Gets a Gun

The folks over at Neural Robotics Inc. seemed to be making a fine little business for themselves, building autonomous mini-helicopters for surveillance, traffic monitoring, and movie shoots.

But let's face it: there's only so long you can let your robots stand on the veritable sidelines. After a while, you want 'em to get in on the action. That's why, presumably, NRI has started to trick out its "AutoCopters" with 12-gauge, fully-automatic shotguns.

The weapons work with anything from 18-Cal. BBs to armor-piercing, FRAG-12 rounds, according to Defense Review. Which turns the AutoCopter "into an incredibly lethal unmanned combat air vehicle."

Previously relegated to 'convoy escort,' the AutoCopter can now be tasked with convoy security/force protection. This constitutes a significant leap in mission capability, and it has the potential to be a significant force multiplier in multiple combat environments.

And it sounds like a much more fun job, besides.

Other robo-copter tinkerers are trying to give their machines some teeth. Boeing is working to fit Gatling guns and Hellfire missiles onto its "Unmanned Little Bird" chopper. The Army recently morphed a UH-1 Huey into a robotic, missile-firing model. Meanwhile, Japanese authorities are worried that Yamaha's pint-sized robo-copters might be making their way to China, where the drones could be equipped with chemical arms. Bummer.

(Big ups: Scott @ Sploid)

Drone Seahorse Gets Wet

The Navy is testing out its latest "untethered, unmanned, underwater robotic vehicle, capable of pre-programmed independent operations": the 28 1/2 foot, 10,800 pound Seahorse.

The drone (more pictures here) was originally developed for the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) by the Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory as an economical, long-endurance, unmanned underwater vehicle for oceanographic surveying and bottom mapping. The Navy, as is often the case, has a few ideas of its own for the vehicle.

SEAHORSE construction is modular to facilitate field maintenance, rapid mission turnaround, and payload flexibility. With an integrated afterbody for propulsion and hydrodynamic control, plus variable ballast systems fore and aft, the UUV can execute a variety of high-level commands, such as maintaining a constant depth, course, and speed; navigating between waypoints; and conducting search and survey patterns. Typical mission operating depths range from 15 to 1,000 feet, with endurance up to 72 hours. SEAHORSE vehicles are 28 feet long, slightly more than three feet in diameter, and weigh 10,500 pounds. Standard alkaline batteries (D-cells) power the vehicle, allowing a 300-mile range. NAVOCEANO plans to transition to rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology in the near future.

In standard operations, the Seahorse is launched from a T-AGS 60 Pathfinder-class ship. The most recent pictures show test operations on the FSF-1 Sea Fighter X-Craft. Test launches from Trident missile tubes have been performed, as well. The Seahorse's diameter prevents it from being launched from standard torpedo tubes (maximum of 21 inches).

The Seahorse's primary survey mission could be very valuable to the Navy in a supporting role, especially in the littorals, but the modular nature of the vehicle and rapidly-advancing technology could broaden the scope of the Seahorse's mission extensively. At worst, it will serve as an advanced test-bed for the Navy's wide range of unmanned underwater vehicle programs. These include the Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS), a torpedo tube-launched AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) for mine detection and countermeasures, the Mission-Reconfigurable UUV (unmanned underwater vehicle), which would be launched from submarines or surface ships and carry array of sensor payloads for performing a variety of information-gathering missions, the Advanced Development UUV, the large-diameter, Remus (Remote Environmental Measuring Units), BPAUV (Battlespace Preparation Autonomous Underwater Vehicle), and Manta.

For more on this alphabet-soup, see Unmanned Vehicles for U.S. Naval Forces: Background and Issues for Congress (.pdf, particularly pg. 4), RECENT U.S. NAVY UNDERWATER VEHICLE PROJECTS (.pdf), and especially THE LOWER DEPTHS: Navy Plans for Unmanned Undersea Vehicles on Military.com.

More-direct support for military operations, such as real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. resupply of special forces ashore, or even direct attacks against sea or short targets with weapons, are in the cards for these robot subs. The Seahorse will lead the way for follow-on vehicles, and might even get a chance to contribute a bit itself.

--cross-posted by Murdoc

Robo-Butterfly, Nuke Sniffer?

Clark read the nuke-detection story in today's Times, and spotted this little tidbit:

The experts discussed a range of potential tools, including... robotic butterflies that can monitor an atomic site while appearing to flutter by innocuously.

So naturally, Clark wanted to know what was up with these mechanical insects. I haven't heard of this project specifically. But I'm guessing that the Times' lepidopterans are metaphorical -- flying contraptions about the size of a butterfly (and yeah, before you ask, I looked up the word up).

Pentagon fringe science arm Darpa has a program, of course, for these "Nano Air Vehicles," or NAVs. The idea is to make a drone smaller than a monarch butterfly -- 7.5 centimeters and less than 10 grams -- that can carry an itty-bitty sensor.

Monitoring... often requires that the sensors be placed in locations that are not readily accessible: on buildings, walls (exterior or interior, e.g., in tunnels), windows, bridges, caves, tunnels, towers, rocks, and other vertical or steeply angled surfaces. Emplacing unobtrusive reconnaissance/surveillance sensors in remote or special high-security areas also demands sophisticated means for delivery. [NAVs] may provide an effective means for precision delivery and emplacement of small, multi-element sensor packages to locations of interest.

Now, these drones don't have to be insect-shaped to get the job done. "Monolithic 1 to 7.5 cm wings or rotors," are okay too, Darpa says. But it is strongly suggested. "Fortunately, biology offers some hints, e.g., insects and hummingbirds have evolved the ability to fly at this scale." As the Red Herring notes, the presentation Darpa gave to industry on NAVs in late September "is full of images of dragonflies and cicadas."

Flying 'bots just a bit bigger than NAVs are already being tested out. Earlier this year, sailors aboard the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group starting using a bunch of 7-ounce, 13-inch planes to act as teen-tiny eyes in the sky.

Now, the Times article talks about a whole bunch of other nuke-detection technologies, too -- things that can pick up everything from centrifuges' acoustic signals to the power surges needed for uranium enrichment. I'll leave it to the Arms Control Wonk to explain those gadgets. But I know the Wonk hasn't been happy with the reporters, David Sanger and Bill Broad. Not too long ago, he basically accused the pair of blowing big parts of both the Iranian and the North Korean nuke stories.

UPDATE 12:48 PM: "Look closely, and you still can't see it. But it can see you. Cameras with lenses as small as the point of a pen have put video surveillance at the fingertips of just about anyone," Knight-Ridder notes.

Cheaper and smaller than ever, the cameras increasingly are being used to monitor property, watch wildlife, keep an eye on baby sitters or children -- and spy on people, raising privacy issues.

``A few years ago all this wireless stuff was pretty much reserved for government or covert agencies,'' said Stephen Barnhart, owner of Barnhart Security & Alarm in Grandview, Mo. ``Now anyone can buy a wireless, they can pop it somewhere and put it anywhere from 50 feet to 50 miles away and they've got transmission.''

(Big ups: JQP)

Japan's Robo-Copter Bust

What does a company with close ties to the Chinese military want with a robotic, crop-dusting, mini-helicopter? And why was Yamaha willing to sell nine of the things, in violation of export control laws?

Those are some of the questions being asked in Asia this week, after more than 200 Japanese police raided Yamaha offices on Monday.

"Investigators seized the helicopter, a manually controlled RMAX L181 type, after Nagoya customs last month halted the shipment, citing insufficient documentation," the Asahi Shimbun reports.

They said the helicopter... has GPS and an autopilot device... As long as it is programmed beforehand with flight routes and other data and by activating the GPS, the unmanned craft can continue to fly even when it is outside radio control.

While the helicopter was designed for crop-dusting, these features allow it to be used for military reconnaissance as well as spreading biochemical weapons, officials say.

Yamaha officials admitted to investigators that the helicopter was equipped with functions restricted by the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law.

In Japan, more than 1600 of the robo-copters are used to spray crops. Here in the States, the RMAXs are equipped with cameras, to shoot movies and TV commercials. That's what Yamaha says the nine China-bound drones are for.

I have no idea whether or not to believe the company. I'm sure Yamaha didn't intend to give robotic bioweapons-sprayers to China's military. (For that matter, I have a hard time believing Beijing would want to add robotic bioweapons-sprayers to its arsenal.) But a little unmanned, hovering scout? The People's Liberation Army could find some way to use that, I'm sure.

(Big ups: CS)

UK Stealth Drone Unveiled

The Brits want to get out of the traditional fighter jet business, and start putting robots in the cockpits, instead of blokes.

After the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is done, the Ministry of Defence is looking to build unmanned combat aerial vehicles, or UCAVs, according to Jane's International Defence Review. But developing killer drones takes time. So Brits are working now with the American military on a "Project Churchill... an effort that is focused on the joint, airborne command and control" of the UCAVs."

The drone pictured here -- called the Corax -- is one of two robo-planes that the Ministry will use as platforms for their UCAV development. (Jane's doesn't mention whether the cancellation of the American killer drone effort will affect the project. One suspects it might.)

"The jet-powered Corax had performed several successful flights as early as 2004 – taking off and landing under computer control," New Scientist notes. "The aircraft is curved in a manner than resembles existing 'stealth" aircraft. The special shape of such craft is designed to defeat radar detection by reflecting radar away from a radar sensor instead of back at it. Corax also lacks a conventional tail, which should make it more aerodynamic but also more difficult to control."
All of which reminds Jane's of the infamously secretive DarkStar stealth drone, cancelled in 1999. It also had "a tail-less configuration, and a long-span unswept wing mounted at the rear of a short body section."

However, there are important differences. The body section is straight-edged and pointed rather than being a half-disc shape. The wing is tapered and mounted relatively further forward, and there are two pitch-control surfaces on each side of the exhaust. This avoids one problem with the DarkStar, which was the limited pitch authority available from the win trailing-edge surfaces: a factor in the loss of the first DarkStar in April 1996. Compared with DarkStar, which was designed with an emphasis on a low side-on signature - matching its side-looking sensors - Corax is optimised for all-round stealth.

(Big ups: JQP, SH)

Killer Drone, Dead; New Bomber Lives

Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems -- the shared Air Force and Navy program to develop a killer drone -- has been cancelled, Inside Defense is reporting. "Instead, the Defense Department will begin work this year on a next-generation long-range strike aircraft, accelerating its bomber modernization plans by nearly two decades in an effort to quickly enhance the Air Force’s effectiveness across the Asia-Pacific region."

J-UCAS was supposed to produce an armed drone that could knock out enemy air defenses, conduct surveillance, jam enemy radars. On the side, it might do some strike missions. But it would mainly pave the way for manned aircraft.

This new project would focus more directly on taking the enemy out, Inside Defense says.

"The action to accelerate work on a new bomber tracks closely with a recommendation last fall for a new, long-range strike aircraft program made by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon’s director of net assessment, who called for developing capabilities necessary to deter China."

That means striking at targets thousands of miles from any U.S. bases, Robert Work, with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, noted in a recent presentation. "Reach — the combination of range and persistence — is especially important in the Pacific theater of operations."

"U.S. Strategic Command, which has responsibility for an evolving concept dubbed 'global strike,' strongly advocated the need for a new bomber" to obtain that reach, according to Inside Defense.

Here's how Globalsecurity.org describes the concept:

The new capabilities ensure that the Air Force can strike a variety of targets, including hardened or deeply buried targets (HDBTs) as required in non-permissive environments... Capabilities should provide the ability to operate at extended distances from the theater of conflict with an effective and flexible payload (e.g., nuclear and conventional precision/non-precision munitions). Desired attributes for GS capabilities are responsiveness, persistence, survivability (including lethal self-protection), lethality, connectivity, and affordability... A new/modernized bomber aircraft may satisfy the proposed capability. Currently, all milestones for the program are tentative, but for planning purposes, a development effort could start as early as 2006 with an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in 2015 and Full Operational Capability (FOC) in 2020.

At first glance, it sounds like an updated version of Cold War doctrine -- with this new plane standing in for ICBMs or for the B-52 fleet (which, incidentally, j just got cut in half). But this time around, those global strikers could still wind up being robotic, Inside Defense notes.

Three capabilities are expected to be essential for the Next Generation Long Range Strike Aircraft program: the ability to remain airborne for many, many hours; the means to fly very long distances; and the ability to carry significant numbers of bombs. The importance of these factors is expected to make the case for an unmanned system.

For the last several years, Pentagon fringe-science arm Darpa has been working on a program somewhat along these lines. The Falcon, or Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States, project aims to fire a bunker-busting bomb into near-space, and then send it crashing into a target more than 3,000 miles away, at four times the speed of sound.

Sub's Unmanned Buddy

A while back, I briefly mentioned the Cormorant, Darpa's idea for a sub-launched flying drone. Reader DS points us to the agency's quick write-up of the 19-foot "multi-purpose unmanned aerial vehicle," or MPUAV.

The idea is that the drone could handle "all-weather reconnaissance, battle damage assessment, or specialized mission support (e.g., special forces re-supply)" for the sub.

The Cormorants would be kept in the sub's ICBM launch tubes, and released into the water as needed. From there, they'd be launched into the air "using two Tomahawk missile-derived solid rocket boosters."

Upon mission completion, the turbofan engine-powered MPUAVs return to a designated retrieval point at sea, initiate engine shut down, and splash down to await recovery. During recovery, the submerged [sub] would deploy a remotely operated vehicle to secure an in-haul cable from the [sub] to the recovery tether deployed by the MPUAV. The [sub] would then haul the MPUAV to its designated launch tube [with a] saddle mechanism, where it would be docked and retracted into the missile tube.

StrategyPage, for one, isn't so sure all that trouble is worth it.

Aircraft operating off submarines is nothing new... [During World War II], the Japanese built 44 subs that could carry a small float plane for reconnaissance. This idea was fine in theory, but much less successful in practice... Someone may read a history book before that, or remember that the United States has plenty of other satellite and long range UAVs that could provide air reconnaissance needs of U.S. subs.

And Darpa admits there are a whole bunch of technical hurdles to leap before the Cormorant would begin to make sense.

The launch and recovery procedure -- including that "saddle" thingy -- would have to go through "key risk reduction demonstrations." So so would the drone's high-pressure turbofan engine.

Robo-Tanker Ready?

We've all read about unmanned spy planes and remotely-piloted bombers. Now, "two U.S. Air Force test pilot school students have designed an autonomous aerial refueling scheme for an unmanned tanker," Aviation Week reports.

Using two manned planes as surogates, the students linked together the "bank-angle and roll-rate measurements and the relative positions" of the two aircraft.

These inputs manipulated the control surfaces and throttles, automatically allowing the aircraft to hold a series of positions and transitions while flying a standard racetrack course, even when the tanker was in a 30-deg. bank. By the final flights, pilots kept their hands off the controls for nearly 2 hr. In straight-and-level flight, the controller held the receiver within 1.3 ft. of the desired refueling position.

Unmanned planes can already stay in the air for a whole lot longer than aircraft with a pilot in the cockpit. The only endurance limit has been how much fuel the drone can carry. If the student-designed scheme can be made to work consistently, that final barrier could be gone.

Killer Drone's Big Brother

If you stop by this site regularly, you probably know about Boeing's efforts to develop an killer drone for the Air Force.

You might have read about how a prototype "unmanned combat aerial vehicle," or UCAV, has already gone on trial bombing runs. Or how a pair of the drones came up with attack plans of their own -- and executed them on a mock air-defense battery. It was one of more than 60 test flights for the UCAV.

But that was just the first model, the 8,000-pound X-45A. The other day, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, Boeing showed off its next edition, which, at 18,000 pounds, is more than twice as big: the X-45C.

It will be powered by an F404-GE-102D engine, the same kind used on Boeing's two-engine F-18.

The X-45C will be able to fly at 40,000 feet and at Mach .85. It will carry two 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs or up to eight small-diameter bombs. Its operational combat radius will be 1,100 to 1,300 nautical miles.

That's far more range than manned fighters have without being refueled.

Drones have been armed for a while, now. Look at what the Predator has done. But those planes are remote-controlled, completely. The UCAV is supposed to fly itself, make decisions for itself, the Seattle Times notes.

The aircraft's sensors identify and approach targets autonomously. The remote pilot gives consent to strike with a mouse click.

"Yet there are serious questions as to the long-term funding of the next-generation X-45-type unmanned aircraft," the Times adds.

Richard Aboulafia, industry analyst with the Teal Group, called the program "the worst-funded good idea in decades" and said it's unclear if the budget to produce combat versions will be there.

THERE'S MORE: If the X-45's $1.2 billion price tag seems a little out of your reach, maybe this little remote-controlled spy plane will be more your speed. It takes 26 pictures from up to 1,000 feet. And it's selling at Wal-Mart for $148.32.

(Big ups: CP)

Smack Ya Back

Remember Maj. Shannon Rogers? He's the fighter jock turned Predator pilot who loomed rather large in my June Wired story, "Attack of the Drones." Anyway, Rogers (call sign: "Smack") is back in the limelight. Time magazine spends a day with him, from his beige stucco home outside of Las Vegas, to Nellis Air Force Base, where he blows up insurgents 7,000 miles away. Nice shootin', Smack.

Desk Jockeys vs. Border Drones

The President wants it to happen. The guys on the ground want it to happen. And their bosses in DC want it to happen. But that doesn't mean the bureaucrats are going to let unmanned spy planes start patrolling the southern border.

In a speech in El Paso earlier this week, President Bush said he wanted more cash for border patrol technologies, including drones. Border patrol agents -- at least the ones I visited -- thought the robo-planes did a world of good during, when they briefly had them. (And, with millions illegally entering the country every year, these guys could use all the help they can get.)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently bought a new Predator B drone to help its agents out. But that may be the only unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) the Federal Aviation Administration lets the border guards use, GovExec reports.

After more than two years of negotiations, the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Customs and Border Protection Directorate recently finalized a deal with the FAA to fly one drone in the Tucson, Ariz., area.

CBP also issued an environmental impact study in September that helps clear the way for an expansion of UAV operations from the western corner of Arizona to the eastern corner of Texas, but the agency still needs to work out a deal with the FAA to fly the drones outside restricted military airspace. Because of the restrictions, CBP officials have been forced to deploy a fleet of Blackhawk helicopters to patrol the rest of the southern border.

A CBP spokesman said Wednesday that the agency has recently received the "green light" to buy its second UAV early next year and plans to deploy the drone in the Tucson area until CBP and FAA officials reach additional agreements.

"We have to talk and ask for permission, but FAA is very strict," he said. "We're looking at what we can do to get exemptions" from FAA regulations or maximize the requirements set by FAA for UAVs.

Drone manufacturers, and handlers, have been tangling for years with the FAA over when and where UAVs can fly here at home. Here's a snippet from an article I wrote for the Times three years ago, which to the best of knowledge, is still essentially true:

Jim Brass, a colleague of Mr. Herwitz at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., sought to use a drone last November to look at a forest fire in the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles.

But the Federal Aviation Administration refused to let the drone fly. Getting to the fire, a ''controlled burn'' begun by the Forest Service to thin trees, would have involved flying through the approach to the suburban airport in Ontario, Calif., and the F.A.A. did not want a drone in crowded airspace.

It is a common problem for civilian drones. A small, piloted airplane can operate pretty much anywhere with little or no notification. But flying a drone means filing for a certificate of authorization, a narrowly drawn permission slip from the F.A.A. to roam a small strip of the skies. Getting the certificate takes months.

''We aren't pursuing commercial applications over America because U.A.V. flights are so restricted by the F.A.A.,'' Mr. Sliwa said, reflecting a common approach in the industry. The agency has yet to issue minimum standards for the drones' hardware and software. There are no guidelines on how the drones' human operators should be trained.

Okay, obviously you don't want to let pilotless planes roam the skies with no supervision. But, c'mon... it's been three years. It can't be that hard to carve out some space for these drones.

Drones Team Up for Spying

Drat. I had been meaning to blog about Darpa's multi-drone surveillance project for most of the year, but never quite got around to it. Now Wired News has beaten me to the punch. So let me try to play catch-up.

There are now 19 types of U.S. military drones flying in the skies above Iraq, shooting video of what's below. But it's tough to put those images together in any kind of coherent way. The average soldier or marine on the ground can't see most of that footage. And he doesn't have the authority or technical ability to order one of the unmanned aerial vehicles to go check something out.

There are exceptions to this -- which Wired News doesn't note. The hand-held Raven or Dragon Eye UAVs, for example, are controlled by frontline units. Marines on the ground during the taking of Falluja last year were able to see Pioneer drone footage as they moved through the city. But, for the most part, infantrymen don't have access to the drones-eye view.

Darpa would like to change that with the HURT program -- short for "heterogeneous urban reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition." The idea is to give soldiers the ability to see all kinds of UAV footage, and command all kinds of drones, from a single device. And, the agency wants the machines to be able to translate simple, high-level orders into complex manuevers.

It ain't easy. First of all, automatically choosing which soldiers' requests for drone coverage should get top priority is a nigthmare, just by itself. How do you program a computer to decide who gets first dibs? Then there's the question of how you take all those 19 drones -- many of which are controlled by their own proprietary software -- to talk to each other. Finally, you've got the problem of giving machines that are currently remotely-operated some measure of autonomy. Because if a captain tells a group of drones to "show me what's inside that window," they've got to be able to organize themselves for that recon mission. Gizmag gives another example: "the HURT system must be able to simultaneously order the UAVs to conduct wide-area surveillance while dispatching an individual vehicle to a location requested by a soldier for a close-up look."

Northrop has a contract from Darpa to develop HURT. And the company put on a little demo in the fall, Wired News, relying on this Northrop press release, notes.

Two fixed-wing UAVs, a Raven and a Pointer, along with an Rmax rotorcraft, were put aloft under the control of the system. Participants on the ground were able to view wide-area surveillance of the battle zone on handheld monitors, but could also send one of the UAVs in for a closer look at a suspected enemy position by merely moving over the subject with their cursor.

For the demo, a soldier observed a distant garage with a van backing out of it, and selected this target on his handheld screen. HURT autonomously selected the best UAV for the job based on location, and dispatched it to "shadow" the van. It also re-tasked the remaining three aerial units to secure a wide-area perimeter...

The elasticity of the HURT concept means that UAVs plugged into the system don't need any special modification. The system could also combine ground-based surveillance sensors with airborne platforms, with the potential to reduce manpower demands and risks to friendly forces associated with urban operations, according to a report by Rand.

Drudge on Drones - Doh!

"HONEYWELL is developing a micro flying spy drone -- that would be used for civilian law enforcement!" the Drudge Report shouts.

Which is true. In a way.

The company is, indeed, developing a small, "hovering robot carrying video cameras and other sensors," as Drudge explains, and Defense Tech has detailed in the past. And Honeywell officials have talked about unmanned vehicles being "a huge growth area... not only for the military, but for the department of homeland defense and other agencies."

But, near as I can tell, there's been nothing more than loose talk about the Pentagon-funded machines moving into police work.

Oh, another thing: Drudge says that "the vehicle [is] nicknamed 'Dragon Eye.'"

Which is wrong. The Dragon Eye is a Marine Corps drone -- one that's spent the last two years in combat zones, not it research labs, like the Honeywell machine.

Both are meant for short-range recon, true. But the model airplane-esque Dragon Eye (right) looks nothing like the cylindrical Honeywell bot (above). And it uses propellers to fly, not ducted fans.

Yeah, it's a small point. But telling.

Robo-Race Winner Got Smart

How did Stanley, the winner of Darpa's $2 million all-robot race across the Mojave, learn to drive? "In much the same way as any 16-year-old: by following the lessons of experienced humans," says the Merc-News.

When the Stanford team first started testing Stanley, a blue sport-utility vehicle, he had a 12 percent blunder rate for ``false positives'' -- incorrectly assuming 12 percent of the objects in front of him were obstacles big enough he had to swerve around them.

So the team instructed Stanley's software to take notes while a human driver maneuvered the car over different types of terrain. By following this guidance, the false positive rate dropped to one in 50,000 objects.

This kind of debugging, conducted during 1,200 miles of off-road testing in the deserts of Southern California and Arizona, put Stanley first across the finish line in Primm, Nev., after traversing a 132-mile course with no human intervention.

In some ways, this is a model for how Darpa wants to teach machines, generally. Here's a piece I wrote last year on the agency's attempt to produce cars that learn from their mistakes -- and think for themselves.

Robo-Mule Gets Wheel, Leg Blend

Click this link, people. It's the Amazon page for David Hambling's Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World. David, a military tech writer for New Scientist and others, has his first story for us, below. And it's really good. Let's encourage him to write more, by sending him up the Amazon sales charts.

Gadgets are getting smaller. Materials are getting lighter. But the modern foot soldier is lugging a bigger load than ever. The U.S. Army is hoping to take some of this weight off with a new-fangeled beast of burden. The Future Force Warrior program's Robotic Mule will be able to go wherever the infantry go, carrying supplies and ammunition and giving them somewhere to plug in their rechargers.

One approach to the Mule is to build a four-legged robot very much like the biological version -- or some sort of wheeled equivalent. But there is another way, and this is where Danny Hillis of Applied Minds comes in. Hillis is best known for developing the parallel processing that underlies most modern supercomputers, but has been active in many different fields. His idea is to develop something that is part wheel, part leg, combining the strengths of both. It's not a matter of reinventing the wheel so much as repackaging it.

"Nature doesn't generally use wheels," Hillis explains, "because although they are good for smooth surfaces, there are few smooth surfaces in nature. In fact we spent a great deal of effort building flat surfaces for wheels to roll on. It would be better to have a wheel which could go on any surface."

Robot legs are complex and inefficient - typically they rely on dynamic stability, which means that a legged robot falls over when power turned off. Hillis built a large robot dinosaur for the Disney organisation, and says that the amazing thing is that it walks at all.

The new alternative would be as simple and cheap as a wheel but with the all-terrain capability of legs. Hillis is very cagey about the configuration - evidently there have been several different versions – and the picture shows one prototype. The ultimate design may be completely different.

Shi-Ping Hsu, Director at Northrop Grumman's Futures Laboratory, is collaborating on the project. He points out that a wheel/leg hybrid should be able to give a much lower centre of gravity than the usual large wheels used for rough terrain, making it much more suitable for military applications.

If successful, the wheel/leg hybrid could have all sorts of uses for both powered and unpowered vehicles. The robotic mule and its relations will be the first beneficiaries, but it could give to a new generation of all-terrain vehicles. Eventually everything from electric wheelchairs to baby buggies may be able to negotiate all sorts of obstacles that are impossible today with the aid of the new hybrid.

Hillis would not be drawn on when the wheel/leg project would be completed, but hinted that the design would be sufficiently simple that it could very readily be adapted and could spread quickly.

Can you really improve on a design that's been around for thousands of years? "I'm not saying that we do have the solution," says Hillis, "but we might have a solution."

-- David Hambling

(Images courtesy of Applied Minds)

Stanford Beats Odds, Wins Robo-Race

Eighteen months ago, when Darpa held its "Grand Challenge" -- a $1 million, all-robot rally across the Mojave desert -- none of the competitors could get past mile seven of the 150 mile-long course.

That was then, this is now.

A second, slightly shorter, Grand Challenge went down yesterday. And three robo-cars managed to complete the entire 132-mile race. Two were from Carnegie Mellon's massive robotics program. Finishing just a few minutes ahead, with an average speed of 17 miles per hour, was Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg from Stanford University.

It's an incredible feat. Giving robots the intelligence and the vision to manuever over all that rough terrain was considered closer to science fiction than science fantasy not too long ago. I'm beyond impressed. And so is the Pentagon. "I don't know if I'd go 'moon shot,'" Darpa director Anthony Tether told the Merc-News. "It's closer to the Wright brothers."

DARPA's Desert Drag

The Grand Challenge is on, tomorrow, in the Mojave Desert.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has picked its 23 finalists for the unmanned vehicle race, the second the agency has run. The first didn't go so well -- no vehicle made it past the seven-mile mark -- but this year DARPA expects to hand out the $2 million prize to the team with the vehicle that "traverses the entire course the fastest in under ten hours."

Ten hours. That's a lot of driving. And the teams have to circumvent or overcome "lakebeds, narrow desert roads, tight turns, tunnels, gateways and treacherous mountain passes."

But here's the cool thing: The teams won't know the course until about two hours before the race begins.

The whole shebang will be webcast here.

A Carnegie-Mellon Hummer gets the pole position.

Virginia Tech has two teams; so does Carnegie-Mellon.

The CajunBot (that's the one in the picture) makes it. The GhostRider motorcycle, sadly, does not.

If you're in the area, DARPA welcomes spectators; its Web site offers a tip sheet for onlookers here. Have fun.

-- Posted by Dan Dupont

Little Wings

Earlier this year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency started a new "challenge" -- this one for the makers of small, remote-control aircraft. How small?

You've heard of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), right? These are smaller -- Nano Air Vehicles (NAVs), in DARPA speak. All of five centimeters, or less, "in any direction." Maximum weight: 10 grams.

Here's Flight International, in May:

“The warfighter needs something that can navigate inside a building, cave or tunnel, where MAVs can’t go,” says NAV programme manager Darryl Pines. “We need something even smaller that can fly through a window and provide situational awareness inside a building.”

And according to Aviation Week, NAVs' bigger cousins may be moving from the lab to the field. In a report this week (behind the subscription firewall), the magazine says a "recently spotted micro-UAV" was all of 3.5 inches long.

The all-black micro-UAV was silent, flew at about the speed of a person walking, was unaffected by a light breeze and appeared to be under remote control. It was very fragile-looking, and probably weighed only a few grams, according to the Texas-based mechanical
engineer who saw the vehicle at close range.

The story also notes that tiny aircraft like that one could be "powered and controlled via broadband radio-frequency energy beamed from a nearby source."

THERE'S MORE: Back in August, Noah delved into the Pentagon's new "Unmanned Systems Roadmap."

-- Posted by Dan Dupont

Drones on Hurricane Hunt

One of the promises of unmanned airplanes has been that they would handle jobs that were too dangerous for flesh-and-blood pilots to handle -- not just over a battlefield, but here at home, as well.

Here's a mission which fits that perfectly: Last week, an Aerosonde drone took off from southern Florida, rode through Tropical Storm Ophelia, and "provided the first-ever detailed observations" of a killer storm's "near-surface, high wind... environment."

"Today we saw what hopefully will become 'routine' in the very near future," Joe Cione, a researcher at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, said in a statement. "If we want to improve future forecasts of hurricane intensity change we will need to get continuous low-level observations near the air-sea interface on a regular basis, but manned flights near the surface of the ocean are risky. Remote unmanned aircraft such as the Aerosonde are the only way..."

While the successful use of NOAA's WP-3D Orion, its Gulfstream-IV aircraft and the U.S. Air Force Reserve's WC-130H aircraft have been important tools in the arsenal to understand tropical cyclones, detailed observations of the near-surface hurricane environment have been elusive because of the severe safety risks associated with low level manned flight missions. The main objective of the Aerosonde project addresses this significant observational shortcoming by using the unique long endurance and low-flying attributes of the unmanned Aerosonde observing platform, flying at altitudes as low as 500 feet...

The Aerosonde platform that flew into Ophelia was specially outfitted with sophisticated instruments used in traditional hurricane observation, including instruments such as mounted Global Position System (GPS) dropwind sondes and a satellite communications system that relayed information on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed every half second in real-time. The Aerosonde also carried a downward positioned infrared sensor that was used to estimate the underlying sea surface temperature. All available data were transmitted in near-real time to the NOAA National Hurricane Center and AOML, where the NOAA Hurricane Research Division is located.

The environment where the atmosphere meets the sea is critically important in hurricanes as it is where the ocean's warm water energy is directly transferred to the atmosphere just above it. The hurricane/ocean interface also is important because it is where the strongest winds in a hurricane are found and is the level at which most citizens live. Observing and ultimately better understanding this region of the storm is crucial to improve forecasts of hurricane intensity and structure.

Back in '02, I wrote a story for the Times on civilian UAVs. The star of the story: an Aerosonde over the Arctic Circle, monitoring the frozen seas and skies.

THERE'S MORE: American spy sats will be watching Rita from above, the AP says. Meanwhile, NASA has transferred control of the International Space Station from Houston to Moscow.

(Big ups: UV Online, Sploid)

U.S. Lags in Civilian Bots

Are all our robots going to wind up being soldiers?Wired News reports that, "with the exception of military and space applications, the United States is falling behind Europe and Asia in robotics research, according to an international study."

Unlike many other developed countries, the United States lacks a coordinated strategy to cultivate robotics development... Robotics research funding has been dropping in the United States for at least the last decade, with [the National Science Foundation's] funding now at less than $10 million per year.

In contrast, he said Japan's government will spend nearly $100 million in 2005. And over the next three years, Europe plans to spend nearly $100 million on a new program called Advanced Robotics. South Korea, meanwhile, spends $80 million on robotics research annually.

THERE'S MORE: If you've got a 'bot that can dig up moon dirt, NASA has a quarter-million bucks for you.

Drones Over NoLa

Defense Tech first spotted the 8-foot long, sausage-shaped Silver Fox drone back in early 2003, right before it was headed off to Iraq.

Now, it looks like five of the robo-planes, equipped with thermal cameras, will be headed to New Orleans, to hunt for Katrina survivors.

Five Silver Fox "unmanned aerial vehicles," or UAVs, equipped with thermal imaging technology to detect the body heat of storm survivors, are en route to the crippled city, Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Curt Weldon said.

Mr. Weldon told reporters in Baton Rouge that he had bypassed government bureaucracy to obtain the drones from a private company to be used in search and rescue operations in New Orleans, scene of one of the worst natural disasters in US history.

"With thermal imaging capability ... you can actually see into the buildings and see the body image of a person still alive," Mr Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, said.

"It could help assess whether there are people trapped alive in attics or upper floors," he said. "Once you've got them pinpointed you can send rescue teams in."

(Big ups: JQP)

THERE'S MORE: Over at Winds of Change, Murdoc has a terrific round-up of the Navy's response to Katrina.

AND MORE: A few weeks back, we mentioned the giant sonic blasters being tested by the L.A. Sherriff's Department. Some of the screechers are about to be shipped to the Gulf Coast, "so authorities can use the tools for crowd control, aid distribution and rescue operations," Xeni reports in Wired News.

Drone-Killer Designed

I don't pretend to know the first thing about designing a drone -- much less desgining a drone-killer. But when I told the folks at Popular Mechanics that Darpa was looking for proposals for a weapon that could take out robo-planes, a team of artist- and engineer-types got busy. This is what they dreamed up.

"Special Delivery," For Sure

Now I know why the Pentagon's chiefs are spending billions to develop heavily-armed, flying robots. It's so they can get their Amazon deliveries quicker.

Well, maybe it won't be the main mission. But Mike Francis, Darpa's program director for Joint-Unmanned Combat Air Systems, says there might be a couple of commercial applications in the killer drones' underlying algorithms. At the agency's DarpaTech 2005 conference, Francis noted that J-UCAS technology -- including multiple unmanned aircraft (unarmed, of course) and the planes' associated software and ground systems -- could be commercialized for a variety of uses. Inspecting power lines are one possibility. Handling security is another. A third is delivering or tracking UPS or FedEx packages.

Darpa announced that Boeing's X-45A prototype killer drones successfully completed a suppression of enemy air defenses demonstration last week, including detecting multiple simulated threats and performing coordinated attacks on multiple targets. The aircraft also prioritized targets, re-planned attacks as priorities changed and avoided simulated "pop-up" threats. It's no so hard to imagine the drones using the same decision-making processes to cope with slightly less-lethal choices.

-- Catherine Macrae Hockmuth

Unmanned Future Plotted

The Defense Department's "Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2005-2030" is a pretty cold-eyed document, detailing in no uncertain terms what the pilotless planes of the world can and cannot do. But there is a part of the Roadmap where the Pentagon's planners let their imagination run wild, where they consider the flying robotic equivalent to concept cars. Here are a few models…

DP-5X
length: 11 ft. weight: 475 lbs. endurance: 5.5 hrs. 0 delivered/TBD planned
The DP-5X is planned to be a… VTOL [vertical take off and landing] UA [unmanned aircraft]. The program has successfully completed development and test milestones and is planning to enter initial flight demonstrations. The vehicle is modular and will facilitate reconfigurations to include or remove subsystem components. The modular design allows the aircraft to be separated into distinct modules that are man-transportable. The DP-5X has an ample payload capacity and is designed to fit into a common HMMWV system. The unique construction allows it to be rapidly launched by two operators. The vehicle can serve as a tactical Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition (RSTA) and Communication Relay platform to the Army small unit commanders at the Battalion and below level.

Long Gun
length: 12 ft. weight: 720 lbs. endurance: 30+ hrs. 0 delivered/TBD planned
The DARPA Long Gun program will evaluate and develop a re-useable, long endurance, low cost, joint, unmanned/armed missile system combined with a tri-mode long wave infrared/near infrared/visible (LWIR/NIR/VIS) sensor with laser spot targeting. Ducted fan propulsion will provide efficient thrust for long endurance. The missile will be launched from a canister carried on a sea or ground vehicle, will fly to a specified target area, and use a tri-mode sensor operating at visible, long, and near-infrared wavelengths to search for targets. If a qualified target is found, the missile will attack the target with a self-contained munition. If no targets are found, the missile could be commanded to return to base. The missile will include a data link back to a human controller/ operator to confirm target characteristics, approve engagement, and perform battle damage assessment.

A-160 Hummingbird
length: 35 ft. weight: 4300 lbs. endurance: 18 hrs. 4 delivered/10 planned
The A160 Hummingbird is designed to demonstrate the capability for marked improvements in performance (range, endurance, and controllability), as compared to conventional helicopters, through the use of a rigid rotor with variable RPM, lightweight rotor and fuselage structures, a high efficiency internal combustion engine, large fuel fraction, and an advanced semi-autonomous flight control/flight management system. The patented Optimum Speed Rotor (OSR) system allows the rotor to operate over a wide band of RPM and enables the A160 rotor blades to operate at the best lift/drag ratio over the full spectrum of flight conditions. First flight occurred in January 2002. In flight testing, using a 4-cylinder racing car engine, the A160 has achieved 135 knots speed, 7.3 hour endurance on an 18% fuel load, 7,000 ft altitude, and wide variation in rotor RPM. Autonomous flight achieved for take-off, waypoint flight, landing, and lost-link return to base. Current plans are to test with a 6-cylinder engine, then migrate to a turboshaft engine, and ultimately to a diesel engine, to achieve high endurance (24+ hours) and high altitude (30,000 feet). The DARPA contract ends in 2007.

X-50 Dragonfly Canard Rotor/Wing (CRW)
length: 17.7 ft. weight: 1485 lbs. endurance: 30 mins. 2 delivered/2 planned
The CRW concept combines the VTOL capability of a helicopter with the high-subsonic cruise speed (as high as 400 knots) of a fixed-wing aircraft. CRW intends to achieve this by stopping and locking the rotor and using it as a wing to achieve high speed forward flight; the canard and tail provide additional lifting and control surfaces. For both rotary and fixed-wing flight modes, the CRW is powered by a conventional turbofan engine. The X- 50 is a technology demonstrator designed to assess and validate the CRW concept. Hover tests were conducted in December 2003 and March 2004, but a hard landing resulted in significant damage to the first air vehicle. The second X-50 is now being readied to continue the flight testing, planned for summer 2005.

Cormorant
Length: 19 ft. weight: 9000 lbs. endurance: 3 hrs
The Cormorant project is currently conducting a series of risk reduction demonstrations for a multi-purpose UA that is “immersible” and capable of launch, recovery, and re-launch from a submerged SSGN [guided missile] submarine or a surface ship. Such an UA could provide all- weather ISR&T, BDA [battle damage assessment], armed reconnaissance, or SOF and specialized mission support. In particular, the combination of a stealthy SSGN submarine and a survivable air vehicle could introduce a disruptive capability to support future joint operations. If the current demonstrations are successful, follow-on efforts could involve building an immersible and flyable demonstrator UA.

It's interesting to see, too, what's not on the Roadmap's list. For example, Future Combat Systems, the Army's gazillion dollar modernization program, is supposed to have at least four new kinds of flying drones by 2008, from backpack to mini-helicopter sized. But, according to the Roadmap, two of those four robo-planes will be ones that G.I.s are already flying. Instead of the UFO-buttplug hybrid that the Pentagon had originally been pushing to put in soldiers' packs, the model airplane-esque Raven will get the nod, at least initially. Although there are hopes for the DP-5X to become the Army's two-man portable drone of the future, the rail-launched Shadow 200, which first flew in 1991, will be drone of choice, for now.

THERE'S MORE: Aviation Week looks at the Roadmap and notes that UA missions "will be quickly expanding into the more exotic areas of electronic jamming, communications interception, pulling imagery from obscure portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and the measurement of faint signals that could betray enemy activity."

The Roadmap has several chronological buckets for the appearance of specific capabilities. In 2005-10, some UAVs are to be inaudible from 1,000 ft. or less, detect targets under trees, distinguish facial features from 4 naut. mi., and automatically recognize target vehicles. By 2010-15, UAVs are to be capable of automated aerial refueling and employing a 100-band hyperspectral imagery sensor. Capabilities added in 2015-20 are to be the ability to map sea mines in real time and increased endurance (of 40%) without an increase in fuel load. The period 2025-30 is to produce 1,000-band hyperspectral imagery and human-equivalent processor speed and memory in a computer small enough for airborne use...

One big obstacle to expansion, particularly among the most sophisticated of these aircraft, appears to be the recruitment and training of qualified pilots and sensor operators to fly and fight them. Possibly the most sought-after and overworked units are the U.S. Air Force's three Predator squadrons stationed at Nellis AFB and Creech AFB in Nevada; only the aircraft and small launch and recovery teams operate in Afghanistan and Iraq. Crews flying the overseas missions are actually operating from "cockpits" at Nellis.

For example, the Predator training squadron flying from Creech will produce only 15 pilots and 15 sensor operators per class during the next year, and perhaps double that in the following year, say USAF officials. There are plans to establish a second flight training unit, possibly operated by the Air National Guard. But demands of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq will make it a slow process.

Special Forces' Drones

The Pentagon came out the other day with its "Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2005-2030." It's the Defense Department's once-every-few-years wrap-up of everything it's doing in drone-land. And there are, of course, a number of interesting tidbits. I'll share 'em with you here, as I make my way through all 213 pages.

But here's something that caught my eye right away: a breakdown of the robo-planes being used by (or in the works for) Special Forces. Two of 'em I had heard of before -- the Snow Goose and Onyx delivery drones. The rest were new to me.

BATCAM
length: 24". weight: .84 lbs. endurance: 18 mins. 46 planned
First flown in 2003, the Battlefield Air Targeting Camera Micro Air Vehicle (BATCAM) will be a recoverable/attritable asset for the Air Force Special Operations Command and Air Force Battlefield Airmen. The BATCAM w provide the ability to covertly navigate, reconnoiter, and target objectives, ultimately enhancing situational awareness, reducing fratricide, increasing survivability, and mission success rates.

Neptune
length: 7 ft. weight: 20 lbs. endurance: 4 hrs. 5 delivered/27 planned
Neptune is a new tactical UA [unmanned air] design optimized for at-sea launch and recovery. Carried in a 72x30x20 inch case that transforms into a pneumatic launcher, it can be launched from small vessels and recovered in open water. It can carry IR or color video sensors, or can be used to drop small payloads. Its digital data link is designed to minimize multipath effects over water. First flight occurred in January 2002, and an initial production contract was awarded to DRS Unmanned Technologies in March 2002.

XPV-2 Mako
length: 9 ft. wieght: 130 lbs. endurance: 8.5 hrs. 30 delivered
Mako is a lightweight long endurance versatile unmanned aircraft capable of a variety of missions, yet of sufficiently low cost to be discarded after actual battle, if necessary. It is a single engine, high wing, Radio Controlled or computer assisted autopilot UA capable of daylight or infrared reconnaissance and other related missions. Although it is a relatively new aircraft, the recent modifications that included the addition of navigation/strobe lights, a Mode C transponder, dual GCS operational capability, and a new high resolution digital camera, made it a success during support to OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom].

Monday: experimental drones. Stay tuned.

Army Picks New Killer Drone

The Army has finally settled on a company to build its next generation of long-range killer drones, according to Defense Daily.

General Atomics, maker of the wildly succesful Predator robo-plane, got the $214 million gig to build 48 of the Extended Range Multi-Purpose drones. The first of them should be ready to go by 2008. 132 are planned, all told.

Defense News notes that "unlike Predator, the ERMP will be able to take off and land automatically" -- handing off the trickiest parts of piloting a drone to a computer. Which means that the ERMP can be flown by young enlisted men, instead of by the ex-fighter pilots, who now operate the Predator fleet. (My Wired magazine story on drones has a bit more on this.)

The Army sees the drones staying up in the air for 72 hours straight; the Predator, by comparison, can't even manage a whole day in flight, right now. While it's airborne, the Army expects the ERMP to snoop on enemies, relay communications, identify targets -- and blow stuff up, if need be. It'll start out with Hellfire missiles, same as the Predator. Other weapons may be added, later on.

Bot to the Rescue

The U.S. Navy is sending an unmanned, underwater robot to help rescue a Russian mini-sub caught on the Pacific floor.

The "Super Scorpio" submersible has been used repeatedly to salvaged downed fighter planes and sunken ships in the Pacific. It can "can reach depths of up to 5,000 feet and is equipped with high-powered lights, sonar and video cameras," according to the AP. The American Forces Press Service says it's capable of cutting one-inch-thick steel cable.

The 4500-pound Scorpio and its human handlers "will be flown from San Diego on a U.S. Air Force C-5 aircraft later today to the Kamchatka Peninsula, where many of Russia's most secret military projects are based. The airlift "will mark the first time since the World War II era that a U.S. military plane has been allowed to fly there," the AP reports.

Silly "Stealth"

Cockpits in unmanned planes. A steath fighter that every radar can see. A drone so evil it illegally downloads MP3s. Popular Science's Eric Adams watches the supersonically silly Jamie Foxx flick, "Stealth," so we don't have to.

Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions (SAUVIM)

The University of Hawaii (via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends) is testing an undersea robotic vehicle called SAUVIM (Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions).

"Intervention missions" include "construction & repair, cable streaming, mine hunting, and munitions retrieval..."

This sucker is roughly the size of an SUV, with a robotic arm. It can operate at great depths -- down to about 4 miles -- for about eight hours. Operating time is a function of battery life.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported some problems, but the engineers and Navy didn't get down on themselves:

A sensor failed to work, causing a glitch in the performance of the group's Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention during a demonstration ....

But industry and Navy research officials were enthusiastic about the unique vehicle's potential.

"This is technology that the world needs," said Gary Godshalk, of Lockheed Martin, in Kailua. "Underwater vehicles are the future."

I am off to Hawaii, myself, for a friend's wedding in a couple of days. If I scuba, I'll keep an eye out for an any underwater SUVs with robotic arms.

So, here's a big "aloha" to the DefenseTech gang. It's been a blast.

And, since "aloha" is also a greeting, welcome Jim Lewis (no relation), Director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I used to work for Jim. He grasps both the technology and the absurd, which makes him perfect for this gig.

You'll like him a lot.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis

End of the Kamikaze?

Okay boys, you're off the hook.

Kyodo News reports that the Japan Defense Agency "plans to produce two prototype high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned reconnaissance aircraft by fiscal 2012 at a total cost of 22 billion yen ..."

JDA sources told Kyodo that the Technical Research and Development Institute hopes to reduce Japan's dependence on imported UAVs:

The move is expected to stir debate over whether it is appropriate to pour large sums of taxpayer money into developing planes that would most likely be inferior to existing U.S. aircraft and that would require even further investment to be practical.

[snip]

The prototype that the institute plans to produce would be able to operate for more than 10 hours at an altitude of about 15,000 meters. It would have a wingspan of about 24 meters.

By comparison, the U.S. Global Hawk, which costs 5.7 billion yen each, flies for more than 35 hours at about 20,000 meters. The U.S. Predator B, at 800 million, yen cruises for more than 30 hours at 15,000 meters.

The announcement follows reports that Japan is considering buying US Global Hawk drones.

The current Japanese surveillance UAV is called the Forward Flying Observation System (FFOS). The FFOS is essentially an unpiloted helicopter, manufactured by Fuji Heavy Industries -- the people who make the Subaru.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

Drone OS Ramps Up

A dozen types of drones are patrolling the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq. But because most of them run on different software, it's tough to get the robot planes to work together -- or to port one machine's advances to another drone.

That's why the Pentagon's way-out research branch, Darpa, has been working on a common operating system (COS) for the next generation of killer drones. The "first components" of that software were delivered last month, according to the agency.

The COS "is not like UNIX, LINUX, or any of the available embedded operating systems," Darpa says. "It does not manage and control resources such as hard drives, network cards, and keyboards as one would expect of these typical operating systems."

What the COS is supposed to do, eventually, is let the drones pass information back and forth between each other, with operators on the ground, and with manned airplanes in the sky. If all goes according to plan, the system will tie together the drones' sensors, giving the robots a single picture of a warzone. It will manage the aircraft's weapons array. It will make recommendations on when to fire. And it will manage the "balance between autonomy and human interaction" in each mission.

In other words, it's pretty damn important. No operating system, no robot war.

UAV Takeover Shot Down

The Air Force's bid to take over all of the U.S. military's flying drones has been shot down, Inside Defense says.

Over the years, the various branches of the military have all pursued their own independent, often overlapping, unmanned aerial (UAV) vehicle programs. The result is a giant, jumbled robot menagerie, with over a dozen species of military drones flying in Iraq. Few of them speak the same language, or work together well. Soldiers often have to wait weeks for a slice of the radio spectrum that they can use to talk to their UAVs.

That's why panel after expert panel has recommended that someone take control of this unmanned zoo, and start getting the creatures to play together nicely. Last year, Air Force generals nominated themselves to be the zookeepers. They offered the Air Force up as the "Executive Agent" for UAVs -- the financial and operational gatekeeper for all robots in the air.

In many ways, it was a logical choice. The flyboys already understand the skies, managing the "Air Tasking Orders" that tell American planes when and where to fly over a warzone. And they've long been the military's gadget freaks. That's why, back in the day, they got the bulk of the Pentagon's space program, too.

But there was also a heaping scoop of self-interest in the Air Force move. The service's fighter jocks have had a whole lot of free time on their hands, ever since the Cold War ended and all those Soviet MiGs stopped flying. And which service has been the most threatened by the rise of robo-pilots?

Plus, UAVs -- especially the little, hand-thrown models -- aren't exactly planes. As I noted in last month's Wired, "they have wings and fly, but they're more like guns (or cameras) with wings than planes with guns." And the last thing any Army or Marine general wants to do is give up his guns. Or kiss some fighter jock's ass every time he needed to buy a few more flying cameras for his men.

So, in the end, it wasn't a surprise that the Joint Requirements Oversight Council -- the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the vice chiefs from each of the services -- nixed the Executive Agent idea in a June 1 meeting.

Instead, Inside Defense reports, they endorsed the idea of turning the Air Force's new UAV Center of Excellence near Las Vegas into an establishment for all four services. "That center will be led by a rotational flag officer, with the first leader being an Army one-star [general]," according to the newsletter. "The deputy, also a rotational position, will initially be filled by an Air Force colonel."

Solar Drone New Endurance Champ

Saving pilots' lives is cool and all. So is holding on to some cash. But one of the biggest reasons why militaries have become so infatuated with robot planes might be the drones' ability to hang around in the air.

Flying a plane is tiring. A pilot can only last so long before he needs a break. That's why long range bombers, like the B-52, usually take a pair of 'em into the air.

Drones, on the other hand, don't tucker out. They can keep flying as long as there's fuel to be had. The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), for example, can stay in the air for 31 hours straight.

That's a hell of a non-stop flight. But it's only a fraction of the endurance that drone-makers believe will eventually be possible. Take away a drone's need for gas, by loading it up with solar panels or fuel cells, and you might have a UAV that can stay airborne just about indefinitely.

Electric vehicle maker AC Propulsion took a big step toward that goal earlier this month, setting a new unmanned endurance record by keeping its SoLong UAV in the skies for 48 hours in a row, Aviation Week reports.

"The flight probably could have lasted a third night, and perhaps a fourth and a fifth," the magazine adds. AC founder "Alan Cocconi landed after 48 hr. 16 min. because the pilots [operating the plane from the ground] were exhausted, not because the battery was low on juice."

[SoLong is] a powered sailplane of Cocconi's own design with solar cells built into the wing. It weighs 28.2 lb., has a 15.6-ft. span, and takes off with its own 1-hp. motor from a wheeled dolly. The control system includes a sophisticated autopilot with inertial, barometric and GPS references; a television camera gives an over-the-nose pilot's-eye view. It's easy to dismiss the project due to the small size of the aircraft and the 5 X 8-ft. ground station, but the flight system is equal to those many times larger.

There could be major bucks for Cocconi & Co., if they can build their system out to industrial strength -- and not just in defense contracts. As I noted in the Times back in 2002...

The big commercial opportunity is likely to be in missions at 50,000 feet and higher that last for months. There, drones can serve as "long-endurance, orbiting relays -- airborne cell towers," Mr. Newcome of Adroit Systems wrote in the trade journal Unmanned Vehicles.

Traditional cell towers are expensive -- up to $1 million each -- and cover three square miles or less. Given their mobility, drones could offer a cheaper alternative.

Several companies are already looking to outlast Cocconi's vrew. AeroVironment, the previous long-range champ, is designing a hydrogen-powered drone (right) that can stay in the sky for a week or more.

Israel, France Team Up for Killer Drones

It's bad enough that Israel is selling weapons to China. But France? Quel horreur!

"A French company plans to display a tactical drone armed with advanced Israeli air-to-ground missiles at the 2005 Paris Air Show, in a bid to make France a leader in unmanned combat aircraft," Defense News reports.

The Sperwer B, designed for battlefield reconnaissance, has been fitted with two Spike long-range, precision-strike missiles...

Israeli government-owned Rafael Armament Development Authority makes the Spike ER (extended range) guided weapon. The missile carries an advanced electro-optic system with a combined daytime camera and infrared seeker and fiber-optic data link. The 33-kilogram Spike ER is designed for precision strikes against small, moving ground targets at ranges of up to eight kilometers...

The Franco-Israeli cooperation on the drone marks a political turn for Paris, Jean-Paul Hébert, of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes et Sciences Sociales, said. France sold Israel Dassault Mirage fighters used with devastating effect in the 1967 Six-Day War, but has not sold much military equipment to Israel since then.

France, already pushing ahead on several killer drone projects, isn't the only European country developing armed robots to roam the skies. According to Aviation Week, England's BAE Systems is working on a "classified low-radar-observable UCAV [unmanned combat aerial vehicle] project, dubbed Nightjar, for the British Defense Ministry."

The program, suggest industry sources, has a twofold purpose. The first is to ensure the technology base for the development of a low-observable UCAV; the second is to provide leverage should the U.K. decide to participate in any comparable U.S. effort...

Earlier this year the British Defense Ministry joined the Pentagon's Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems program. Work from Nightjar will inevitably inform the U.K. participation. While the ministry remains publicly noncommittal as to whether it will pursue a European or a U.S. path... all indications are that U.S. route is far more likely.

The joint work will conclude with "live and virtual manned and unmanned assets from both nations operating in a networked coalition warfare scenario." It's possible that a Nightjar UCAV could take part in [U.S. drone test flights] in 2009.

Killer Drone Construction Begins

Northrop Grumman engineers have spent the last couple of years designing a killer drone for the Navy. Today, the company announced that it's starting to build the X-47B Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems plane. It's the first attack drone "that can operate from both land bases and aircraft carriers," according to a Northrop press release.

Or, at least, the X-47B will be the first, once it's completed. Putting the prototype robo-plane together should take about 18 months. A second X-47 should roll off of the assembly line about three to six months after that. And a third... well, we'll wait and see. Northrop wants the Defense Department to evaluate the first two before it builds another.

The Pentagon is giving Northrop a billion bucks for the three vehicles, which are designed to "suppress enemy air defenses, perform electronic attack, conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and perform precision strike attacks," according to the company. The drones will each have a pair of 2,000 pound, satellite-guided bombs to help in the missions. The military wants to test flights to start by the end of 2007.

Predator's Maverick Maker

The Pentagon has been toying around with limited-run, prototype drones for decades. So how did the U.S. military suddenly have a small fleet of Predator robotic planes at the ready after 9/11? Aviation Week says the answer lies with Tom Cassidy, the maverick chief of Predator-maker General Atomics.

"We're going to tell General Atomics to build every Predator they can possibly build," replied [Air Force chief of staff] Gen. John P. Jumper, referring to the small San Diego company that developed the aircraft.

Tom Cassidy isn't waiting for the paperwork to go through. Cassidy, the president and CEO of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, is expanding the Predator production line, even building eight additional Predator Bs -- a more capable version of the aircraft -- without orders. "They'll procrastinate for three years," he says of his military customers. "Then when they want to buy, they think it's like going down to the Ford dealership and picking one off the lot."

Such blunt talk has won him his share of critics, but the 72-year-old retired rear admiral and veteran fighter pilot from The Bronx doesn't seem to care. The Predator, initially shunned by the military services, has won wide acclaim as a simple, adaptable aircraft that can provide crucial reconnaissance and strike capability for the bargain price of less than $5 million a copy, sensors included.

The remotely piloted aircraft, which carries two Hellfire missiles and can stay aloft for more than a day at a time, stunned the world with its ability to hunt down and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Afghanistan and the Middle East...

It was Cassidy's risky "build it and they will come" strategy -- developing and building aircraft ahead of orders -- that proved decisive following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. When U.S. forces were unexpectedly and very suddenly ordered to rout guerilla-like forces from mountainous Afghanistan, Hellfire-equipped Predators weren't just a concept on the drawing board. They were in production.

Unmanned Culture Clash

In March, Wired magazine sent me to a remote desert outpost in Arizona, where the Army is training newly-minted GIs to fly the robotic planes which have become so critical to the battle for Iraq. The place is central flashpoint in a military culture clash between teenaged videogamers and veteran fighter jocks for control of the drones. Here's a snippet of what I found:

Private Joel Clark doesn't have any macho dogfight stories. He doesn't have a cool call sign or the swagger of a guy who has pulled 9 gs. In fact, Clark has never held a throttle. He did, however, flunk high school English. And that's how the milky-pale 19-year-old became one of America's newest pilots.

Clark had planned to join the Army as a Blackhawk helicopter mechanic. But that F kept him from graduating on time, forcing him to reapply. The second time around, his recruiter suggested he try instead to be a "96 Uniform" - Army-speak for a unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, operator. Clark had never considered becoming a pilot. But the idea of running a robot spy plane sounded pretty rad. Now he's one of 225 soldiers, reservists, and National Guardsmen training on a lonely airstrip at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, a 125-year-old outpost 10 miles from the Mexican border.

In a sense, Clark has been prepping for the job since he was a kid: He plays videogames. A lot of videogames. Back in the barracks he spends downtime with an Xbox and a PlayStation. When he first slid behind the controls of a Shadow UAV, the point and click operation turned out to work much the same way. "You watch the screen. You tell it to roll left, it rolls left. It's pretty simple," Clark says. But this is real life. "So you have to take it more seriously. If you crash one of these, you have to bleed and piss" - in other words, take a drug test.

Clark has no intention of nose-diving, however. He's gamed away the past 11 months in Arizona, and today, finally, is his last "check ride." After this takeoff, he'll be certified to fly the Shadow 200. He'll spend a few months at Fort Hood, Texas, training with the 4th Infantry Division. Then he'll ship off to what his sergeant calls the Big Sandbox: Iraq.

I've also written an online "reporter's notebook" to accompany the Wired magazine piece. Model airplane champs, robotic border guards, and Saddam's children all figure in. Give 'em both a look.

PAK PREDATOR STRIKE

"The killing of a suspected operative of Al Qaeda in Pakistan eight days ago by a missile launched from a remotely controlled Central Intelligence Agency aircraft was the latest such strike in a shadowy effort that both Pakistani and American officials have sought to hide," the Times reports.

The killing of the suspected operative, Haitham al-Yemeni, was first reported Friday night by ABC News, but it was denied the next day by Pakistan's Information Ministry. The C.I.A. has declined to confirm or deny the reports.

But an account provided by former counterterrorism officials said the strike occurred May 7 in the Pakistani province of North Waziristan, in tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan. The missile was fired by a Predator aircraft operated by the C.I.A. from a base hundreds of miles from the target, the officials said.

"The U.S. team was hoping Haitham al-Yemeni would lead them to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden," the Washington Post notes. "But after Pakistani authorities early this month captured another al Qaeda leader, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, CIA officials became concerned that al-Yemeni would go into hiding and decided to try to kill him instead."

The CIA and U.S. military Special Operations forces have been operating inside Pakistan for more than two years with the knowledge of Pakistani authorities. But the U.S. presence is highly controversial with the largely Muslim Pakistani public, which is generally sympathetic to bin Laden and al Qaeda. For that reason, Pakistani officials routinely play down U.S.-Pakistani cooperation...

Al-Yemeni's death is one of only a handful of known incidents in which the CIA has fired the remote-controlled, missile-equipped Predator to kill an al Qaeda member. In November 2002, the CIA used a Predator fitted with a five-foot-long Hellfire missile to kill a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, as he was riding in a car in the Yemeni desert...

The CIA is permitted to operate the lethal Predator under presidential authority promulgated after the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly after the attacks, Bush approved a "presidential finding" that allowed the CIA to write a set of highly classified rules describing which individuals could be killed by CIA officers. Such killings were defined as self-defense in a global war against al Qaeda terrorists...

The Predator drone's primary mission has been to supply real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. But it has proved highly successful as a battlefield weapon as well.

According to previously reported Pentagon documents, over the next five years the Air Force plans to purchase 24 Predators [wrong; it's more like 144 -- ed.] and 35 Predator Bs, which will be armed with as many as 3,000 pounds of precision-guided bombs or missiles, and sensors to locate and strike moving targets on the ground.

"Some of our greatest successes against al Qaeda have been through the use of the Predator, both in terms of recognizing targets and actual strikes," said Roger Cressey, a former Clinton administration counterterrorism official. "It's the area where the CIA has done an extremely good job."

EUROPE'S KILLER DRONES

I'm expecting fashionably-sleek little wings and long, tapered missiles. The Italians are about to start testing a prototype killer d