Airborne Combat Engineer

Fly-sized spies and weapons move closer to practicality

Researchers are working on insect-sized winged vehicles which can spy on enemy operations and even deliver a lethal injection to an individual.

Bill Christensen @ Technovelgy reports on some promising developments.

From an 19NOV2006 Technovelgy post: "According to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel is developing a nanotechnology-based "bionic hornet" no bigger than an insect. This weaponized bug would be able to chase, photograph and kill targets, easily maneuvering in urban landscapes."

Once again, Science Fiction has served as the brainstorming tool to stimulate research. A 1936 Science Fiction story, The Scarab, foresaw such a device.

Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Flight International reports that the US Army's flying-wastebasket style hover-bot - officially known as the Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle - is now in action. This remarkable machine flies using a ducted fan (essentially a propellor enclosed in a cylindrical pipe). The hover-droid and its ground control station can be carried in a couple of backpacks, and it can - according to Honeywell's promotional video (Flash & compliant firewall required) go at almost 60 mph and as high as 10,500 feet.

The Micro UAV weighs just 16lb and can carry only video cameras for now. According to Flight, the initial wastebasket-sized job is being used to check for roadside bombs or ambushes in Iraq.

The Register   Flight   Honeywell

Wall climbing robot

A North Carolina company has developed a technology that can give robots the ability to climb sheer walls. Vortex Holdings, LLC ginned up the so-called “Vortex Regenerative Air Movement” technology that creates a “tornado in a cup,” making it possible for small payloads of up to 3.5 pounds to be adhered to walls.

Christian @ Defense Tech

Medusa multi-caliber revolver

The Medusa Model 47 (once produced by Phillips & Rodgers, Inc.) is a unique revolver that has the ability to chamber multiple calibers, making it interesting to handgun enthusiasts.

The Medusa chambers, fires, and extracts 25 different cartridges (actually 117, if you count every one ever made, but only 25 were claimed) in the .380/.38/9mm/.357 ammunition range (just about any handgun round with a bullet diameter between .0355 and .0357 inches). Various rounds can be mixed in the same cylinder loading and fired with no problem.

The revolver WAS sold under the CADCO name and listed at the now defunct URL http://www.cadco.com/firearms/pri.htm (don't bother clicking on it). Modern Gun Magazine (which  went belly up in 1995) predicted: "This gun will change the industry." (We read that from time to time in gun mags, which have to put enticing titles on their covers to get us to pick them up and maybe buy them.)

[kitsune]

See how it does it in the continuation

Radio Shack a military supplier?

Troops are still buying remote control toy trucks, for use in checking out possible roadside bombs. This, despite the fact that nearly 6,000 combat robots have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan so far. The problem is, there are never enough droids to go around. So the droidless troops have been improvising. Radio controlled (RC) cars and aircraft are readily available from hobby stores, or their web sites. Items can be sent via air freight to Iraq.

The high end RC trucks cost several hundred dollars, but can be controlled from as far away as 200 meters. These are used for checking out items on, or alongside, the road that might be bombs. Just shooting at the suspicious objects doesn't always set them off. But run an RC car up to it, and ram the object, and you quickly know if it is heavy (and possibly a bomb), or light (and likely just some garbage.) These vehicles can also be equipped with wireless video cameras, perfect for checking out what's around the corner.

RC aircraft, especially the high end ones that cost $500 or more, can also, with some effort, be equipped with a wireless vidcam. However, using off-the-shelf equipment, your transmission range is only a few hundred meters. Most RC aircraft can be controlled up to 500 meters away, and with more expensive commo gear, nearly twice that.

[Strategy Page]

Reminds one of the 1998 movie Small Soldiers, in which a toy company uses a surplus military computer chip to manufacture autonomous action figures, then ends up setting up a military sales division. Naturally, the DoD will pay about 10X the retail price, if you make a few custom modifications, paint it OD and get an XM number.

Army to test Fighting Bot

"The U.S. Army will soon test a six-wheeled, 20-foot robot to see whether it can traverse rugged terrain, fire machine guns and carry 1,900 pounds of gear without soldiers remotely controlling its every move," Defense News reports.

The MULE will ultimately use "an Autonomous Navigation System (ANS) whose algorithms can direct its own course."

Backers like Major David Byers, the MULE's assistant program manager, see the machine as "the equivalent of [a] weapon squad. You double the firepower without putting soldiers in harm’s way."

The toughest part is programming a robot to maneuver around another moving object... Massachusetts Institute of Technology research scientist Karl Iagnemma said... “This capability has been demonstrated in laboratory conditions, though not in Army-relevant conditions.”

[NS, Danger Room]

VIPer robot

At AUSA Winter symposium, March 2007 Elbit Systems unveiled its lastest UGV known as the Versatile, Intelligent and Portable Robot (VIPeR).

The new  robot can be equipped with a standard suite of visual and acoustic sensors and could also mount various effectors, such as a probe, pistol, 9mm mini-Uzi or grenade launcher, or a more capable  electronically initiated light weapon (such as a "metal storm" launcher).

Would think a "metal storm" with ammo would be too large and heavy for this little guy.

With compact dimensions and only about 11 kilograms weight and 30x40 centimeters size (excluding the tail) the new robot can fit into the soldier's backpack and become a standard equipment of future infantry units.

[Defense Update]

Maybe one day every "grunt" will have his own robot, which he'll value as much as his firearm, and nickname. Or, maybe every squad/fireteam.

Robots for EOD

Robots have been credited with saving countless lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. In light of this success, the Navy has embarked on an ambitious program to build its next generation of counter-explosives machines.

The robots perform for their human operators the most dangerous task: neutralizing improvised explosive devices by going down range to serve as a specialist’s eyes to check out suspicious sites. Without them, EOD technicians would be forced to inspect potential bombs up close.

Marine Corps Maj. Joseph Parker, who ran the shop at Camp Victory where broken or battle damaged robots are repaired, said 155 robots were destroyed in fiscal year 2006. However, technicians were able to rebuild 105 of them and send them back in the field within 72 hours.

As for the next generation EOD robot, “We think we can get away from using what industry has at the time and modifying it to military requirements,” said Byron Brezina, robotics director of the naval EOD technology division.

[National Defense]

DefenseLink has posted a Navy contract awarded to Remotec, Inc., Clinton, Tenn., for $45,000,000. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for robotic systems, accessories, spare parts, depot level repair support, and operator and technician training.

[Defense Tech]

Letting robots be the heros

ODIS, which stands for Omni Directional Inspection System, is one of a score of small military ground robots developed by universities in recent years and now seeing its first real-world tests in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[DA, Aviation Week]

Sentry robots for South Korea

South Korea on Sept. 28 unveiled a high-tech, machine gun-toting sentry robot that could support its troops in detecting and killing intruders along the heavily fortified border with North Korea.

South Korea has a largely conscript military of 650,000 against Pyongyang’s 1.2 million-strong forces, but a falling birth rate means Seoul will struggle in the future to maintain troop numbers.

[Defense News, 28 SEP 2006][found at Defense Tech, 05 NOV 2006]

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!