Dragonfly-Sized Insect Spies Spotted, Denied 433
SRA8 sends in a Washington Post piece about work at various academic, government, and military labs on insect-sized flying spies. A number of people reported what appeared to be flying mechanical insects, larger than dragonflies, over an antiwar rally in Washington DC last month. The reporter got mostly no-comments from the agencies he called trying to pin down what it was they saw. Only the FBI said through a spokesman: "We don't have anything like that." The article describes work on insect cyborgs as well as purely mechanical flying spies, but quotes vice admiral Joe Dyer, former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command now at iRobot in Burlington, Mass., as follows: "I'll be seriously dead before that program deploys." The article also mentions an International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, held in Switzerland in August, at which Japanese researchers demonstrated radio-controlled fliers with four-inch wingspans that resemble hawk moths.
Bet it's just the new toy from WowWee... (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/product/sku__WW260GRN?cm_ven=adwords&cm_cat=Media&cm_pla=outdoor+toys&cm_ite=wowwee_dragonfly [sharperimage.com]
http://www.flytechonline.com/ [flytechonline.com]
it's just danny dunn (Score:5, Informative)
Symposium (Score:4, Informative)
Insect size flapping MAV (Japan): http://www.fit.ac.jp/~y-kawa/ [fit.ac.jp]
These Have Been Around Since 70's (Score:5, Informative)
"Developed by CIA's Office of Research and Development in the 1970's, this micro-UAV was the first flight of an insect-sized vehicle (insectothopter). It was intended to prove the concept of such miniaturized platforms for intelligence collection. Insectothopter had a miniature engine to move the wings up and down. A small amount of gas was used to drive the engine, and the excess was vented out the rear for extra thrust. The flight tests were impressive. However, control in any kind of crosswind proved too difficult."
Once again Im not saying these were used to spy on protesters, but I know people are going to be like "there is no such thing like this out there...." So I figured I would add in some info to show that this type of tech did exist.
We may already be beyond that (Score:4, Informative)
He goes on to mention that this technology, being 40-years old, "pales in comparison" to what they have today.
You can view these pages for free at Amazon [amazon.com]. Search inside the book for "dragonfly" and they'll come right up. It wouldn't let me direct link to the pages.
Charlie Jade (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I haven't seen it in a while now, so I may be a bit off with that explanation.
Quite an interesting show, despite the slow start.
obviously a dumb story (Score:5, Informative)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jvWgeVUqlII [youtube.com]
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f04Jf3mnGAU&mode=related&search=spy%20drone%20police%20big%20brother [youtube.com]
The picture quality from these drones is simply amazing. The small size means that they're very likely to escape notice from people on the ground. One of the spy drone models I've seen is a four rotor copter running off of battery with a 2.5 hour air time. Longer-haul drones are fixed wing and can stay on station for longer. These little drones are astounding. They can get a line of sight on a second floor window from a few miles away and zoom in until you feel like you're peeking in from a ladder outside. The gyroscopic stabilization means that the images remain clear and useful.
In conjunction with the air vehicles, I'm sure there's probably work going on with vermin-sized spy vehicles, something rat-like. Small enough to penetrate buildings and go unnoticed. Rather than relying on agents to covertly break into locations and install bugs, send in a "rat." If you lose it, no big deal, it's not like one of your agents was killed. Note: I don't have a link for this since I haven't seen it discussed anywhere but it seems like too obvious of an idea, someone has to be working on it somewhere.
Right now we are seeing a huge transition for drones, moving from the era of being remotely piloted aircraft to autonomous robotic aircraft. The Fire Scout the Navy is working on is completely computer-controlled, the only joysticks on the ground equipment are for directing the cameras.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZSok1JRWbu0 [youtube.com]
I've read about what the scout drones can do for warfare and its revolutionary. Field commanders can get a view of the battlefield that is something you'd expect from a video game, eye in the sky, spying on enemy positions, all of the information relayed to a tactical plot in real-time. Avionics designers have been talking about sensory overload for a long time, the problem where a pilot can have more geegaws and doodads feeding him information than he can deal with at one time. That was the reason why interceptors like the F-14 and F-4 had a dedicated radar operator in addition to the pilot. That's also the reason why a guy-in-back was added to some models of the F-15. With more advanced systems fusing the streams of information into consolidated displays, one pilot can keep up with all of the information. That's why the Apache flies with a pilot and gunner but the canceled Comanche only had a single pilot.
This same process is going to be going on in the army general's command post. And with how bloody cheap technology is getting, you can well imagine the same thing will be happening for the third world military and insurgents as well.
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doubt it (Score:5, Informative)
Not it wasn't.
In the 1960s and 70s spy sats still dropped film back to earth using a parachute because they didn't have high the digital imaging that you can find in the average digital camera. Nuclear submarines would have killed for the computing power found in a Pentium 66.
So yes you are coming off as paranoid.
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cute, but no.. (Score:3, Informative)
Two issues I see are (1)flight time (battery drain especially when transmitting video from the object), and (2)control distance. If you're going to try to catch one, you better run fast when you do, because the operators can likely see the thing from where they're operating it.
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Informative)
First you have to find the little fellow in the viewfinder/LCD This is hard, because at wide-angle you'll have trouble seeing it, and at tele you'll have trouble finding it (since your FOV is so limited). If you're good and have one of those little electronic viewfinders, you can track the bug with one eye and look through the viewfinder with the other while operating your zoom ring/switch/whatever you have.
Then you've got to keep the erratically-flying little fellow in the frame while waiting on your AF to lock on. Lots of digital cameras with long zooms have issues with slow focus at the long end. Panasonic's FZ series has much faster focus at the long end but, when using the "high-speed focus" mode, the viewfinder is frozen so you might have trouble tracking.
You're probably better off using one of a variety of prefocus tricks.
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:3, Informative)
You have hardly provided any evidence to back that up. Military use in military areas ain't protests. Tasers [taser.com] were developed by a NASA guy and their development and history also do not fit your previous claim. So, you have not supported your earlier assertion. Google away, but next time support what you claimed.
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:1, Informative)
#2 John Kerry, on his own, was negotiating with North Vietnam in Paris.
Now, add to that, John Kerry appeared before Congress accusing the United States of war crimes. Given, #1 and #2, wouldn't it be nice to know if he was doing #3 dishonestly? There's a lot of good questions to ask about his motivations.
"Coretta Scott King" on the surface it does seem like a waste. Unfortunately, it has come out that much of the civil rights movement had heavy KGB manipulation.
Again, John Lennon, on the surface seems like a waste. He had a lot of contact with very violent revolutionary groups.
A waste or being careful? Were any of them thrown in jail, beaten, etc by the state?
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:4, Informative)
One of them (Mohammed Atta) had his driving licence revoked
It was in his real name with his real current address and he was known to the CIA?
There is a widespread myth that the hijackers were in the USA illegally (there were not) that they had forged documents (mostly they didn't), that they smuggled weapons on board (they went through the laughable airport security without guns but with knives) that they were Iranian/Iraqi (they were mostly Saudis)
Some of the terrorists spent time learning to fly in the USA before 9/11 and mostly they lived openly under their real names and did nothing to hide themselves