Microdrone Spy Planes

glinden writes "BBC News is reporting that Israel is now deploying microdrone spy planes. These planes have a wingspan of 13 inches (33 cm), can be carried in a backpack, can be launched by a single soldier, and can even fly through windows. The next step in the drone wars?"

Dig that propeller!

[The I Shing]

I'm glad I'm not an Israeli soldier... I'd be worried about over-winding the propeller and breaking the rubber band, or cutting my finger on the thing.

All joking aside, those things would be hot sellers here in the USA.

Ever wonder what's going on behind the ten-foot-high stone walls of that rich dude's house on the corner? Why, just sent your drone flying overhead.

Police departments would dig those things, too, and so would rescue units.

And don't get me started on what the tabloid paparazzi could do with those things.

Nothing new

[baudilus]

Anyone with TechTV knows that these things have been around for quite some time (employed by the U.S. army). They say that they don't carry destructive payloads, just cameras and the like. The real question is, did they develop these models themselves or buy them from a U.S. company?

In the future...

[SmackCrackandPot]

will we have 'spider' like cameras that can crawl along the ground and hide under rocks.

Will we have 'hawk' or 'eagle' gliders that attempt to take out these reconaissance gliders?

Just like in DUNE

[Capt'n Hector]

These look more like personal assassination drones than surveillance equipment. Visions of DUNE come to mind...

Grenade

[kefoo]

How long before somebody loads one of these with explosives and turns it into a guided grenade? It could be useful as a weapon against a small target of opportunity that doesn't merit a bomb run or cruise missile strike, as well as keeping the soldiers out of immediate harm's way.

Ah, more US Tech...

[Vthornheart]

I heard about this technology back in 1999, I had done a report on the unexposed spy technology of the United States. Those little buggers that they were holding in the picture closely resemble a prototype picture that I had found of the exact same kind of idea, being developed by US forces at that time.

The wingspan was similar (about 15 inches, if I remember correctly), and could be controlled remotely. A color video camera and microphone on the "plane" would record any needed information.

Another case of information sharing it seems. It's been about 5 years since I did that report, but I'll see if I can dig it up from the archives of my computer for the purposes of this conversation.

Re:Fly through Windows?

[neilcSD]

I'd imagine this would be pretty simple without adding too much weight - set it up like a claymore, with a plastic/ball bearing lattice and a small amount of c4. They could even shape the charge so that the bearings came out the nose of the drone, limitting collatoral casualties and upping the kill probability. Very Bond-esque!

Resources

[Trillian_Angel]

I still wonder a bit at how much money goes into these things, as well as man hours. I can see their uses as survelliance, but would those resources be better used elsewhere? ... a lot of resources would be better used if people didn't suck and have to fight amongst themselves all of the time, though. So, in that case, whats a little plane?

I'd like to own one, personally, but I just love playing with rockets and planes.

As someone mentioned before, using these devices for rescue personel would be very cool. I think a little robotic snake of somesort would be more efficient in rubble, but for overhead rescues to locate crashes, it would work.

Its a shame people don't come up for this stuff for rescue and other more beneficial things, then converted it to "war" types. But I suppose if you took away the wars, there wouldn't be quite so many people that needed rescued in the first place.

But there'd still be too many.

Small is the future?

[gilesjuk]

Is this sort of plane small enough to be invisible to current radar?

Currently this isn't an issue since the range of it is so small, but a small stealth bomber dropping a chemical or biological agent could be pretty dangerous.

Probably built their own.

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel has a lot of pull in Congress. Technologies developed by American companies often have to wait for Israel to commericialize the product before they are allowed to sell it. An example is sub 2 meter photography from space. American companies were prohibited from selling until the Mosad (via a front company called "West Indian Space" (google if your interested) had launched their own competing satillite.

These are actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

Three or four years ago, when I worked with the University of Florida's MAV team [ufl.edu], we were regularly flying 7 inch planes powered with small IC engines. Last I saw, they were down to a little more than 4 inch electric planes, including video. They need to be piloted, as opposed to the MAVs described in the article, but as I understand it, they're close to integrating GPS/waypoint autonomy on slightly larger planes. They've been throttleable since they went electric, and a good pilot could pretty easily fly through a medium sized window and down a hallway in good conditions (I don't think the planes mentioned could do this on their own either).

Re:Fly through Windows?

[pilgrim23]

I rememebr seeing a Discovery Channel special on the show WINGS some (10) years ago on Israeli drones. What I recall was that they were building theirs for a few hundred dollars out of existing model airplane parts and off the shelf camera/ radio tech. Contrasting this was the US Navy, also working on a drone program. The Navy effort used millions of dollars, thousands of hours of committee meetings, 6 case stduies and postion papers developed by Beltway Bandits, and was a complete and total failure

Re:Dig that propeller!

[Cruciform]

Pick up the latest RC mags and you'll see some very similar devices. Flight times are shorter, but they're improving all the time. Micro-servos and stronger, lighter pushrods are allowing fine control with even the smallest planes.
Wind is definitely a problem with these devices, but if you had a swarm of them and some skilled pilots you could do a lot of damage via intelligence collection or bomb/poison attack.

Re:Very clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Its very cool to know that I know someone who was involved with this technology, a professor of mine who taught a couple of classes I have taken rambled on about this technology my sophmore year. And yes he will remain nameless because I respect him very much but he is elderly and tends to ramble on about project he did in the past some of which I'm dead certain he probably isn't allowed to speak about. An interesting detail that slipped his tounge once was that they significantly dampened the buzzing noise the parent is talking about to the point where it was barely audible to the human ear. This is very old technology indeed.

humans unfit to govern

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are genetically unfit to govern other living beings... we need intelligent machines with Asimov's laws of robotics to hold humanity in escrow...

Re:Better killers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes. From the people who invented the Uzi, an indiscriminate killing machine- the closest you can get to the gun equivalent of a nuclear weapon- you don't pick your targets with an Uzi, you pick your areas.

Man, you're an idiot. Israel didn't invent automatic weapons. By any measure, the Heckler & Koch MP5 is a better submachine gun than the Uzi, and that was invented by the peace-loving Swiss.

Gun-equivalent to a nuke? I'm sure the vulcan cannons are much more powerful than an uzi.

It's be nice if people stopped and remembered a few basic facts. #1, Palestinians were there first.

No, they weren't. Jews have been there for many thousands of years. Arabs didn't migrate out of Arabia until recently (1600 years or so).

#2, Palestinians have rocks; Israelis have gunship helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, RPGs, and nuclear weapons; compare the body counts from the palestinian bombings with the multiple retaliation strikes and note that the ratio is just a tad imbalanced.

The Israelis have a well trained military. The Palestinians do not. And even when other Arab nations with real militaries attacked Israel in the many Arab-Israeli wars, the Arabs got their asses kicked, with far more Arab casulties than Israelis.

#3, you see terrorists- I see people fenced into ghetto prisons, whose basic resources(such as water) have been redirected out of the land they've been squeezed into, so desperate to protect their homes they're willing to strap bombs to themselves because they have no other means left to defend themselves.

Terrorists are those who delibrately attack civilians. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Whereas most Palestinians would probably be happy to have their land back and move on to living- Israel won't be satisfied until they've pushed Palestinians completely out of the way, or exterminated them.

Riiight. Hamas refuses to live in peace with Israel under any circumstances. Don't believe me, go ask Hamas.

They're doing a damn fine job at both. They've stripped land, resources, and property to satisfy the needs of their own population, who are somehow better than the people that were there already.

Riiight. If the best military in the middle east wanted to exterminate the Palestinians, there would be millions of dead Palestinians next month, and the conflict would be over. But they don't, because that isn't the Israeli goal. You forget that when the UN created the modern state of Israel, it also created a Palestinian state. THIS WAS UNACCEPTABLE TO THE ARABS, AND THEY CHOSE THE PATH OF WAR. And lost.

reat, now there will be another hobby that will..

[Tran]

become illegal. Can't have gun control in this country, but I can see now that the abilty to control model airplanes will be viewed viewed as anti-government and therefore severley restricted. Or it will put you on the watch list...

Re:72 Virgins

[Hektor_Troy]

And how do you know that the 72 virgins bullshit is in fact bullshit? Were you by any chance a martyr in your previous life?

They have their belief in one invisible man, we in another - let the two invisible guys (who are in fact the same guy) duke it out on Pay Per View and not in the streets. Please.

Religion ought to be banned outright planet wide!

Cooler than my firebird..

[-tji]

There are slightly larger, but similar in concept, planes available in hobby shops. Such as this Firebird II [hobbytron.net].

Based on my experience flying that, I'm skeptical about a few things:
- Flying conditions: The Firebird is quite a bit larger than that plane, but any winds above 5-10MPH or so make it difficult to control. That little plane would get tossed around even easier.
- Duration: One hour flight time would be excellent, but with something so tiny I'm not sure how they pack that much battery power. My firebird is lucy to get 10 minutes of flying time before a recharge.
- Flying through windows? - That seems unlikely with one of these units. That level of accuracy is very difficult, and at the speeds you need to keep it flying, you would not have much time to maneuver this thing. Also, in the article they describe plotting a destination on a map - like a GPS controlled craft. How the hell would you fly through windows in that scenario.

Anyway, the hobby store variety of these things are a blast.. I highly recommend picking a couple up ( a couple because you're sure to crater it several times when first learning ).

Re:72 Virgins

[stephanruby]

I wonder in which category you would put a clearly marked Tomahawk missile hurling at 550 MPH and traveling at a very low altitude so that noone sees it coming. And how about all the American ex-military "civilians" stationed in Saudi Arabia to protect the House of Saud? Would you qualify those guys as terrorists if their participation went above and beyond training, but if they were actually found to have participated in black ops and unofficial clean-up operations within Saudi Arabia?