RoTM

It's getting closer, they are talking about the little mini-missiles and such like used by the flying killbots in T3.

I for one am running away from our new miniaturised killing overlords, come with me if you want to live.

knife missiles

Read Iain Banks for more info...

you know from...

... a warfighters [sic] POV lots of lovely colateral damage is a good thing but from a PR pov its a bit of a bummer. taking out the target and all his mates is the correct thing to do, militarily speaking.... after all we all know that if you don't kill the bad guy's mate he'll hunt you down!

overkill..

i'm a bit surprised that they do actually use tank busting missiles against individuals.. although as people have pointed out, more damage is not necessarily bad depending on your point of view. it does seem like an expensive way to go about it..

they have some really fancy long range cameras nowdays, as demonstrated on various wildlife programmes, would it be feasable to add a gun to the stabilised mount & have some sort of flying sniper bot? -no collateral damage, nice and cheap..

i do like the idea of a robotic hot air balloon with a basket full of venomous snakes waiting to be released on the target's head next time they step outside though

Should that be...

"Weaponry'n'aerospace globocorp...."

Weap'n'aero?

Anyone?

Sigh.

@Trevor Watt

How much do you think DARPA are expecting for a lousy half-mil? That's barely enough to buy a full-sized hellfire at retail prices. Presumably DARPA like to make things look good, but otherwise I think their brief would have been as simple as: "Give us a design for a 1/10th scale hellfire. Soon." I am pretty sure that everyone in the business who read the brief knew that was what was required.

Disappointing

I was hoping that 'miniature weapons' meant teeny tiny guns to be held in the claws of insect-sized surveillance droids.

Pop! Pop! Pop! OW, stoppit!

Loiter with intent!

Aha I see their cunning plan. It is to develop something with a neat guidance package and enough punch to do the job and for a fraction of the weight of the Hellfire. No need to invent anything new, just find all the minaturised electronics already in existence and implement the plan to get it all working together. Just what you need in today's counter-insurgency environment.

This means those UAVs don't use so much fuel carrying all that ordnance, can loiter above the target area for longer and with quite a few missiles to boot. Soon those soldiers with have their own personal Reapers loitering above them and can stack up their targets in a firefight using a computer. "I have 15 identified targets, please launch in priority order from 1-15... and let's keep missle 16 handy for the mime!"

Sniping is HARD...

all the comments about using a projectile are apparently all from people that only see sniping in movies or in computer games. In real-life, it is HARD. And annoyinigly range limited. A Barrett 50caliber sniper rifle has accuracy out to about 1400 yards in combat. The Hellfire II can hit from 600 yards to 8000 yards. The difference in ranges is the difference in the drone staying covert or not staying covert - and remember that the range has to include both a horizontal component and the vertical component of the drone's height.

Also that 1400 yard range is from a stable platform, off a bi-pod. From a moving aircraft, your reliability of actually hitting the target will be much lower, especially as the windage issues are multiplied with different air currents at different heights - plus the effect of the drone's own airstream must be compensated for.

It would be cool if they could put a 50cal in a drone, but I suspect that it is just too hard and exposes the drone to counter attack due to the range.

Now, a 50cal in a DIRIGIBLE, floating noiselessly and slowly at night, with a night vision TV scope...much cheaper, you could have a cloud of them hovering over a target area that could decend to 500 meters at night, they could even be autonomous and engage anything that they detected (like say in some remote areas known for hiding caves and Al Queda members...). Note to anyone building these - ensure the rifle is permanantly disabled in the event of a dirigible crash or failure...I suggest a small charge in the breech that can be remotely detonated, or even that detonates itself upon loss of control signal.

I don't know why people are complaining...

...about the constitution being used as toilet paper but have no problem cracking one off about newfangled COIN insurgency toolups.

To make my position 100% clear: These things won't only be used to blow Ahmed's and his Panzerfaust donkey's ass to smithereens. They will be used to plaster your innards against the living room ceiling and open your kid's braincases.

Enjoy your regime change.

lasers so old school.

cant they be made to home in on cell phones or something, that way the government can also use mini kill missiles on citizens who download an mp3 or something.

Mini weapons?

Oh gosh, how CUTE!!!

Money well spent

Am I the only one who thinks that if instead of spending the BILLIONS of dollars poured into making things to kill people we spent them on making them our FRIENDS instead (I dunno, PR, TV shows, clean water, taking them all out to lunch more...) we might actually just have a bit of a nicer world??

Going LoTech

Just seen a BBC programme about the source of rare earth elements used in the guidance/control electronics (and next gen cars). The only producer/exporter is China and in about 20 years time their demand will mean no exports. Could be the blimp/sniper combination will be the long term solution (if that is OK with the Chinese govt!)

@Graham Bartlett , @Dave Bell, @Destroy All Monsters

@Graham Bartlett

"Runaway"

Certainly do. Gene Simmons gun did come to mind as the sort of thing they might have in mind. BTW the sensor in the rounds matches the spec for the US Army's current Javelin k missile (64x64). Runaway was made in 1984. Javelin was fielded in 1996.

@Dave Bell

"What I think DARPA are looking for is some solid work on just how small the guidance can be"

Seem likely. With weapon grade,chip sized accelerometers and gyroscopes and GPS systems e on the miliary market the sensing side seems well covered. But changing a projectiles flight means excerting substantial forces, which don't scale well. "Power MEMS" is much less developed. The M47 Dragon's use of pulses of solid propellant for thrust and steering was a neat hack. At least one micro-rocket project has produced silicon encapsulated propellant packs fired by IR laser (Si is IR transparent but airtight). NB Dragon was not too fast (c100ms) or long ranged (1500m) as an ATGW. Operators had to control it to the target., a *very* long 15s if someone is shooting at you. The Iranians appear to have reverse engineered a version of it.

@Destroy All Monsters

"about the constitution being used as toilet paper but have no problem cracking one off about newfangled COIN insurgency toolups"

Quite right. If this programme does produce a system it would likely be on most SWAT teams shopping lists, along with some of the quieter surveillance drones. The dream of the truly "surgical " strike. And no doubt it would prove popular with other government agencies. So neat, discrete and petite.

You can guess what DVD's in my coat pocket