The UAV That Dissolves After Use

The UAV That Dissolves After Use

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is continuing in developing self-destructive electronics and this time its goal is to make an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that dissolves after use. The program is called Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems (ICARUS), and the agency expects it to have both military and civilian applications.

ICARUS is designed to answer the complicated matter of landing important supplies in the event of an epidemic or disaster. Transporting something by ground is safe, but considerably slower than air. With a plane, you need to get the supplies down from the air somehow. Some items can just be dropped with a parachute, but sensitive cargo might need to be landed more carefully or in a specific location.

A traditional UAV could handle the job, but they’re expensive and often contain sensitive or dangerous technology that the military doesn’t want to lose. The ICARUS system could transport the cargo from a plan safely to the ground, then vanish in just a few hours without leaving a trace.

The vehicle would dissolve in a chemical process that makes substances transform from a solid state to  gas and will combine glass-based electronics that shatters into microscopic pieces once no longer needed. The vision for ICARUS is to design an unpowered vehicle that could glide down from a larger plane under the guidance of a remote operator. It wouldn’t need engines because it wouldn’t be taking off again.

DARPA has given this project 26 months and a budget of $8 million in order to create this platform, meant to fly as fat as 150 km, carry a payload of 1.3 kg and parachute the cargo with a precision of 10 meters from target.

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