Another UAV Development Up the Pentagon’s Sleeve

Another UAV Development Up the Pentagon’s Sleeve

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The Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office continues to perfect drone swarm technology featuring micro-UAVs that are fired out from fighter jets to distract and attack.

The US military’s low-cost miniature UAV program just became a lot more interesting with the concept of integrating the platforms with fighter jets that unleash a swarm of drones like bees from a hive.

According to sputniknews.com, the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) has developed an unmanned aerial vehicle known as Perdix that is 3D printed and only the size of a soda bottle, making it ideal for launching from a fighter jet’s flare dispenser which military publication Defense One explains is one of the few places a streamlined aircraft can fit expendable items.

“We designed Perdix to move quickly and to deal with weather, also to deal with temperature, and that’s really not something a hobbyist is paying for in a UAV,” SCO spokesman Will Roper told reporters.

The design mold for the next generation weapon was designed in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory and is part  of the Pentagon’s program of incorporating commercial solutions into the defense needs of the US military. “Could the DoD go build an improvement on each of those components?” Roper asked rhetorically. “Absolutely. But it’s smart to stay inside the commercial base, because it’s going to improve itself. A lot of the pieces come from microelectronics that have been driven by the smartphone industry, and that continues to improve”.

Roper explained that swarms of Perdixes have already been dispatched in tests from F-16s and F-18s with the group of drones designed to coordinate with each other to fulfill missions such as surveying a field, causing interruption for a trailing fighter jet, or potentially at some point even a lethal application against battlefield targets.