DARPA's Nano Air Vehicle program puts UAVs on a diet

It's not like DARPA hasn't been trying to miniaturize unmanned aerial vehicles already, but its Nano Air Vehicle program is yet another attempt to find tiny, ultra-lightweight devices that could theoretically "perform indoor and outdoor military missions." More specifically, it's looking for something less than 7.5-centimeters and under 10-grams, and the overriding goal is to "explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations." Reportedly, AeroVironment already has an idea in mind for such a drone (pictured), but as these type things always go, we've no idea how soon we'll see critters like these take to the skies with a thumb-sized American flag plastered on the side.

[Via BoingBoing]

[Ayman @ Jun 5th 2008 5:22AM]

Just take an Eye Ball and attach it to an Ipod Shuffle or other media storge :P

[jeti @ Jun 5th 2008 5:28AM]

http://www.amazon.com/Silverlit-X-twin-Fly-Stunt-Looping/dp/B000NZG59M/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1212657910&sr=1-3

[kamu @ Jun 5th 2008 5:46AM]

Not another netbook article!! oh.. wait... Carry on.

[Onion @ Jun 5th 2008 5:48AM]

Under 10 grammes and they want to use it outdoors? It'd blow away.

[Chuckles McGee @ Jun 5th 2008 7:08PM]

Hmmm, under 7.5 cm?? That would require some skilled origami fingers to assemble such a tiny paper airplane.

[Loban @ Jun 5th 2008 10:37AM]

Some sort of hovering capability would be useful don't you think? Especially indoors.

[Samurai Jack @ Jun 5th 2008 1:44PM]

This is very much like something I read as a kid. A fast Amazon search proves enlightening...

http://www.amazon.com/Danny-Invisible-Abrashkin-Raymond-Williams/dp/B000TNRQKU/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212686218&sr=1-35

Great stuff when you're 10 - 12 years old. As I recall the plot had the Pentagon after the technology even then.

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 5th 2008 4:34PM]

Regardless of anyones views on war and military power, the great thing about DARPA is that they always share a ton of the (non-weapon/classified) advanced technology that they pay to develop with the public. which seemingly makes sense as they are using our tax dollars, but I'm sure they could do otherwise and just classify everything they get.

Anyways, this is the exact policy that created the early internet infrastructure among other historical things.They are currently paying IBM a couple hundred million to build a petaflop supercomputer with next-generation POWER processors, and one of the stipulations of the contract is that they have to commercialize the technology.