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  • AeroVironment

    American special forces open a drone hacker lab

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    05.20.2017

    Battlefield drones are evolving quickly, and there's only so much militaries can do to keep up -- they're not used to competing with consumer tech that can improve in a matter of months. To that end, US Special Operations Command (aka SOCOM) is taking the unusual step of opening a drone hacker lab in Tampa, Florida at an unspecified point in the future. The organization's James Geurts hopes this tinkerer mindset will help special forces "get out in front" of threats that could easily prove overwhelming, such as drone swarms. There are also more direct problems to solve, such as balancing weapon payloads and portability. You may need a drone bigger than something like the tiny, kamikaze-oriented AeroVironment Switchblade (above) to take down a target, but you can't always field more conventional runway-bound drones to do the job.