"The Military Wants New Technologies To Fight Drones" Topic

"At the end of October, the Pentagon put out a request for information, or RFI, for new technologies "countering" commercial drones that are armed with chemical, biological, or massively destructive weapons. Specifically, the request asks for ideas on "emerging technologies, technical applications and their potential to counter a low-cost, small/man portable, commercial off-the-shelf unmanned aerial system (UAS) carrying a chemical and/or biological WMD payload." And that includes "electronic systems that can interdict defeat or deny hostile use of UAS" and "systems providing the capability to intercept and neutralize the UAS. Both kinetic and non-kinetic solutions are encouraged and should cover both" the United States and global applications. The project, called Thunderstorm, will feature a technology demonstration in the second fiscal quarter of 2015 at Mississippi's Camp Shelby.

The first portion of the request asks for ideas on technology to outfit drones with chemical weapons detectors. It's another area of intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance where flying robots that don't sleep or blink or breathe could easily outperform humans. The biggest technological hurdle here is simply shrinking the sensors to the point where they can fit on relatively small drone but still be robust enough to pickup the most popular poisons.

The RFI is looking for the drone to be able to detect a wide variety of nerve agents like Sarin as well as industrial compound toxins and even flowers and wildlife, or "persistent and natural flora (providing biological surveillance on current and emerging flora)." It should be able to reach an altitude of 1000 feet, fly for at least 30 minutes without recharging and be able to actually collect samples and fly them back to defense department labs for analysis…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Odd, so they want to develop a drone that can pick flowers?

So in the future with better AI will we see pacifist, hippy drones protesting war and refusing to fight?

An anti-drone drone---until the drones need protection and then we need an anti-anti-drone

Who watches the watchmen?

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand