The Pentagon's Autonomous Swarming Drones Are the Most Unsettling Thing You'll See Today
Ejected from a fighter, the tiny drones collaborate to accomplish their mission—with not a single human involved.
By Kyle Mizokami
Jan 9, 2017
2.7k
An arm of the Pentagon charged with fielding critical new technologies has developed a drone that not only carries out its mission without human piloting, but can talk to other drones to collaborate on getting the job done. The Perdix autonomous drone operates in cooperative swarms of 20 or more, working together towards a single goal.
Named after a character from Greek mythology that was changed into a partridge, the bird-sized Perdix drones were featured on the news program "60 Minutes" last night, January 8. In footage taken over the skies of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, a trio of F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters release a total of 103 Perdix drones from small pods mounted on hardpoints on both wings. The drones are capable of withstanding ejection at speeds of up to Mach 0.6 and temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius.
GPS data, combined with a map of the area, shows that during the October 26 test the fighters released their Perdix drones in a long line their flight path. The drones formed up at a preselected point and then headed out to perform four different missions. Three of the missions involved hovering over a target while the fourth mission involved forming a 100-meter-wide circle in the sky.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a24675/pentagon-autonomous-swarming-drones/
