These Swarming Drones Launch from a Fighter Jet’s Flare Dispensers
Will Roper, the director of the Strategic Capabilities Office, explains how the protective canister on the table protects the fourth-generation swarming Perdix drone in his hand as the micro-UAV deploys from a fighter jet's flare dispenser.
By Caroline Houck Atlantic Media fellow at Defense One Read bio
September 9, 2016
Topics
Drones
Caroline Houck
The Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office is building — and rapidly improving — them with commercial parts and 3D-printed fuselages.
It’s no secret the U.S. military is looking to low-cost swarming drones for the next wave of unmanned technology: The Navy has its LOCUST program; the Air Force has Gremlins, and even the Army has tested out the concept. What differentiates the Strategic Capabilities Office’s unmanned aerial vehicle called Perdix isn’t just its soda-bottle size — far smaller than LOCUST’s meter-long Coyote UAVs — or its focus on surveillance, not attack. It’s also that SCO’s micro-UAV is assembled entirely from commercial parts fitted into a 3D-printed fuselage.
Working with the Air Force, SCO designed Perdix to launch out of a fighter jet’s flare dispenser—one of the few places the streamlined aircraft can fit expendable items. The dispenser’s size and lack of temperature regulation helped winnow down a broad idea—expendable swarming micro-UAVs—to a specific, viable project, SCO Director Will Roper said.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/09/these-swarming-drones-launch-fighter-jets-flare-dispensers/131414/?oref=d-mostread
