Aamer Madhani - September 14, 2008

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — It may look like a futuristic arcade game, but it’s a scene from an official Air Force animated video: Bad guys of indiscernible origin being shadowed, from a careful distance, by small robotic drones designed to resemble birds and insects.

When one of the bad guys opens his apartment door, a tiny robo-bug, looking like a garage door opener with wings, sneaks in to spy. In another scene, a bug—the Air Force calls them Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs—creeps into a sniper’s roost and delivers a deadly shot to the back of his head.

It might sound far-fetched. But top Air Force officials believe that MAVs could be a significant part of the Defense Department’s arsenal in the not-so-distant future.

Civilian researchers and airmen at the Air Force Research Laboratory, based at this installation just outside Dayton, have set a 2015 deadline to roll out the first generation of MAVs. This first group, they hope, will be the size of birds and able to operate several days without recharging.

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Paul Joseph Watson asks “What Is The Secret Killing Weapon In Iraq?” My guess is Robobugs.

Robert Michelson of Georgia Tech holds a simplified model of the "entomopter," a flapping, four-winged robotic flier.

The hints given by Woodward on Larry King Live, suggest to me, the new weapon likely has an advanced targeting capability. Either it finds and attacks specific targets with ease like never before, or it has capabilities to get close enough to call in the missiles - probably a combination of both.

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