'The Stuff of Science Fiction?'

Whilst the UAV 'Global Hawk' has set a new world record for the longest unmanned flight ever - from Continental USA to Australia, many countries operate nothing more than a small radio-controlled model aircraft or helicopter fitted with single lens cameras or video cameras.

For example, we all know about the Predator and Global Hawk in use with CJPTF in Iraq and Afghanistan, the French are or have launched the
'Sperwer' UAV, the Swedes have something called the 'Swedish Highly Advanced Research Configuration [SHARC]), we Brits are developing the 'Watchkeeper' UAV.

Scenario:

You are the top man at a secret government think tank tasked with designing a top secret unmanned, unarmed, remotely piloted, airal observation vehicle.

There is nothing for you to refer to, there is no technology and you are on your own. Oh! One more thing. Excuse the pun but - The sky's the limit. You have no budgetry ceiling. What you want - you get.

The task is the blackest of the blank projects you government has ever come up with.

Now guys, go and design your own UAVs. Tell me what you'd design and why?

I would use nano technology. Drop a “bomb” from very high altitude or use artillery. At some predetermined altitude the carrier would burst open releasing hundreds or even thousands of nano devices. Not all would be the same. Some would have optical sensors, some thermal; some could detect radiation or chemicals, etc. 100% of them would send back real time data not only from their main sensor, but data about their location.

They would be designed to float and loft as much as possible prior to landing. They would also continue to send data until they ran our or power or were destroyed, even after landing.

Drop a few dozen of these things equaling many thousands of nanobots around an area just prior to an attack. All the data gets sent back to a central computer than gets compiled into a “picture” of the battlefield.

Nearly ever nook and cranny of the subject area would have some data returned. And if you managed it right, 100% of the area in question would be totally revealed in every possible aspect.

And the enemy wouldn’t even know it, as these things would be smaller than a flea each.

Imagine a combat commander having access to the summarized data sent to a HUD in his helmet, transmitted in real time. The central computer collecting the data would only send relevant data to each commander. Example: It would not make much sense to send data to Commander X about enemy positions across town when Commanders Y and Z are closer to those positions.

These things could also identify friendly locations with sensors detecting a chip on each soldier’s uniforms and adding them to the “picture” as blue dots on each commanders HUD.

Imagine: Total, continuous real time data about your enemy without them even knowing about it. And even if they figured it out, they could hardly do anything about it as these things would be everywhere.

The scary part? This stuff is well on its way in development and we may see it deployed in our lifetimes.

Skippy, thanx 4 the input. Obviously too much like hard work for the usual knuckle draggers on these posts.

Greetings,

To be honest, I would just love a Few UAVs that are slaved to the ground pounders, so that they can call in arty and supporting fire in seconds, rather than having to go through the process of ordering support from either the Airforce or Arty in the rear, some thing which is usally only available when you don't need it.

- Phil