HURT, Heterogeneous Urban RSTA

Now it looks like our fighting forces can access these urban fling spies right from the battle field without going through the chain of command to get up to date information on where the bad guy's are hiding. Excellent !

Two fixed-wing UAVs, a Raven and a Pointer, along with an Rmax rotorcraft, were put aloft under the control of the system. Participants on the ground were able to view wide-area surveillance of the battle zone on handheld monitors, but could also send one of the UAVs in for a closer look at a suspected enemy position by merely moving over the subject with their cursor.

www.wired.com...

There are several photos of the different drones on this page along with links to additional programs the military is developing for the troops.

God Bless America!

This is a good idea and one which has been worked on for many years. It seems it is begining to bear fruit.

The guy across the street from me is a airplane modeler and often puts his olde issues of Airplane Modeler on my porch for me to read. This is where I became aware as to how far modeling has come over the years. Especially in the arena of adapting electronic digital controls and digital video to these models. I was quite surprised to see how small and light weight a camera could be made. If this is so with regular video equipment what must the technology be with night vision gear????
Militarily speaking the control must at some point be given to the ground troops because of the very rapidly moving dynamics of ground warfare today. The ground leaders must have access not some guy way back in the rear...removed from the on sight events.
By the very speed of todays combat...on site leaders must have the ability by available intelligence to make decisions based on the latest knowlege otherwise dangerous situtaions cannot be averted or opportunitys will be missed.

Good post here SIRR1
Thanks,
Orangetom

I can really see soldiers using micro versions (6-10 inch wingspan) of these in one or two decades maybe sooner. They could be very handy in ubran settings. Reach into your backpack pull out a micro UAV let it fly and get a view of whats waiting around the next block or on the roof tops


I really like the concept of the "Honeywell's Micro Air Vehicle" in this article. I wonder how small they could make that design. Most of the micro prototypes I have seen have been pretty much micro planes. That thing is more like a mini heliocopter. Imagine a tiny version of that you could sit there and hover looking in windows.

Battery life seems to be the major obstacle with really micro UAVs. I have seen a tiny flying robot from japan


But it could only fly for about 3 minutes, not very practical in the real world as a spy.