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US Army Hopes To Outfit Soldiers With Tiny Drones By 2018 (engadget.com) 101

Posted by BeauHD from the high-tech-warfare dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The U.S. Army has requested industry information on the feasibility of making tiny drones that would help infantry gather intelligence on a small scale, such as peeping over a hill or around a building. its dream recon machine would weigh no more than a third of a pound, launch within one minute and fly for at least 15 minutes. Ideally, the drones would be in service as soon as 2018. "[A nano-drone] will send real-time video back to the operator to give them real-time situational awareness of what's in the immediate vicinity," says Phil Cheatham, the deputy branch chief for electronics at the Army's Maneuvers Center for Excellence (MCOE). Cheatham says he and his team want something cheap enough to deploy with every squad, noting the Army already uses satellite imagery and larger drones to provide broader battlefield intelligence.
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US Army Hopes To Outfit Soldiers With Tiny Drones By 2018 More

US Army Hopes To Outfit Soldiers With Tiny Drones By 2018

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  • It lets us save American lives since they are worth more than other lives AND it lets us rotate our warhead stock so we can keep it fresh. WIN WIN

    • except it denies the resources those areas have to us.

      nukes are like permanently poisoning the well. it makes the region useless to us afterwards. look at Chernobyl. 30 years later it's resources are useless to us. another 200 years it will still be useless.

      You may not think it useful, but nuking the majority of easy access oil when the USA is still importing oil on a daily basis is a bad idea.

      • Whooosh!
        • That, or he might actually just be adding to your joke/cynism rather than missing it. Note: he said "don't nuke because it spoils the very resources that the US wants", and not "don't nuke because it kills millions of innocent lives along with the handful of actual terrorists"
          • Gee, I was under the impression that we don't give a fuck what the local resources are. I thought that was the whole point of nuking fuckheads. You don't WANT to go to the local area after you nuke it. You don't give 2 shits about the people or the place. Geez, what the fuck are they teaching you little wimps in school? Somethimes you cant get along with some peoples and better to nuke them than to wonder when they are going to attack you. Nip it in the bud. That is the kind of balls it takes to own and dep

  • When I read soldiers would be outfitted with tiny drones, I thought they finally, after almost 3 long decades, have the Innerspace technology perfected... But alas, it is just small RC helicopters... Strangely (to me) they are not quadcopters, I thought is small sizes quadcopters have all sorts of advantages over helicopters, am I wrong?

    • Yes, quadrotors are more energy hungry than a plane or an helicopter and it makes probably more noise and is less compact than an helicopter as well.

      • Re:Ah, shame. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday April 04, 2016 @10:39PM (#51842645)

        Yes, quadrotors are more energy hungry than a plane or an helicopter and it makes probably more noise and is less compact than an helicopter as well.

        I bought my son a $69 quadrotor drone for his birthday that has a 10 minute flight time, and meets all of the other criteria listed in the summary. So instead of spending their budget investigating the feasibility, they should get in their Humvee and drive to the closest mall.

        The quadrotor may be slightly bigger than a heli-drone, but it is much more stable and easier to fly. My son was flying his skillfully after 2 hours of practice, so the Pentagon should be able to train operators for about $50k each.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Assuming 40,000 infantry in the US Army(Yahoo answers) at $69/pop it would be $2,760,000 for disposable quadrotors. The logistics cost of moving a .1m cube of styrofoam and cardboard to the sandbox is probably $50/pop and the cost of replacing a broken one is probably $150 real costs(+$50 in paperwork because there's no such thing as petty cash in the military... unless they're bribes for the Taliban ?WTF?).

          Based on this I'm guessing a mil-spec(environmental hardening + better materials) should cost $1,000/

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Syberz ( 1170343 )
          I'd be curious to see how your 69$ drone would fare after being lugged around a dusty/windy desert for a few days and/or a very humid jungle and/or stuck in a tight pack that was thrown around a few times.

          • I'd be curious to see how your 69$ drone would fare after being lugged around a dusty/windy desert for a few days and/or a very humid jungle and/or stuck in a tight pack that was thrown around a few times.

            You know, nobody has more experience paying people to make fancy cases for equipment than our military. You should see the kind of boxes that fucking cable sets are carried around in. They'd make adequate cover in a firefight.

            • You should see the kind of boxes that fucking cable sets are carried around in. They'd make adequate cover in a firefight.

              #Pelican4Life

              There probably isn't such a hash tag, but there should be. Though after the C2 Rewire project, I'd lugged around enough of those cases full of cable sets to last me a lifetime.

        • When I read "cheap enough to deploy" my brain replaced with "destroy" instinctively. These things will be (or should be) mass produced and used up like socks.

          As for "skill to fly" on a massive program like this, they should be installing a $3 IMU+processor that mostly takes the skill out of flying it.

  • Cheap enough (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday April 04, 2016 @09:24PM (#51842339) Homepage Journal
    Cheap means it needs to cost $50k at least.
    • Joking aside, I wonder how much this device will cost. There are toys that are less than $100, and good ones which are less than $1k. Yes, everything is more expensive for the government, but to quote a mediocre movie "You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

      • Re:Cheap enough (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jklovanc ( 1603149 ) on Monday April 04, 2016 @10:32PM (#51842615)

        Take your $1000 drone and do the following.
        1. Rugedize the controller and drone so they can stand up to battlefield conditions which includes the following: temperature extremes; being dropped, stepped on, etc; waterproof; dust/sand resistant; etc
        2. Make the communications channel both jam resistant and secure.
        3. Make it, including a protected carrying case for the drone, small and light enough not to be a burden.
        4. Go through several rounds of testing and modification so everyone has a say in the design and politicians are seen to be doing something.
        5. Parcel out the production to several states to spread the money around.
        That $1000 drone just got much more expensive.
        The main issue is that military equipment has to work in harsh conditions. On the battlefield you can't say "my machine is not working so I am not going to play today".

        • 1. Rugedize the controller and drone so they can stand up to battlefield conditions which includes the following: temperature extremes; being dropped, stepped on, etc; waterproof; dust/sand resistant; etc

          Yep, people miss this all too often, but the military has learned the lessons of the past.

          Look to prior wars, equipment that worked perfectly on the test bench or at home, simply turned out to be useless in a hostile environment.

          The US Army tests this stuff in Alaska for example, to see what happens at -40 degrees below zero. A LOT of stuff that works fine elsewhere completely stops functioning in that much cold.

          What if we end up having to invade Siberia? Ok, not likely, but you have to plan for everythin

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            And what happens in practice is that the 80% solution is 1/10th the cost and so you have twice as many, so there are more working than the ideal at 1/5 the cost.

            The cheaper solution is generally better. You buy more, and quantity has a quality all its own.

            • Re:Cheap enough (Score:5, Interesting)

              by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @12:57AM (#51843153)

              And what happens in practice is that the 80% solution is 1/10th the cost and so you have twice as many, so there are more working than the ideal at 1/5 the cost.

              Twice as many that don't work isn't much of an improvement.

              Yes, in some situations, you can get 5 times as many for the same cost, until they don't work.

              Read up a bit of history of WWII, the problems of taking vehicles into the desert, then the arctic, then Western Russia and the mud. Then the jungles of SE Asia.

              Stuff that is reliable as dirt in one place is worthless in another.

              Part of what makes military stuff cost so much is the ability to work everywhere. Our M1 tanks have to be geared up to work in 120 degree deserts and -40 degree arctic snow.

              That is harder than you might think.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dcw3 ( 649211 )

              And what about the time that it just has to fucking work? When someone's life is on the line? No, you can't just buy a bunch of the cheap versions.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                You have 10 and a 20% failure rate. Yours will work more than the guy with the "approved" one which they have so few of that only one person gets them per squad, so even if it works 100% of the time, you still don't have it when you need it.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by dcw3 ( 649211 )

                  So, you expect a squad to carry a pile of them around, just to make sure they've got one that works. Would it be one guy operating all of them, or would every squad member...teams don't all typically do the same job, certainly not at the same time. In addition to adding weight to the packs of every additional GI that has to carry one, you've gone from one operator to however many you need now to ensure mission success. A squad will typically have maybe a dozen troops...do I really need ten of them to dro

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                    Did you forget that this is the Army that has soldiers buying their own body armor because there isn't enough to issue one to everyone who needs it? You are arguing that someone shouldn't be allowed to bring their own enhancement.

                    Your solution will only get people killed.

                    Reality has shown that more and cheaper of "good enough" beats a shortage of the preferred solution.

            • The problem is that on the battlefield one can not just go back and get another one. When the failure of a piece of equipment may mean someone's death that equipment better work.
              A soldier will not carry around equipment that only works 80% of the time and no good commander would make them.

        • 2. Make the communications channel both jam resistant and secure.

          Since when did anybody do that? If we can't be arsed to encrypt Predator communications, what makes you think the shitty little hand carry toy is going to have it?

        • You can build more drone than they are asking for with off the shelf parts for a couple hundred bucks. If you could get the graft out of it, it should be trivial to build multitudes out of it for a grand a pop in hardened form. And therein lies the rub...

      • Well, I certainly hope that the price in the article($190,000/unit) reflects the fact that the purchase was some sort of small-scale R&D thing and likely included a lot of not-specifically-hardware services.

        The lousiest of the toys are probably inadequate to the job, if nothing else most of them take a dreadfully naive approach to security on the camera and control signal link; but one would think that these things would be amenable to relatively low cost, in mass production. The cellphone market is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          For that price, they should feed back to the AR headset in real time, so the soldier can see through the hill, and call down indirect fire, and spot for snipers and such while secure.
          • Depending on what the unit cost ends up being, the drone could be indirect fire. More expensive than a grenade; but a grenade that can manage a couple hundred meters of acrobatic, guided, reasonably swift, flight and make up for in proximity what it lacks in payload strikes me as potentially being really damn scary.

            This particulary RFP emphasizes sensors, endurance, and very light weight, so it probably isn't a request for such a gadget; but I would(admittedly naively) imagine that guided munitions based

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )
              Speaking of grenades, I wonder how hard it would be to make a drone small and durable enough to be fired from an M203. The launcher has a range of several hundred meters which would be perfect for launching the drone. This would give the drone a lot more range as the drone would already be at altitude when deployed and so would not waste power.
              • According to our wiki overlords, an M203 has a muzzle velocity of 76M/s, and ~ 30cm of barrel. What isn't included is the peak acceleration the projectile experiences. I'd assume that there is a sharp spike followed by a gradual decrease because the volume that the expanding propellant is filling becomes larger as the projectile moves down the barrel; rather than constant acceleration during the entire period spent in the barrel; but I'm not sure how one would infer the shape of the curve from that speculat

                • I only have one R/C copter and I haven't got it flying yet (came with crap electrics) but it seems to me like the prop isn't much bigger than everything else, and the blades fold down.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tom229 ( 1640685 )
        If Independence Day was mediocre, what do you call the trash they make now? [imdb.com] At least it made sense.
  • tiny drone

  • Dangerous Government Waste (Score:4, Insightful)

    by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Monday April 04, 2016 @10:18PM (#51842557)

    If remote controlled tiny aircraft were better on the battlefield we would not need soldiers at all. There is a huge issue with putting soldier under the dependency of gadgets. I say this as a Veteran (US Army) in case you weigh things by experience.

    Communications is important, but so is a lack of communications. Soldiers walking around with broadcast devices have no ability to hide, they also run the risk of interception and force feeding bogus orders.

    Save a soldier's life and write Congress. Tech companies don't need to make money off of soldier's lives.

    • If remote controlled tiny aircraft were better on the battlefield we would not need soldiers at all.

      There is a huge difference between an armed drone and a small recon drone.

      There is a huge issue with putting soldier under the dependency of gadgets.

      True, which is why you train them with and without the drones so they know how to use them but don't become dependent on them.
      .
      Do you see no value in a soldier being able to send a drone into a building or over a hill to check if anyone is in there? Say you were on patrol and ahead you see a spot that would be great for a sniper. Wouldn't you rather send a drone to check it out?

      Soldiers walking around with broadcast devices have no ability to hide,

      They can only be seen by people with sophisticated tracki

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by s.petry ( 762400 )

        There is a huge difference between an armed drone and a small recon drone.

        Fallacy much?

        True, which is why you train them with and without the drones so they know how to use them but don't become dependent on them.

        Nothing like ignoring the obvious I pointed out.

        Do you see no value in a soldier being able to send a drone into a building or over a hill to check if anyone is in there? Say you were on patrol and ahead you see a spot that would be great for a sniper. Wouldn't you rather send a drone to check it out?

        A soldier running a recon mission is different than every soldier walking around with a tiny drone tethered to them so that they can all run recon. You further lack both combat knowledge and the ability to read the basic specs of the drone in question. If you think that you can find a sniper with this drone, I have a nice bridge for sale.

        They can only be seen by people with sophisticated tracking systems which would actually fail when a number of these things are in operation. I doubt Daesh has any of this kind of equipment.

        Wrong, it takes very little to detect electronic signals being broadcast.

        Which is why encryption and jam resistance is important and one reason why civilian drones will not be sufficient.

        While it's nice to see that you are

        • Fallacy much?

          So you think a this [defense.gov] is the same as this [aolcdn.com]?
          You also need to read a bit more.

          Nothing like ignoring the obvious I pointed out.

          All you said was being dependant is bad. I agree and there are ways around dependence. What did I miss?

          A soldier running a recon mission

          Who said recon mission. It could be a patrol.

          is different than every soldier walking around with a tiny drone tethered to them

          They are not talking about a drone for every soldier all the time but a drone per squad used when needed.

          You are not going to fit much into a small drone in terms of either anti-jamming or encryption.

          Are you an electronics expert who knows what can and can not be done on small chips these days?

          If you think that you can find a sniper with this drone, I have a nice bridge for sale.

          Explain to me how a drone with a camera transmitting back to an operator can't look behind

        • If you think that you can find a sniper with this drone, I have a nice bridge for sale.

          If the drone has stereo microphones, the data can be relayed for processing and you can use it to find that sniper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )

      Soldiers walking around with broadcast devices have no ability to hide,

      You mean nothing has an "off" switch? What do they do with the radios that are on 100% of the time?

      they also run the risk of interception and force feeding bogus orders.

      Yes, because being able to detect a wireless signal is the same as decoding the encrypted control channel. I hope you weren't in the Signal Corps.

      Tech companies don't need to make money off of soldier's lives.

      So it's fine if it's Northrop Grumman, but not if it's a tech company? We've paid private companies tens of trillions of dollars, and you complain about a few drones. Perspective. Find some.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tom229 ( 1640685 )
      I would like to thank you for your sacrifice to the west. Now, how can you not see the benefit of a drone? Perhaps not in the jungle, but in urban guerrilla warfare a drone could reveal enemy positions, deliver concussion grenades or other explosives. It could simply just deliver vital information or supplies between units. There's so many imaginable uses for these.

    • There is a huge issue with putting soldier under the dependency of gadgets.

      ...

      Soldiers walking around with broadcast devices have no ability to hide, they also run the risk of interception and force feeding bogus orders.

      Yeah! These new-fangled gadgets are nothing but trouble. I mean, radios do nothing but give soldiers positions away and provide the enemy with an avenue to force feed bogus orders. In my book it's flags and smoke signals or nothing for long distance communication!

      Wait... what?

  • I'm gonna sic Posse Comitatus on you GI ass.

    • What does the FAA requirement for civilians to register their drones, have to do with the law that prohibits the use of Federal Military personnel in law enforcement actions within the boundaries of the nation? Particularly in regards to small drones intended to be used by infantry patrols in a combat zone?

  • Let's let the enemy know where we are by flying a noisy thing around the place.

    Or, stick a mirror or camera on the end of a stick and do it completely silently.

    • Or, stick a mirror or camera on the end of a stick and do it completely silently.

      A mirror or camera on a stick can't take an aerial photo. It can't move hundreds of yards away from you to do recon. And a reflection from it most certainly can give away your position. But a soldier behind a hill who pops a drone up over his head is only giving away his position in the vaguest way, and even then, only if someone even notices the tiny speck hanging in the air. Just painting it blue will help with that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tom229 ( 1640685 )
      So drones are probably kind of a bad idea in a situation that requires stealth, so they are always bad? How about putting a grenade on one and getting it to fly over a fortified position? The army does this today with much larger, more expensive drones and missiles. These could be used for the same thing all drones are currently used for, except they're quicker to deploy and operate in a much tighter area.

  • They need to come up with some security, such that the enemy can't take it over like existing $50k drones.
    Having experience with both quads and planes (not copters, too difficult to fly), I see advantages in both. Plane made of foam is light weight, long flight time and distance, little noise, but of course can't stay stationery, a bullet is no problem, unless it kills battery or motor. With a flight controller, they are easy to fly. Quads are dead if hit by anything. Short flight time and range. But can st

    • Having experience with both quads and planes (not copters, too difficult to fly)

      There's no reason whatsoever that a copter [multiwii.com] can't have fully stabilized flight. You can do it with FOSS and a $3 arduino nano coupled to a $10 10DoF board. There's also no reason you can't build a quadcopter out of foam. Instead, though, the goal will be to make it so small that you can't reasonably shoot it. That also fits in with the goal of having one carried by "every" soldier.

    • Why? These aren't expected to fly miles behind enemy lines. They are vision extenders for troops on the ground. If the enemy is able to take over one, then they just probe forward as they did before drones and kill the enemy. But most likely the enemy are not going to be worrying about taking over such drones, just shooting them down. And if electronic countermeasures are suspected, they can probably be programed to a basic flight path up out and back with no external direction commands received.

  • Fun but distracting (Score:3)

    by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @07:22AM (#51844289)

    "If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped--say with a stone ax---will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier".

    - Robert Heinlein (“Starship Troopers”)

  • Someone must have watched the movie Allegiant and thought to themselves "Hey, that's a good idea! Let's make that." Drones that can be tied to an operator and feed visual information back to them from around corners or watch their back INSIDE the same structure would be a huge improvement in situational awareness.

  • First, you need to design quieter propellers because the sound of a bee swarm is going to give away your position. Second, you need to come up with a battery that has a much higher energy density.

  • Or, at least, mark them like "Paywall" links. They block you if you use an ad blocker, and they interpret any disinclination to run any random malicious script they or any of the advertisers on any of the ad serving companies they use might choose to push at you "an ad blocker." Evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.

    For the record, I do not use an ad blocker. But I do run NoScript, and I will continue to run NoScript. "Wired"'s oh so very helpful link on their intercept page says about allowing access to NoSc

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