Someday spies will be like a fly on the wall, according to U.S. military engineers who are drawing up bumblebee sized cameras with wings.
The unmanned drones that have been so successful in Iraq and Afghanistan will be miniaturized and virtually indistinguishable from an insect. Bird-sized drones are planned by 2015 and insect-sized ones by 2030.
Seattlepi.com reports:
“If we could get inside the buildings and inside the rooms where their activities are unfolding, we would be able to get the kind of intelligence we need to shut them down,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
Philip Coyle, senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., said a major hurdle would be enabling the vehicles to carry the weight of cameras and microphones.
“If you make the robot so small that it’s like a bumblebee and then you ask the bumblebee to carry a video camera and everything else, it may not be able to get off the ground,” Coyle said.
No mention is made of the next likely development – insect-like weapons that pack a real sting. If cameras can be placed on bird and insect-sized drones, so will bombs or other weapons.
