The US military has launched 103 miniature swarming drones from a fighter jet during a test in California.<\/p>\n
Three F\/A-18 Super Hornets were used to release the Perdix drones last October.<\/p>\n
The drones, which have a wingspan of 12in (30cm), operate autonomously and share a distributed brain.
\nA military analyst said the devices, able to dodge air defence systems, were likely to be used for surveillance.<\/p>\n
Video footage of the test was published online by the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n
“Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronised individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said William Roper, director of the Strategic Capabilities Office.<\/p>\n
“Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”<\/p>\n
The drones were originally designed by engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and were first modified for military testing in 2013.<\/p>\n
“When looking at how you deal with air defence systems that are optimised to spot very large, fast-moving aircraft, small, cheap disposable drones seem to be one solution,” said Elizabeth Quintana, at the Royal United Services Institute, a military think tank.<\/p>\n
She added that the system would probably be used for surveillance purposes in the near term.<\/p>\n
In May, the US Navy tested a system that could launch drones into the sky for rapid deployment.<\/p>\n
Asian competition<\/strong> Ms Quintana pointed out that China had significant resources both in electronics and drone-manufacturing.<\/p>\n The world’s best-selling consumer drones are made by DJI, a Chinese company.<\/p>\n “They have a tremendous amount of expertise in the country,” she told the BBC.<\/p>\n “It’s going to be very interesting – it won’t just be about who has the biggest swarm but also about who can out-manoeuvre who.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US military has launched 103 miniature swarming drones from a fighter jet during a test in California. Three F\/A-18 Super Hornets were used to release the Perdix drones last October. The drones, which have a wingspan of 12in (30cm), operate autonomously and share a distributed brain. A military analyst said the devices, able to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":283738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[1123,2830,2831,2832],"class_list":["post-283737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-drone","tag-jets","tag-mini-drone","tag-us-jets-launch-swarm-of-mini-drones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnd late last year, the Chinese also demonstrated a swarm of larger, fixed-wing drones.<\/p>\n