DARPA builds a Vulture!

DARPA's Vulture is yet another of the agency's blue sky programs, this one maybe more than others. Vulture is intended to fly for periods of up to five years unattended at 65,000 feet.

Here's what DARPA requested:


The VULTURE Air Vehicle Program is an exploratory development program with the overall goal to develop and demonstrate the ability to deliver and maintain an airborne payload on station for an uninterrupted period exceeding 5 years using a heavier-than-air platform system... The Government is not interested in approaches that use either radioactive energy sources or employs any form of buoyant flight for this application.
...develop technologies and systems which will enable the Military to deliver and maintain a 1000 lb, 5 kW airborne payload for an uninterrupted period exceeding 5 years with a 99+% on station probability.

The intent is that DARPA's Vulture would orbit over a small, well-defined area (like a battlefield) and provide continuous coverage of that area. Vulture is intended to operate in a manner similar to a satellite, except that it has the advantages of not being bound by orbital mechanics. The only satellites that can remain stationary over one spot must orbit at 22,240 miles - and this trick works only along the equator. Low-flying spy satellites scoot quickly over their coverage area. If the Vulture can be accomplished, you would see dramatic increases in sensor resolution and communications capability.

I can't understand why none of the articles I read on this program include references to the amazing Helios program. Helios is a single wing, solar-powered aircraft that has performed admirably above Hawaii in tests performed in 2001.


Helios is an ultralight flying wing with 14 electric motors built by AeroVironment Inc. Helios' 247-foot wingspan exceeds that of a Boeing 747. Operating entirely under solar power (including the take-off), Helios reached an altitude just short of 100,000 feet, which broke records for non-rocket powered flight. At that altitude, Helios approached conditions for winged flights in the atmosphere of Mars.

It's not quite the same thing, but both the DARPA Vulture and Helios remind me of the Flying Wing from Triplanetary, the 1934 novel by 'Doc' Smith. the Flying Wing was also able to fly to near-space.

Read more about DARPA pushes limits of unmanned aircraft capability to extremes; via Dvice. See also DARPA Vulture project description. Here's a nice DARPA sfnal project list; also, if you're not familiar with Helios, check out this awesome Helios picture gallery. Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/4/2008)
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1491

Can you say Star Wars?

More money for useless military projects. Less money for healthcare and education. ;(

The WaPo reported a while back:

"Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

'I heard someone say, "Oh my god, look at those," the college senior from New York recalled. 'I look up and I’m like, "What the hell is that?" They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.'

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

'I’d never seen anything like it in my life,' the Washington lawyer said. 'They were large for dragonflies. I thought, "Is that mechanical, or is that alive?"

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security."

<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/10/4439/

Imagine being able to spy on people in any room of the house, or follow them around wherever they go. Obviously, if these dragonflies were really robobugs, they weren't exactly very stealthy. Naturally, the various security agencies say there's no such thing as robobugs, but . . .

"So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon and a handful of others at the D.C. march — and as far back as 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, when one observant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the Web 'a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue . . . watching us'?

They probably saw dragonflies, said Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Washington is home to some large, spectacularly adorned dragonflies that 'can knock your socks off,' he said.

At the same time, he added, some details do not make sense. Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies — an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison.

'Dragonflies never fly in a pack,' he said."

<snip>

And if this sort of thing is just all in the fevered imaginings of a small group of tree-hugging peaceniks then why is DARPA seeking to build so-called "Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS)"? HI-MEMS are remote controled incect hybrids.

Check out the help wanted ad:

"DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power."

<snip>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/15/cyber_insect/

. . . And fly right up to Osama bin Forgotten and really smoke him out. But, knowing this bunch, they'd probably be happier keeping an eye on our bedroom habits.