Since March, US Army Special Forces have been testing Black Hornets, lightweight reconnaissance drones from Prox Dynamics that are small enough to fit in your pocket.
Each Black Hornet PD-100 is a micro unmanned aerial vehicle that weighs just 0.6 ounces and measures only 4 by 1 inches. Three onboard cameras provides full-motion video and still images to the operator. The camera array contains a thermal imaging camera for night missions. The Black Hornet has a range of just over a mile, and can remain in the air for up to 25 minutes per flight. The device
is designed to operate quietly, and can navigate in winds up to 20 mph.
You can watch video live on the base unit, and the video is also stored on a SSD drive there. No video is stored on the drone itself, which means that if captured, enemies cannot see what the reconnaissance drone has viewed.
The applications for this thing are endless. The Black Hornet is ideal in a wide variety of situations, such as for search-and-rescue missions to locate missing or injured persons, as well as for crowd control and otherwise monitoring large groups of people. The device can be fitted with chemical sensors and used for inspection of nuclear installations, chemical plants in case of accidents, or situations where it may not be safe for a human to go in right away. It can navigate inside buildings as well.
We would imagine that in the future we’ll see them being used by local law enforcement as well. A future where war and crime is fought entirely with machines is a step closer.
