Possible Look At Future Battlefield Evac Ambulances

As the Korean and Vietnam conflicts showed, Helicopter extraction of wounded was great for the infantryman but could be extraordinarily dangerous to the pilots transporting the wounded. 

An Israeli aeronautic company has quite literally put a new spin on the medivac  of the future.   The AirMule, developed by Urban Aeronautics, is a VTOL UAV measuring 20 feet long, over 6 feet wide, and weighing one ton. It is powered by a Turbomeca Ariel jet engine driving a pair of ducted fans.  Flight dynamics is accomplished by 200 directional air flaps, while transporting well over 800 pounds of cargo.




Read more in the Gizmodo article HERE

Dark Angel MUAVs a very real possibility?

That's what contributor Shaun Saunders was asking when he posted this article.

The main thrust of this paper was touting the advantages of the micro unmanned aerial vehicle.
The units are becoming much more prevalent now that there has been great strides in computer and AI technology.

The micro UAV has a distinct advantage over it's fixed wing brethren because they are much smaller in size and many now are not fixed wing aircraft but configured much like helicopters. They can fly in areas with large amounts of obstacles and are able to operate in areas where control signals are often blocked by the same obstacles.

The main idea is to put mobile monitoring equipment on site with a release and forget strategy. But as Shaun posits....are we seeing the first volley into eye in the sky crowd control - something akin to what we saw in Dark Angel?

Here is the video of the device in action:

Terminator HKs?!!!

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Word to make you shiver eh? Take them to heart and check this out! The U.S. Air Force is thinking of building unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability, armed to the robotic teeth with Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System. Aurora's Excalibur VTOL UAV is intended to have fully automated flight systems. It will know its mission and complete without remote operator control Oh yeah, its a f...in HK! The one below .... movie hk - the one above... the proposed real deal. Small scale and large scale tests begin soon. What was the line.... oh yeah, there's a storm coming.

First Robot on Robot Combat Kill

Here is another "It was bound to happen sooner or later" From Gizmodo the first combat related autonomous machine kill of another robotic device. A week ago in Iraq, a MQ-9 Reaper killed a remote controlled vehicle carrying a bomb. The MQ-9 destroyed a RC car using a laser-guided 500-pound GBU-12 bomb in southeast Iraq. It was the first recorded incident where the UAV searched for, found, fixed, targeted and destroyed another autonomous/robotic threat.