Li'l Copter heads to Mars!

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/everything-know-nasas-mars-ingenuity-223900705.html

 

"Mars' thin atmosphere, which is 99% less dense than Earth's, will make it difficult for Ingenuity to achieve enough lift to properly fly. Because of this, it has been designed to be extremely lightweight. It stands just 19 inches tall.

The helicopter has four large carbon-fiber blades, fashioned into two rotors that span about 4 feet and spin in opposite directions at about 2,400 rpm — significantly faster than typical helicopters on Earth."

* * * 

I can't wait to see how this goes!

russian police hunt drones to prevent video coverage of protests

 https://www.dw.com/en/russia-protests-erupt-over-navalny-prison-sentencing/a-56434780

 

"According to a tweet from the Belarus Free Theatre group, Russian riot police shot down drones to prevent footage being released that showed the scale of the demonstrations."

 

It looks like they were using both a rifle and a frequency jammer.

military use of drone swarms

 https://theprint.in/defence/drone-swarms-are-coming-and-they-are-the-future-of-wars-in-the-air/596842/

 

"While massed drones in spectacular light shows are all controlled centrally, in a true swarm, each of the drones flies itself following onboard AI to maintain formation and avoid collisions with algorithms mimicking nature — there is no true leader and follower, with all agents in a swarm having their own ‘mind’ able to undertake collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying, and self-healing. The benefit of such a swarm is that if one drone drops out — and a few appear to crash — the group can rearrange itself to continue undertaking the mission till the last UAV in air."

 

The problem right now is defense against such swarms.  This is going to get worse before it gets better.