Drones Within a Drone Riding a Balloon 108
smitty777 writes "Given the U.S.'s recent drone issues, what is the new recipe for sending a drone over another country of interest? Simple, just take a balloon and attach a Tempest drone to the bottom of it. Now, attach two more CICADA drones to that. The balloon climbs to over 55k feet, then drops the first drone, which can travel another 11 miles or so. It then deploys the CICADA drones. These unpowered gliders slip past radar undetected and start sending back information. There are future plans to mount many (count hundreds) of the CICADA glider drones to the Tempest in the future. The article quotes the flight engineer describing the process as 'straightforward.'"
Re:I await the day (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't something you'd want to use for covert, peacetime operations. The only stealth factor in these mini-drones is that they're hard to detect or shoot down in the air, simply because they're bird-sized. Once on the ground, they're painfully obvious. Littering your opponent's landscape with hundreds of sensor-bearing paper airplanes that home in within fifteen feet of their target... that's not stealthy or covert. That's going to be noticed quickly.
Besides, the post-balloon range is only ~50 miles. This isn't useful for deeply penetrating an opponent's airspace.
These are for naval surveillance. A balloon launch can happen from the deck of any ship, even from a surfaced sub. The range is appropriate for scouting around your position at sea, and you don't have to worry as much about detection if these things degrade quickly on contact with the sea. In fact, you might not even be worried about detection at all if you're in international waters.