Move Over UAVs, In Come the MAVs

Via Wired.com -

If you feel something crawling on your neck, it might be a wasp or a bee. Or it might be something much more dangerous.

Israel is developing a robot the size of a hornet to attack terrorists. And although the prototype will not fly for three years, killer Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, are much closer than that.
British Special Forces already use 6-inch MAV aircraft called WASPs for reconnaissance in Afghanistan. The $3,000 WASP is operated with a Gameboy-style controller and is nearly silent, so it can get very close without being detected. A new development will reportedly see the WASP fitted with a C4 explosive warhead for kamikaze attacks on snipers. One newspaper dubbed it "The Talibanator."

Fred Davis, technical director of the Assessment and Demonstrations Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, confirmed that the United States has ambitious plans for future micro-munitions, which he says will be pocket-sized with mission-specific payloads.

"You're not going to be knocking down walls," says Davis. "What we're looking at is functional defeat."

This means preventing the target from carrying out its mission, rather than destroying it, Davis says. A truck, for example, can be put out of action by destroying its tires; a MAV can do this by squirting them with few milliliters of a catalytic de-polymerization agent, causing them to disintegrate rapidly.

Davis sees future MAVs landing and hopping or crawling on the ground like insects, enabling them to get inside buildings. Once inside, an entire command center can be disabled by targeting the power supply.