Roboflies. Microbugs. Mesicopters.

December 12, 2001 11:40 AM

Roboflies. Microbugs. Mesicopters. No need for a missile defense shield after all. The future of military defese technology lies with MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and the US Defense Department. Gives new meaning to the word entomophobia.
posted by Voyageman (6 comments total)

PS Get your swatters while they last.
posted by Voyageman at 11:42 AM on December 12, 2001

tiny spies within enemy territory

Right. Or tiny spies within our own territory. Imagine having to wonder whether that pesky fly in your backyard is actually a spy device. In the future, privacy and civil liberties may become quaint archaic concepts.
posted by vacapinta at 11:50 AM on December 12, 2001

Anyone remember Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy?

A book about the Army developing a tiny insect dragonfly which you would control by wearing gloves and a helmet. You saw what the dragonfly saw, and felt what the dragonfly felt. Virtual Reality published in 1974 as a children's book.
posted by perplexed at 12:00 PM on December 12, 2001

Brains over brawn, dude.

That famous passage in the Bible had a typo in it. It should have read: "The geek shall inherit the earth."
posted by mrmanley at 12:39 PM on December 12, 2001

Now if we can also develop a micro-nuke, the size of a grain of rice, and saddle it on one of these Mems, we could take those Afghani caves out 1-2-3.
posted by BentPenguin at 2:54 PM on December 12, 2001

Alas, the laws of physics place strict limits on both the minimum and maximum size of a fission bomb. So no micro-nukes. But a swarm of 10^6 robo-bugs, each carrying 1g of C4 and detonating in unison, would provide a nice wake-up call.
posted by Hieronymous Coward at 11:59 PM on December 12, 2001