Drones built to look like birds evaded detection at Air Force tech exercise

2052, Somewhere in the Northern Atlantic. Shipmate Hendricks cant believe his eyes. He seems to have seen something nobody has seen for decades now. After the US-China war - when every drone, spacelaser and soldier was aimed at every last bird on earth in fear of it being an enemy drone - nobody thought there were any left alive. But out here right there in his visor he sees them clear as day, flying around this small rock in the sea without a care in the world. He hurries to the outboat, sets off towards the island, trying to get a picture with his phone the closer he comes. He struggles to get them in focus as the birds start to fly towards him. A quiet "pop" is all thats heard as Hendricks tumbles to the floor. Lying there, blood pooling around him, his phone now showing the picture he took, finally in focus - clearly showing the motors and metal wings of the drones...

Would maybe make a decent twilight zone clip.

Ornithopter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-BklB99ybM

For those who don't know, the CIA had a similar (unsuccessful) program in the 1960s, which was kept secret for decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_AQUILINE

Fascinated with ornithopters—probably since reading "Dune", 45 or so years ago as a teenager.

(I may have been fascinated beforehand though—I had a small wind-up one as a kid.)

Kazuhiko Kakuta has a small YouTube channel where he experiments with ornithopter builds (and ornithopter adjacent craft): https://www.youtube.com/@BZH07614/videos

I wonder if falconry can fill that detection gap. Trained birds are already used to manage wild bird populations at airports. Now time to stop fake birds.

Instead of a full flapping wing thopter I wonder if something prop driven but with moving wings (for show, not propulsion) would be good enough for distant recon. Basically something like an RC plane with transparent plastic wings for lift and painted porous flapping wings underneath.

I remember once watching a bird in the distance through my binoculars and then how it inexplicably vanished into the distance, seemingly at great speed, not really flapping its wings. Seemed interesting, but I don’t go birdwatching enough to rule out my inexperience in looking at them properly. Maybe the binoculars had given me mild vertigo.

Metal Gear Solid

It won’t fly further than a headline, never a practical one. The biggest issue remains (after solving the other two) in drones now is endurance, and unless a breakthrough battery technology changes that, all these cool concepts will never materialize.

Birds Aren't Real

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real

I'm lucky enough to be employed in the robotics space.

It's not that all birds aren't real.

But some birds definitely aren't real.

Feels like the end-game is that anti-drone defense turrets are just going to shoot down anything that looks like a bird as well.

Oh god, they're going to kill all the birds, aren't they? I wish I was joking.

This should be perfidy against animals.

If only there were other spectra that trivially distinguish birds from drones

Claude, this time do shoot at birds, make no mistakes.