
The CIA’s Insectothopter - jonbaer
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/meet-the-cias-insectothopter
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foreigner
Wow if they had that 40 years ago it really makes you wonder what they have
now.

~~~
kemiller2002
You can call this pure conjecture if you will, but here's the story. Several
years ago, I knew some people in a PhD physics program, and one of the guys
there tells a story about an engineer he worked with during one of his summer
internships during undergrad. He described this guy as one of those older
rugged not quite polished types. The type that cursed a lot, and didn't really
put up with anyone's crap. He was wicked smart though, and he'd been doing it
a long time too. The story goes that the one of the government agencies
approached him to help them work whatever they were doing at the time. I think
he said this was around the 1950s. The engineer asked why should he work with
the government when he gets to work on cutting edge stuff all the time anyway.
Apparently, they let him see some of the things they had developed to entice
him, and he said that it was easily 5 years beyond what anyone had seen.

Is it true? Honestly, I don't know, but the guy telling the story at the time
believed him, and this was in the same conversation where scientists were
talking about how they could use satellite imaging to track where someone had
walked 10 minutes before in a field. That was the unclassified version of what
they could talk about.

~~~
chris1993
Has any of this tech "trickled-down" to agricultural applications? The ability
to track an individual seems like it could be used very effectively for
livestock monitoring.

~~~
knz
It's probably not as effective as an ear tag and fence though (especially when
you factor in real world conditions, a lack of unified technologies across any
industry, and an unwillingness to invest in technology).

That said, I have heard of remote sensing being used to monitor livestock and
crops. The commercialization of UAV's is contributing to that.

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wittjeff
I first heard of a device like this as a kid reading
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy)

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gene-h
What's interesting is the engine for the insectothopter, it appears to be a
plastic bladder compressed with a cantilever spring. Inflating the bladder
with gas pulls the wing down, which is itself something like a leaf spring,
and then deflates and the wing springs back. This is a surprisingly simple
mechanism that one might even be able to make without hand tools.

I wonder how long it will take the RC community to duplicate it?

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partycoder
There was also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_\(listening_device\))

The Thing was a bugged US seal built by the Soviet Union and given to the US
ambassador to the Soviet Union as a gift.

~~~
bwldrbst
Given the subject of the article and some of the comments (robotic or modified
real animals) I was expecting this to be about a different type of seal.

What an interesting life you must have, I thought, if people gift you bugged
aquatic mammals as pets...

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anotheryou
How does todays tech look like? The previous trend was scooping from far above
with a mid size drone, but I guess nowadays the insectocopters are possible.

Or did spying on phones make this absolutely redundant :) ?

~~~
pveierland
The PD-100 made by Prox Dynamics is a modern reconnaissance drone which is
close to the insectothopter in size. It's pretty cool to watch in real flight,
as it is very difficult to notice when hovering just a few meters above you.

[http://www.proxdynamics.com/home](http://www.proxdynamics.com/home)

~~~
maxxxxx
Are these being sold and for what price? The data sheet is hard to believe as
far as range and battery life goes.

~~~
owyn
They're military grade toys, and therefore expensive... Found an article which
says they cost about $50k each.

~~~
maxxxxx
It's still surprising. What kind of tech do they have that's fundamentally
different? Do they have better batteries or radios?

~~~
adamweld
The main efficiency boost is using a helicopter style rotor over a
quadrocopter - the larger propeller means greater efficiency.

Obviously a great deal of time is spent on weight reduction. And finally the
max range is one direction, until the battery is completely dead. When you
have military funding there's no need for a return trip... and to think each
of these could send a kid to college.

~~~
maxxxxx
Wow. 50k for a one way trip. It's good that our tax money is being spent
wisely.

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arca_vorago
I was super disappointed after having read about this in books/news for years
being referenced as in the spy museum, and finally got a chance to visit (it
takes living in DC area to fully experience DC) only to realize it wasn't
available for viewing.

More on topic, the real discussion this piece of work enables for me is the
reduction in the gap of power between the government and the individual
citizen due to technology as a force multiplyer. So they used to say the gov
was ~10-20 years ahead of the civilians. I think the gov is more like 5 these
days. It's corruption has weakened it's effectiveness.

~~~
vidarh
> due to technology as a force multiplyer.

You get $40 toy drones the size of a hand with HD video today. I keep telling
people that interesting things will happen when these shrink enough and get
enough flight time for people to decide it's low enough risk to start flying
drones into restricted areas and buildings.

It'll be increasingly hard to defend against, not least because it's getting
cheap enough you're not going to be defending against a handful of enemy
states, but against anyone curious enough or with a sufficient grudge and a
willingness to take the risk.

~~~
DenisM
I’m expecting drone-hunting drones. Flying around with tiny shotguns or maybe
catch nets.

~~~
vidarh
The challenge is the toys are getting so cheap, that it is likely to become
highly difficult to do this for a committed adversary.

E.g. imagine just overcoming the shotgun or net drones by simply sending in a
thousand (or however many) toy drones to deplete your supply of nets first. Of
course it'd set off all kind of alarms, but that may in itself make it worth
it: How many people can you afford to keep on high alert for $12 [1]
disposable drones in case one of them turns out to be something that actually
matters.

The potential disruptive effect of _just_ toys is becoming massive.

Then multiply it by a high factor if adversaries in that swarm of toys hide
e.g. a handful with explosives, or a handful of "proper" surveillance drones,
so that the cost of not taking out every single one (or even of taking one out
in the wrong location) becomes prohibitive.

[1] [https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-4G-6-Axis-RC-
Drone_...](https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-4G-6-Axis-RC-
Drone_60693001101.html) \- $12 if you order large enough volumes; of course
these would not do it - for starters, you'd have no chance to _control_ all of
them, and they could be disrupted simply by transmitting enough noise at
2.4GHz. But replace the control of it with some semi-randomized flocking on
all of the disposable ones, and cause chaos.

~~~
DenisM
It cuts both ways though - as attackers can buy more drones for $$ so do the
defenders. Superior budget wins every time.

~~~
vidarh
The problem, though, is that a $12 toy drone won't be able to reliably stop
even another $12 toy drone, and you need to be _able_ to stop something much
bigger and more sophisticated. Because you won't know if what's coming is
harmful or a major security threat.

So you might very well look at a $100k drone designed to take out $10k threats
being used against a $12 toy because the only way of being sure is to take it
out.

Now suddenly an adversary able to send 1000x$12 drones for $12k materials cost
could conceivably force you to spend $100m on drones for a single facility.

The problem with that being that your adversary gets to decide where to
attack.

That's the nightmare of this: Highly mobile, extremely cheap "attacks" that
can be used to massively drive up the needed defense efforts on the off chance
that somewhere in a swarm of a 1000 the adversary has hidden a $10k investment
in a flying bomb.

A superior budget may win, but this can drive up the budget advantage needed
before you have an advantage.

~~~
DenisM
Aren’t you exaggerating the cost difference?

I’m pretty sure a $10,000 drone can hunt down a $12 drone, and do it more than
once. To make it work you need size, speed, radar / sonar, a computer, and a
weapon for that sort of drone. Civilian DSLR-carrying drones are half-way
there, they have the size, the speed, and the weight capacity. Don’t know the
size/weight of the sonar though.

Besides cheap drones have low range and low speed, it will be hard for the
perp to get away, or even get close enough in the first place.

Non-state actors are very limited in budget. They might catch some targets
off-guard, but it’s not a game changer.

~~~
vidarh
This misses the point. A $10k drone can probably take out a $12 drone, but you
need to be armed to take out the bigger threat, because you don't know whether
the drone any given defensive drone will try to take out is a $12 drone or
another $10k drone with defensive capabilities of its own.

That's the point of this scenario: Deploy a bunch of cheap junk, in between a
handful actually dangerous ones. If you knew they were all just $12 drones
you'd hardly even need a countermeasure - they'd fall down after not that many
minutes flight.

The point would be to force the defensive force to commit far more resources
than necessary.

> and do it more than once.

Yes, but the problem is you need to scale for peak load. If someone sends 1000
drones after you spread around your perimeter and it'll take those drones 5m
to target, you need to have enough to intercept and destroy all 1000 in 5m.
Sure, you can reuse many of them - next time your adversary may up the attack
to 2000 drones, and see if you still have enough to kill them all.

> Besides cheap drones have low range and low speed, it will be hard for the
> perp to get away, or even get close enough in the first place.

The $12 drones in question have wifi and transmit hd video. You can get
suitable SOC's with dual wifi chipsets and relay connections quite easily, and
some of those cheap drones also have proximity sensors good enough to be able
to add tolerable flocking behavior. Judging from the stability of automated
takeoff and "return" functionality on the toy drones I've tested, we're not
long away from having the ability to have them do unaided flight. Not least
because the toy ones do not need to reach a specific target: Flying
erratically is not a problem. They just need to cause fear. Speed is also less
of an issue if your _intent_ is to spread fear - you can fly drones low over
locations where a defender does not dare use too drastic interception means
for fear of causing more harm than they prevent.

Besides, the most likely use for this type of thing are in situations where
some desperate group is fighting a state actor and losses are high anyway. It
doesn't make it worse.

> Non-state actors are very limited in budget. They might catch some targets
> off-guard, but it’s not a game changer.

I think it is, _exactly_ because they are very limited in budget; the terror
you'll spread with a $10k explosive device + $10k worth of drones aimed to
make the response more expensive is likely to be far greater than what you'll
achieve with 2x$10k explosive devices, and the chance of actually hitting
anything of value can likely be made higher. E.g. look at the rockets
regularly fired by Hamas - it's rare they cause much real harm, because
they're basically unguided; they're mostly about fear. For that kind of
scenario, the ability to get people to fear the buzzing of a drone because
they don't know if it's a $12 toy or a $10k bomb would definitively be a game
changer.

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andrewl
The technology will continue to improve. At some point they'll attach a
hypodermic loaded with cyanide or ricin to one of these and use it in an
assassination.

~~~
QAPereo
Why? Just make the current iteration have a sharp point on it and coat it with
your desired toxin or tracker. The tech is here now, and we’re in real trouble
without solid laws around this.

~~~
CamperBob2
_The tech is here now, and we’re in real trouble without solid laws around
this._

People who would be interested in the misuse of this technology aren't, as a
rule, interested in whatever laws you might think appropriate for regulating
it.

~~~
QAPereo
That really depends on who they are, what the oversight is, what the penalties
are, and how likely they are to be enforced.

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kkylin
Reminds of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_\(2015_film\))

Very likely the writers knew about the insectothopter, or came across it at
some point.

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cornchips
Behold, robo-bee:
[https://youtu.be/myOTp1wr3Bg?t=39s](https://youtu.be/myOTp1wr3Bg?t=39s) :-)

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perilunar
'Insectothopter'?

Shouldn't that be 'entomopter', or just 'ornithopter'?

~~~
marcosdumay
Wouldn't an 'ornithopter' look like a bird?

~~~
grzm
My dictionary has ornithopter as "a machine designed to achieve flight by
means of flapping wings."

Looks like Merriam-Webster agrees:

> _" an aircraft designed to derive its chief support and propulsion from
> flapping wings"_

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ornithopter](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/ornithopter)

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singularity2001
one of Ray Kurzweils most brilliant ideas was that aliens (from whereever) are
already surrounding us in the form of insects.

