nano hummingbird

What can I say? What mind thought this one up? Who lay awake at night and came up with this idea for a new war technology?

Nano Hummingbird. It sounds cute, doesn't it? Nano Hummingbird. But no, it is not a new gift from your Nanna. That is, unless your Grandmother is Princess Stephanie Julianna von Hohenlohe or Nancy Wake or Violette Szabo and she wants you to practice playing spy. She would also have to have quite a few dollars to spend on a gift.

The nano hummingbird is a little remote control fake hummingbird to fly around your yard -- that is, if you plan on spying on your neighbours. The nano hummingbird cost $4m. to develop and along with raven drones, are a new bird-looking surveillance technology by American company AeroVironment, the leading drone maker. This particular drone was produced for use by the US army, which has also bought 2182 raven drones.

Below you can see it in action:

from Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the army's latest $4million spy drone disguised as a hummingbird, measuring just 16 centimetres:

"Around 86 per cent of its [AeroVironment] orders come from the [US] Government, meaning last year it was paid a whopping $215million from the Department of Defense.

The company, based in California with 732 full-time employees, expects to sell even more drones to the Government once rules are relaxed to allow spying within America.

....

Chris Fisher, project manager at AeroVironment explained: ‘It gives the guy on the ground the opportunity to see what’s on the other side of the hill. There’s only so much you can see with binoculars. A small [drone] can get up and go over the hill. That gives the ground soldier a capability that is huge.

He added: ‘One of the things we benefit from is the average young person in the military has hours and hours of video games experience. They are attuned to holding these things in their hands; moving the joysticks around with their thumbs and that’s how our planes are flown. To an 18-year-old it’s extremely simple.