DARPA Plans Vanishing Drone

Future aerial unmanned missions could be executed by vehicles that fly to their targets, deliver their payloads, and then self-destruct. For the past two years, the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) has been working on technology to develop such unmanned aerial vehicles. The program’s engineers already have demonstrated they can do it, building the devices out of polymer panels that would vaporize once their job is done. Electronic payloads would be borne on glass strips that would shatter as well. The vehicles could deliver food or medical equipment to hard-to-reach areas someday. The ICARUS program – the acronym stands for Inbound, Controlled Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems – is expected to take 26 months to complete, at a projected cost of $8 million.