Tiny UAV Joins the Marines

April 18, 2005

'Efforts to create smaller and smaller UAVs has reached the point where the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are now field testing the seven ounce Wasp Micro Air Vehicle (MAV). This is a flat, rectangular “flying wing” (13 inch wingspan, about seven inches long), that can stay in the air for about an hour. Once the battery powered propeller is spinning, the operator throws Wasp into the air, and off it goes, usually a 100 feet altitude. You land it by pressing the autoland button after you have entered GPS coordinates of where you want it to return to. The propeller often breaks off when it lands, but the Wasp was designed for that, and you just snap on another one. The $5,000 MAV can survive about twenty such landings. The MAV is controlled via a hand held ($30,000) device that looks like a Gameboy, but has a seven inch color screen and controls laid out for easy use. '