A seeming innocuous US Naval Research Laboratory solicitation for a contractor to support work on advanced electronic-attack concepts and technologies includes as one of the tasks designing and testing advanced unmanned EW vehicles "to maximise efficiency in the low Reynolds number flight regime".
Low Reynolds number means a small vehicle - are they thinking about swarms of micro- or nano- air vehicles jamming radars?
The overall task is to help NRL evaluate, develop and field-test electronic countermeasures techniques for use against advanced weapon-control radars and seekers, particularly imaging systems, such as synthetic-aperture and millimeter-wave radars, and radars with advanced electronic protection.
One of the sub-tasks is to develop ways to control networks of sensor and jammer nodes using rule-based algorithms to enable the individual nodes to sort through the data and make decisions. And the third task - UAV design and development - suggests those nodes could be expendable decoys or unmanned aircraft.
I still can't see micro- or nano UAVs operating in the wild; they seem far too vulnerable to weather (wind, rain, sandstorms). Still, it's sexy tech that can always count on funds.
