Naval Research Lab Tests Swarm of Stackable CICADA Microdrones

The U.S. Naval Research Lab has been working on its CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) drones since at least 2011. The tiny drones are designed to be carried aloft by other aircraft and dropped, whereupon they'll use GPS and little fins to glide to within 15 feet of their destination. They can carry a small sensor payload, and they're designed to be cheap enough that you can use a whole bunch of them all at once. At the Sea Air Space Expo back in April, we checked out the latest MK5 CICADA prototypes, along with a new delivery system that'll launch 32 of them out of a standardized sonobuoy tube all at once. The CICADA drones themselves consist mostly of a printed circuit board, which makes up the wings and also contains a custom autopilot system that can recover from the crazy tumbling that you can see when the CICADAs are initially deployed. A 3D-printed fuselage minimizes the amount of hands-on assembly time required, and the general idea is that eventually, these things will be created and assembled entirely by robots.