Vanishing, invisible drones heading our way

$8 million project could produce amazing tech

Drones can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on the circumstances. They may be used to drop essential medical kits in war zones or supplies to hidden Special Forces but such actions involve several risks, particularly the high visibility of the recipient's location. Technology could end up in the enemy's hands or worse. In light of the risks normal drones pose, the Pentagon has called for design specs for a "vampire" drone that disappears in daylight.

span style="line-height: 1.22;">LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), is financing a new project to develop aircraft that can "fully disappear within four hours of payload delivery, or within 30 minutes of morning civil twilight (assuming a night drop), whichever is earlier." The project is called Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems, or ICARUS. The project's name is a homage to the Greek mythology character whose wax and feather wings melted when he flew too close to the sun, leading to his death. 

In keeping in step with Icarus' tale, the drones are expected to perform one-way trips only. The project will run for 26 months with up to $8 million in funding. Darpa has announced its need for "proposals for the design and prototyping of vanishing air delivery vehicles capable of precise, gentle drops of small payloads."
Darpa continues, noting "These precision vehicles must be guaranteed to rapidly physically disappear following safe payload delivery." The goal is to allow each drone to travel 93 miles (150 km) and drop packages in hard-to-reach regions without the currently required time-consuming clearing and hiding. Each package will weigh less than three pounds (1.4kg) and the drones need to be 10-feet-long at the most (3 meters) and needs to be capable of landing on targets no greater than 33 feet (10 meters).
The final design requirement is that the craft should vanish -possibly in a puff of smoke. Another Darpa project, called the Vanishing Programmable Resources (Vapr) program, focuses on turning polymers from solid states to gas, DefenseOne reported. 
According to Darpa, the craft pieces would disappear and should not be visible to the naked eye and shrapnel will not exceed 100 µm in length, which is about the same size as a grain of sand. 

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