Once launched, the swarm can decide for itself how best to execute a mission.

by Jamie Condliffe January 10, 2017

What’s small, fast, and is launched from the bottom of a fighter jet? Not missiles, but a swarm of drones.

U.S. military officials have announced that they’ve carried out their largest ever test of a drone swarm released from fighter jets in flight. In the trials, three F/A-18 Super Hornets released 103 Perdix drones, which then communicated with each other and went about performing a series of formation flying exercises that mimic a surveillance mission.

But the swarm doesn’t know how, exactly, it will perform the task before it’s released. As William Roper of the Department of Defense explained in a statement:

Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature. Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.

Releasing drones from a fast-moving jet isn’t straightforward, as high speeds and turbulence buffet them, causing them damage. But the Perdix drone, originally developed by MIT researchers and named after a Greek mythical character who was turned into a partridge, is now in its sixth iteration and able to withstand speeds of Mach 0.6 and temperatures of -10 °C during release.

A Washington Post report last year explained that they had been developed as part of a $20 million Pentagon program to augment the current fleet of military drones. It’s hoped that the small aircraft, which weigh around a pound each and are relatively inexpensive because they’re made from off-the-shelf components, could be dropped by jets to perform missions that would usually require much larger drones, like the Reaper.

Clearly, they’re well on the way to being that useful. Now the Pentagon is working with its own Silicon Valley-style innovation organization, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, to build fleets of the micro-drones.

Original post technologyreview.com

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Image: theaviationist.com

Watch U.S. F/A-18 Hornets Unleash Swarm of Mini-Drones in First Test https://t.co/1sz0TcTuNX pic.twitter.com/0t1uwDvEjA

— The Aviationist (@TheAviationist) January 10, 2017

The swarm drone “Perdix” deployed from F-16

Russia’s PAKFAs to be transferred to Aerospace Forces later this year

Reuben F Johnson, Kiev – IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly

10 January 2017

The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) has announced that it will take delivery of its first five Sukhoi T-50 PAKFA fifth-generation fighters later this year.

Although the VKS did not specify in its announcement on 6 January when in 2017 the transfer will take place, the move will mark the end of the company trials programme for the aircraft, and the beginning of the two-stage state-joint trials programme.

In the first stage, the industry pilots that have been flying the T-50 thus far will train a cadre of military pilots on the aircraft, with the second stage of test programme flights being conducted entirely by these VKS pilots.

Current flight testing by Sukhoi of the initial T-50 aircraft has been conducted at the Gromov Flight Research Institute (LII) in Zhukovskiy. According to Russian specialists familiar with the process, these five T-50s will now be transferred to the Chkalov VKS State Flight Test Centre base No. 929 at Akhtubinsk for the joint-state trials programme.

Transfer to the VKS is also a marker for the next stage of the contract for the T-50 and the process of moving to series production of the aircraft.

Original post janes.com