Important Innovations

  Flying Carriers With Swarming Gremlin Drones                                                          Source:  DARPA Flying Aircraft Carrier Rendering                    Source:  DARPA's Flying Carrier and Gremlin Drones DARPA R&D Project Stranger Than Science Fiction The Pentagon's DARPA (the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency) is working at forever changing the face of warfare.  They are developing for the US military huge, flying aircraft carriers.  The carriers would be loaded with highly advanced drones, called Gremlins, instead of fighter jets.  Military officials believe the carriers would be safer in the the sky than on the ocean where they are becoming increasingly vulnerable to long range missile attacks.  The Pentagon is particularly concerned about new maneuverable, ballistic missile technology from China. The Gremlins The US Navy currently has 11 nuclear powered carriers.  Each carrier contains up to 80 fighter jets and 6,000 personnel

  Reusable, Affordable, Flying, Launch & Release Drones                                 Source:  DARPA's Gremlins Program For the US Military and Multi-Purpose Missions DARPA, the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, has a fascinating, highly advanced drone program underway to launch and catch airborne drones.  DARPA calls it the Gremlins program and it just completed the first flight test of its X-61A drone vehicle that is designed for airborne launch, free flight, swarming and then retrieval in the air, for re-use thereafter.  Drones Within Inches of Retrieval What DARPA is striving for is the aerial recovery of multiple drones that are low cost and reusable, unmanned aerial systems or  GAV (Gremlin Aerial Vehicles). The test drones each flew two hours autonomously and successfully tested for all formation flying positions and for safety.  But, within "inches", they failed to lockup in flight for the catch by a retrieval system on a C-130 H