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posted by janrinok on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.

Over recent years, more than 30 Chinese military and government agencies have been reportedly using drones made to look like birds to surveil China's citizens in at least five provinces, according to the South China Morning Post Sunday.

The program is reportedly codenamed "Dove" and run by Song Bifeng, a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an. Song was formerly a senior scientist on the Chengdu J-20, Asia's first fifth-generation stealth fighter jet, according to the Post.

The bird-like drones mimic the flapping wings of a real bird using a pair of crank-rockers driven by an electric motor. Each drone has a high-definition camera, GPS antenna, flight control system and data link with satellite communication capability, according to the Post.

While the "scale is still small", according to Yang Wenqing, a member of  Song's team in a comment to the Post, the researchers "believe the technology has good potential for large-scale use in the future ... it has some unique advantages to meet the demand for drones in the military and civilian sectors."


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:19AM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:19AM (#699040)

    > China - Regime with a terrible human rights record, currency manipulator that has robbed western wealth by undercutting workers rights.

    While that quote could easily apply to the US, let's focus on the word "robbed".
    I totally remember Chinese people forcing Western CEOs to outsource for cheap labor and access to the big market. What was even more a hoot was how Chinese Navy ships forced dockers to unload containers of cheap crap to take all the space on Western shelves and displace the local goods. It will be left to historians to try to put into words how strongly the extra cash disgusted the shop owners.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @08:31AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @08:31AM (#699198)

    Interesting but you're still onboard for solving the Justin situation and nuking Canada?

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:40PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:40PM (#699368)

      Well, last I heard, one fo the Justins lived in Calabasas, CA, so you'd have to nuke L.A.
      Which sounds like a good proposition.