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posted by takyon on Saturday July 25 2015, @01:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the british-navy-warship-becomes-aircraft-carrier dept.

On Tuesday this week, the Royal Navy ship HMS Mersey launched something unusual from its gun deck off England's southern coast—a cheap drone made using a 3-D printer.

The three-kilogram craft with an airplane-style design was launched by a three-meter catapult and autonomously flew between a few preprogrammed waypoints for five minutes before being piloted to a safe belly landing on a pebbly beach.

The cheap drone had been printed on shore and then assembled on the ship. The test was meant to demonstrate how more-or-less disposable drones that could, in a pinch, be printed onboard might cut costs and let a crew adapt quickly to a new mission, for example after a natural disaster.

How much do you want to bet they'll be primarily used to spy on chicks tanning naked on yachts?


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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:50AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:50AM (#213424) Homepage

    Carrier has arrived.

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