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British Navy Warship Tests a 3D-Printed Drone at Sea

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:11AM (#213427)
    ...is LOHAN [theregister.co.uk] ever going to fly?