NetWorkWorld.com asks, “Is this a mosquito micro air vehicle (MAV)?”
No and Yes. Right now it’s only a CGI-mockup, but it will probably be real eventually, like many others that already are.
Alan Lovejoy wrote, “Such a device could be controlled from a great distance and is equipped with a camera, microphone. It could land on you and then use its needle to take a DNA sample with the pain of a mosquito bite. Or it could inject a micro RFID tracking device under your skin.” While DNA-sucking, RFID-chip-injecting mosquito drones are currently a bunch of bunk, a Bing image searchshows a multitude of MAVs that aren’t simply CGI mockups.
This little MAV had a 3 centimeter wingspan and that was back in 2007. When the U.S. government was accused of making insect spy drones in 2007, Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert on unmanned aerial craft, told the Telegraph, “America can be pretty sneaky.” The article also mentioned a dragonfly drone the CIA had developed in the 1970s.
In 2008, the U.S. Air Force showed off bug-sized spies as “tiny as bumblebees” that would not be detected when flying into buildings to “photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.”