Aquila Origin Story

In a an article on the history of Unmanned Surveillance Drones in Newsweek (June 9th issue) I found this bit
"The Army plunged into procurement hell, developing a drone with so many bells and whistles that it barely got off the ground. Ill conceived from the start, the Aquila needed hundreds of tons of backup equipment, which required an hour to set up or take down. Crashing every 20 hours or so, its costs climbing to $3 million a copy, the Aquila was canceled in 1987 after burning through $1 billion."

 

To me, this just screams "origin story". I can just picture the developers of the Aquila Drone adding more and more things in comic book fashion.

 

"Do you know what this needs? Infra-red."

"Yeah! We can get some IR capability in there, but it has to be able to switch between that and UV and regular light."

"Oh, of course. And we'd get a better idea of the area if it could detect sound too."

"Locating other planes, you mean?"

"Plus hearing stuff on the ground. We'l have to make it smarter so it can filter out the wheat from the chaff in the incoming sound streams however."

"Smarter is good. And then maybe it could direct itself if under attack, rather than wait for a new response!"

"Defense capability, sure! And maybe some jamming system, and some other defensive measures."

"What about those heat beams the DARPA guys are working on? That would clear out an enemy anti-aircraft installation!"

 

LATER
 

"No, it would be much more effective in gathering data if it could pass for human. Make those waldoes look more like arms, and get the joint articulation on the legs right."

"But it still has to be able to blend in the sky, so we have to pit on  the liquid crystal skin so it can change color."

"What if radio contact gets cut out in a conversation? How will we control it?"

"We'll have to upgrade the intelligence programming again to give it full language compatibles I guess…."  

 

LATER STILL
 

"This is it, the Aquila Mark 9: it's a totally humaniform robot with flight, senor suite, independent action level AI, camouflage, flares, radar jamming and an IR heat beam!"

"Our budget's been cut."

"Can't we turn him on at least ONCE?"

 

Your call as to whether he's a hero or a villain….