DARPA ICARUS develops self destructing drones that make precise deliveries of critical supplies and then vaporize into thin air

A Chinese navy submarine rescue vessel launched a small boat and seized the US drone which the Pentagon also called an “ocean glider.”  The Pentagon said the Chinese ship ignored repeated demands to return the vehicle from the USNS Bowditch. One week later the Chinese government has returned the US underwater drone it siezed in the South China Sea, according to Chinese and US officials. The Pentagon said the United States would continue to investigate the “unlawful” seizure, which took place in international waters about 50 miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines.

In 2014, Iran claimed to have developed a stealth drone which it says is copy of US RQ-170 Sentinel, made by Lockheed Martin. “The drone was brought down by the Iranian Armed Forces’ electronic warfare unit which commandeered the aircraft and safely landed it,” the Iranian Tasnim News Agency reported. Late 2014, Iran announced it had “managed to reverse engineer most parts” of the drone, according to the Tasnim report. In 2011, U.S. “stealth” Blackhawk helicopter that crashed during the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden was given access to China by Pakistan despite explicit requests from the CIA not to, the Financial Times reported.

At the 2019 Defense News Conference on September 4, acting United States Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Donovan announced a number of “controversial changes” would be taking place within his military branch’s “future budgets.” “We are investing in advanced standoff weapons; low-cost, single-use aircraft; and technologies such as directed energy and hypersonics,” he said during the conference on Wednesday.

U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ) had launched  “Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems” (ICARUS)  program in 2015  to prevent incidents like this from happening. The goal was to create drones that would be deployed from an aircraft, deliver their payloads, and literally disappear.

If ICARUS is successful, small items, including batteries, communications devices, or medical supplies – especially those requiring maintenance of a cold chain – could be supplied/resupplied using low-cost, disposable aircraft to military or humanitarian assistance teams operating in difficult-to-access areas.

The program builds on recent innovations in its two-year-old Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program, which has developed self-destructing electronic components. “Our VAPR program partners are developing structurally sound transient materials with mechanical properties that exceeded our expectations,” says Troy Olsson, program manager of VAPR and ICARUS for DARPA.