From John Horgan’s Scientific American blog post “Why Drones Should Make You Afraid. Very Afraid.“:

“According to a report in today’s New York Times, the Department of Homeland Security has also offered grants to help police departments purchase drones, which are ‘becoming a darling of law-enforcement authorities across the country.’

• The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding research on ‘micro-drones’ that resemble moths, hummingbirds and other small flying creatures and hence can ‘hide in plain sight,’ as one Air Force researcher told me. The Air Force is now testing micro-drones at facilities such as the ‘micro-aviary’ at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

• These micro-drones could be armed. The Air Force has produced an extraordinarily creepy animated video extolling possible applications of ‘Micro Air Vehicles,’ which a narrator extols as ‘unobtrusive, pervasive, lethal.’  The video shows winged drones swarming out of the belly of a plane and descending on a city, where the drones stalk and kill a suspect.