Army's New Weapon of Choice: the Attack Frisbee

Posted on September 8, 2006

Just when you think the defense department can't do anything more ridiculous, it does. The latest weapon for hunting terrorists is a robot-controlled frisbee of death.

DefenseTech reports that the killer frisbee is called "Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munition." It will be developed by a company named Triton Systems. The frisbees of death can be remote controlled by soldiers on the ground. They eliminate their targets by shooting "Jets of molten metal."

This seems like the kind of weapon that could easily go out of control and take out a bunch of our guys. If you're using it in caves, there are going to be problems with losing the signal to the device. And in cities, there are going to be other problems. Are the frisbees controlled by radio waves that can be interfered with? And what is an "autonomous target classification routine built into the UAV"? Does that mean they're heat-seeking? Or does it mean the targets have to be painted first somehow by a soldier (who might as well go ahead and kill the target if he's close enough to paint him)?

And if the frisbees can be programmed with specific coordinates, wouldn't it be easier to just drop a regular bomb on the target? The probability for an entire mission going totally FUBAR within a few minutes of launching a swarm of these things seems rather high. I'm thinking it's back to the drawing board on this one.

All I can say after reading this is: the next time you see multiple black frisbees coming at you in the park or in some urban situation, you might want to take cover.