  Intercontinental Ballistic UAVs  Predator Minuteman  By Evan
Ackerman  DARPA, the defense department’s crazy-yet-plausible
ideas office, is exploring the possibility of launching unmanned
aerial surveillance aircraft with ballistic missiles. I
completely understand the “strapping a huge rocket to it will
make it better” philosophy in general, but the specific
advantage that DARPA is pursuing is the potential to drop a
surveillance UAV anywhere in the world in under an hour. Sounds
like a great idea, and it is… The only problem is the launch
platform: certain countries (I’m looking at you, Russia and
China) get a little bit jumpy when they see the US launching
intercontinental ballistic missiles, and these same certain
countries have plenty of intercontinental ballistic missiles of
their own, not necessarily armed with surveillance UAVs.  VIA [
Danger Room ]