© Kaleb R. Staples – Navy

The United States Navy is coming up with innovative ways to use drone technology. One of the simplest ways for the Navy to defend themselves against incoming missiles is to confuse the missile by disrupting their navigation software with the use of radio frequency scramblers. Specially designed drones allow the Navy to easily place these scramblers right in the missile’s path for maximum effectiveness. They refer to such a drone as a Netted Offboard Miniature Active Decoy (Nomad). The Nomad drone is three feet long. It sits inside a tube that has spring loaded rotors attached to keep it stable during flight. When it takes off, compressed carbon dioxide propels it from the ground and the rotors start to spin. The rotors allow this unmanned aerial vehicle to fly in any direction, and even hover over one spot.

Tube launched drones, such as the Nomad, are not a new thing. The Locust and the Blackwing are similar in design but they are not suited for the Navy’s purposes because those drones are unable to hover alongside slow moving targets. They are also not powerful enough to carry the kinds of ammunition that the Nomad can. The Nomad is a variation of these existing models however, the Nomad is characterized by rotors with larger diameters. This gives the Nomad superior in flight control and also allows it to fly efficiently in strong winds.

Other uses for the Nomad drone are currently in testing. Steven Tayman, the Nomad’s inventor, hails his invention as an affordable remote controlled drone which researchers can use to safely coordinate flights. The number of possible applications for the Nomad is only limited by how many payloads the researchers can find to be feasible. The unique placing and size of the rotors means that the tube can store ready-to-use drones for fast deployment.

The Department of Defense made the Nomad’s patent public on October 4th. They are hoping that private businesses will be interested in licensing the Nomad’s technology. The hope is for these private businesses to look into developing a civilian version of this drone. Such versions are likely to feature sensors and cameras.

Businesses that are interested in using these drones technology only need to file a patent-licensing application.  Techlink, the drone company that owns the patent, is allowing businesses to use the patent for free. Techlink believes that any uses that companies can up with for this kind of drone are worth waiving the licensing fee for.