Government Wastes Taxpayers' Money On Crappy "Shark-Like Spy Drone"

Chris | InformationLiberation
Dec. 16, 2014

Here's the latest scam the government is burning your money on: a "shark-like spy drone" that looks somewhat like a shark and swims like a physically disabled fish.

UPI reports:

The U.S. Navy has been testing a GhostSwimmer unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story (JEBLC-FS).

The tests were finished on Dec. 11, and more tests are planned for the future. They refer to it as a "science-fiction-turned-reality" project in a statement. It's part of Silent NEMO, a project aimed at examining the possible uses of underwater drones.

In recent weeks, the device has been gathering data on tides, wakes, currents and weather conditions.

"GhostSwimmer will allow the Navy to have success during more types of missions while keeping divers and Sailors safe," said Michael Rufo, director of Boston Engineering's Advanced Systems Group.

It was made to resemble a large fish, they say, and it has a length of roughly 5 feet and a weight of nearly 100 pounds. It can dive down to at least 300 feet below sea level.

"It swims just like a fish does by oscillating its tail fin back and forth," said Rufo. "The unit is a combination of unmanned systems engineering and unique propulsion and control capabilities."

The appearance and movement could help prevent it from being detected.

As you can see in the video above, the movement is jerky and in no way mimics the graceful way a fish swims with it's entire body, rather it mimics the actions of a cheap children's wind-up toy.

Reports indicate the cost for developing this grade-school project robot has so far been about a million dollars. The Navy says they plan to waste more on the spy-bots in the future.

In the meantime, the US government is over $18,000,000,000,000 in debt, that's $18 trillion, with over $120,000,000,000,000, or $120 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Of course, the state could argue the value gained from intimidating the servile public to pay taxes through panopticon-like surveillance could make the project pay for itself.