The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently hosted a forum to discuss the advance of micro air vehicles—extremely small unmanned aerial vehicles. Current MAV technology runs to vehicles about six inches long, but researchers are looking toward the not too distant day when they may have “insect-size” UAVs. The end game, they say, is to fill “a variety of critical new military needs, chiefly in urban areas.” The forum gathered some 70 attendees from universities around the world, as well as government and industry researchers.
The Air Force budget would grow to $234 billion while Space Force spending would shrink to $26 billion under the White House's yearly ask.