Dragonfly, Or Tiny Spy?

Many attendees at a recent anti-war rally in Washington, DC believe they may have seen top-secret, high-tech, highly-miniaturized flying robots sent by the Department of Homeland Security to spy on them during the rally.

One college senior told The Washington Post the "bugs" looked like dragonflies... or little helicopters.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,'" said protester Vanessa Alarcon. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?'"

Similar alleged devices were also spotted at protests in New York, reports the Post.

Others who saw the tiny flying shapes say they... actually... were dragonflies.

Unmanned aerial vehicles are big news in the US military right now -- the key word being, "big."

"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley.

No government agency admits to having insect-sized UAVs... but, of course, that doesn't necessarily mean they'd tell us if they did.

Tom Ehrhard of the Washington-DC-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a retired Air Force colonel and expert in unmanned aerial vehicles, told the Post "America can be pretty sneaky."

Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office would only say, "If you find something, let me know."

Doesn't exactly sound like a denial to us...

FMI: www.dhs.gov, www.dod.mil