TAMPA, Florida — Never let it be said that small isn’t powerful. A Northern California company has just built commandos perhaps the smallest drone that can kill you. Underscoring the point, it’s even painted camouflage, like Stallone in Rambo.

The Arcturus company built its eponymous drone as the unmanned aerial equivalent of a compact car. Its wingspan is just over 17 feet, making it slightly smaller than the Army and Marine Corps’ Shadow drone. Arcturus is “primarily” a spy plane, says engineer Eric Folkestad. Emphasis on “primarily.”

Because the life-size Arcturus on display at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference here has a conspicuous add-on under its left wing. That’s a Saber, a 10-pound laser-guided missile (.pdf) manufactured by MBDA. In tests, Arcturus discovered that the wings of its drone can carry 22 pounds’ worth of cargo, making it a candidate to wield MBDA’s missiles. “No one else can do that in our size category,” Folkestad says.

Not for lack of trying. For years, both the Army and Marine Corps have tried to weaponize the Shadow, an attempt to make it the pint-sized Salacious Crumb to the Jabba the Hutt of drones, the Hellfire-armed Predator. If it works, a battalion commander won’t have to call headquarters for unmanned air support. He’ll have the air support himself.

So far, though, armed drones of this size haven’t made it out of the testing stage. And that includes the Arcturus.

Folkestad says his company has shipped 12 of the drones to the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force in the past 18 months. They’re still in evaluation. But if it gets the thumbs up, then ever-smaller units will command their own flying killer robots, another step in the proliferation of drone warfare.

Unlike the other “tier-2 class” drones, Arcturus is intended primarily for commandos. Like the Shadow, it’s launched from a pneumatic catapult, and doesn’t need a runway to land. Unlike a Shadow, the Arcturus is a modular design: The wings and the tail snap off of the 100-pound plane for portability by small special-operations detachments behind enemy lines.

Hence the camouflage. The camo might look a little silly when the Arcturus is up at its max height of 15,000 feet. But that missile is no laughing matter.

If that sounds a little callous, consider this: Arcturus shares its company name with a fantastically dark Norwegian black metal band. Folkestad doesn’t need reminding: “You Google us; you get them.”

Photo: Spencer Ackerman

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