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Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait
Here's an insidious and scary development in Ukraine - the "sleeper" drone:
These "sleeper" drones fly to strategic locations along supply routes and land, shutting down their motors to conserve battery and remain invisible to electronic detection systems.
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) August 16, 2026
While hidden out of sight, they rely on onboard acoustic sensors to passively listen for the…
Fans of sf author Maureen F. McHugh recall the wandering mines from her 1994 novel Half the Day is Night:
Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them, like in a sandy wash. And they settled down in the sand and rock, burying themselves, until sand covered them. And then you went away, and the enemy entered the area. And after a preset time, if nothing had crossed them, they dug themselves up, scuttled across the Kalahari on their crab legs, found a new place and buried themselves again. You could preset the range, bury a beacon to keep them fairly close - but the beacon could alert the enemy, so mostly they were set at random, set so as not to wander more then a couple of hundred meters from where they were first buried.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/25/2026)
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Related News Stories - (" Weapon ")
Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.' - Maureen F. McHugh, 1994.
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.' - Philip K. Dick, 1965.
Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...' - Hal K. Wells, 1942.
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'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...' - Richard Morgan, 2003.
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