France unveils flapping-wing military drone

The French defense ministry recently unveiled a drone project inspired by bird and insect flight movements.

The BIOFLY project aims to develop a flapping-wing drone that can glide, fly by beating its wings, and hover, a combination of characteristics lacking in fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, the French Ministry of Defense revealed.

Flapping wings coupled with the drone’s small size and light weight (50g) makes it appear from a distance like a bird or an insect.

The BIOFLY is based on a 2014 “electronic bird” project — the Bionic Bird drone — which had “carbon-fiber wings and a body made from polymers.”

The project aim is to improve the Bionic Bird’s “propulsion system, the mechanism of movement of the wings,” and its flight capacities.

Developers are building a new “flapping-wing flight architecture” which will cut out the “oscillations induced by flapping wings” and include a shock-resistance onboard camera