This is how China is trying to revolutionize espionage: Check out these drones disguised as birds

Nature has perfected many anatomical features that allow the creatures that possess them to have unique abilities. Those have been an inspiration for mankind to develop new technologies and attempts to mimic them over the centuries. Perhaps one of the greatest leaps for wingless homo sapiens was learning how to fly.

While Leonardo da Vinci sketched a flapping-wing aircraft in the early 1500s it wouldn’t be for another 400 years until the first powered flight would take place, achieved by Orville and Wilbur Wright. Modern aircraft have incorporated features of certain birds for specific purposes, but their wings are rigid. That is until now as China has shown with new drones that are nearly indistinguishable from real birds.

The Chinese drones that are revolutionizing espionage

On the day when China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) celebrated the anniversary of its 1 August 1927 founding last year, the infantry academy organized a shooting event where one of the nation’s elite special forces units showed off one of its new toys. In footage broadcast by the Chinese military-affiliated media, a Jiaolong commando, similar to a Navy SEAL, can be seen popping out of the water with what looks like a bird.

The bird-like drone, designed to look like the Eurasian tree sparrow, was tossed into the air and proceeded to fly around, flapping its wings as it circled around in the sky, making it look indistinguishable from a real bird. The fact that the ornithopter, a machine the flies by flapping its wings, looks so real when flying to somebody on the ground makes this drone a perfect tool to stealthfully spy and perform reconnaissance.

There is one drawback though in that ornithopters generally have a limited range and endurance. But they are effective for surveilling enemy forces, able to carry small advanced sensors and can even be kitted out with micro-warheads to strike enemy targets.

This is not the only ornithopter that China has unveiled recently. In March last year, another bird-like drone was demonstrated by Chen Ang, part of a research group at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, Shaanxi province. His creation is called Xiaosun, meaning ‘little falcon’ in Chinese, has a groundbreaking propulsion system which allows flapping and folding of the wings during flight making Xiaosun the most agile and bird-like of this class of biomimetic drones.

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