DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah — The killer drone whooshed out of its launch tube, spreading its carbon wings and shooting into the sky.
Flying too fast for the naked eye to track, the battery-powered robot circled the Utah desert, hunting for the target it had been programmed to strike. Moments later, it sailed through the driver’s side window of an empty pickup truck and exploded in a fireball.
“Good hit,” exclaimed an operator from AeroVironment, the company that produces the drone and sells it to the U.S. military.
NBC News traveled to a military testing center for exclusive access to the first public demonstration of the Switchblade 300, a small, low-cost “kamikaze” drone made by AeroVironment, which sources said the U.S. military has used quietly for years in targeted killing operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria…
