Crew: Automated
Weight: 0.6 tons
Armament: Camera, assorted sensor gadgets
History of the Advanced Autonomous Aerial Reconnaissance Drone Project.
The battlefield Generals were having a tough time against Shadri uprisings. This was especially true in realm of getting up to date tactical data on Shadri troop movements and positions. The Brass commissioned a group of IFSN's best and brightest engineers to design and build a remote recon drone from which real-time surveillance could be received. The hope was that with such a system the Generals could plot effective offensive and defensive strategies.
The engineers proceeded with the best of intentions but ultimately failed miserably. Here is the story of the project through it's various stages.
Mk 1 : The IFSN scientists started with the hardware. This was their only success. The designed a rugged, dependable little vehicle that performed exceptionally well in human piloted tests. It was light, maneuverable, and cheap enough to be produced in large numbers. With flight tests complete, the engineers moved onto designing the AI and system software for the drone. This is where they ran into trouble.
Mk 2 The Horwath : Based on the success of the new generation of ship grade AI's, the IFSN engineers decided to base the drones AI on one of their own. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to the team they chose a compulsive liar. In battlefield tests the drone would frequently make up information and send it along as the real deal. On numerous occasions they found the drone just sitting in a field, far from the action just spinning wild tales about the strength and position of Shadri forces.
Mk 3 The KORHAL : The engineers went back to the drawing board and completely re-worked the AI, basing it on a more trustworthy member of the group. Initial tests were good, however in their fervor to rebuild the AI they overlooked a serious problem elsewhere in the code. Due to a rather gaping flaw in the AI's syntax sub-routines much of the information the drone passed along was unusable. Although the drone was reporting seemingly accurate information it was usually formatted in vast swaths of un-punctuated text, frequently in all caps and it never bothered to run its reports through a spell checker.
Mk 4 The Skavenger (s7) : The engineers returned to the lab. They poured over millions of lines of code and removed the offending data. With mounting budget and time constraints they once again failed to notice a burgeoning problem. The AI was spending so much time in the lab mainframes and was subjected to so much endless poking and prodding that it began to develop an anomalous personality trait. This drone had absolutely no respect for authority, was highly sarcastic and liked to make trouble by passing along false reports. All of which are terrible qualities in a reconnaissance drone. In one infamous episode a S7 drone convinced a Marine Special Forces team that it had found a secret Shadri bunker full of unguarded weaponry. By the time they were picked up by a passing supply convoy the drone had them all standing in a circle, naked and holding hands, chanting something about a yellow Banshee.
Mk 5 The Cassandra : The engineers totally scraped the AI and rebuilt it from scratch. It actually worked this time. Unfortunately, the Marines in the field had had quite enough by this time. They didn't believe a word it said and took pot-shots at it whenever they could.