A Replicant of the Raptor Kind

Building a replicant starts with mimicking nature, something DARPA wants to do in building a bot able to fly like the Goshawk, the acrobat supreme of the raptor world. 

 "Birds of prey and flying insects exhibit the kinds of capabilities we want for small UAVs. Goshawks, for example, can fly very fast through a dense forest without smacking into a tree," according to a statement in the announcement from Mark Micire,DARPA program manager. "The goal of the FLA program is to explore non-traditional perception and autonomy methods that would give small UAVs the capacity to perform in a similar way, including an ability to easily navigate tight spaces at high speed and quickly recognize if it had already been in a room before."

The focus is so firmly on developing a workable, independent flight intelligence, in fact, that DARPA doesn't even want to talk about what that intelligence would be flying in.

The last statement says it all, don't you think?

Northern Goshawk