You can understand the U.S. military’s fascination with insect-like weapon and surveillance designs. If you’re looking to create a smart and sneaky organism from the ground up, why not tap the wisdom of millions of years of evolution, borrowing ideas from the most successful animals on the planet?

Surveillance devices resembling crawling spiders and dragonflies like the illustration above will be noticed by those hooded terrorists about as quickly as they’d spot a fly on the wall. Click Continue below to see a promotional video of these artificial creepy-crawlies and buzzing bots in action, sneaking up on some swarthy bad guys, and then showing their soldier masters the live video. In short order, we see that lethal helicopters laden with high explosions are just a phone call away.

Looks like science fiction? The U.S. Army just plunked down $38 million to BAE Systems to make these things real. Fancy bugs, indeed.

Via Danger Room