[Rocketfan]

It flies like a butterfly, and boy, will it sting a lot more than a bee.

Aurora Flight Sciences recently tested a half-scale model of its new Excalibur unmanned aerial vehicle, or "drone" to the rest of us.

Unlike the military's Predator and Reaper drones currently in use along the Afghan-Pakistani border, the Excalibur won't need a runway.

That's because it's a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft. Like a Harrier jet, it rises straight up off the ground before using forward thrust like a regular jet.

Three horizontally mounted propellers help a tilting turbojet push the craft up, and are then stowed away as the jet drops into flight position.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534 ... latestnews