How swarming drones will change warfare

OK, in the context of a beekeeping blog, the headline makes no sense. Here's the bit that caught my non-compound eye:

Flinging a barrage at a defence system is one thing, but that could be done with a sack of rocks. The key to the swarm is that it's smart enough to coordinate its own behaviour.

It's not only the military that's interested in this problem. Dr Justin Werfel is a senior research scientist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

"In a natural swarm of birds or bees, all individuals are doing their own thing. Each one has its own brain, knows what it can see for itself," he says. "You don't have an explicit hive mind. The queen bee is not giving instructions to everyone.

"The challenge is how you build the individuals so that the collective does what you want."

Swarmy reading for you: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47555588