I have my doubts about the validity of this. I've read about it many times, but there's never any pictures of it, other than the line drawing 'design'. It appears to be powered by an internal combustion engine, which surely limits it from being a realistic size - I've seen tiny internal combustion engines, but they are never tiny enough to convincingly fit in an object around 4mm diameter or so.
It always reads like someone's pipe dream that never really happened, even the anecdote about throwing it into the air, it flying 2 laps of the room and landing on a desk, how? The CIA didn't have access to microelectronics beyond what is known about, there's no way it had any autonomy, and the hinted-at optical remote control would require microelectronics that again is too big for a realistic size.
I suspect it's possible someone built a 'prototype' that was maybe a metre long or so, but that's a long way from the covert device we're asked to believe was made, if never deployed.
I have similar doubts about the anecdote of their 'brain controlled cat' snooping device that has often been written about from the same era, no evidence of the level of brain interface technology that would be required has ever been demonstrated from that timeframe.
You obviously didn’t read the article and just wrote this comment on looking at the headline and picture. The circling the room twice is referring to an actual dragon fly. Also, it’s not ICE but fluidic motors driven by lithium nitrate crystals.
There’s also cover how it is very hard to control and how they do it manually with IR lasers. There’s even a video at the end of the prototype flying.
