Traditional airships use a cable and pulley system for directional movement, which is finicky at best, and leaves tremendous opportunity for error. Continue reading
Author Archives: The Editor
China’s Anti-Drone Gun Tested
Authorities in China have now begun field-testing their latest anti-drone “gun” that is capable of taking down any un-welcomed drone. Police officers in the country were recently armed with the new drone jamming gun at a big soccer game in Wuhan, China. Any drone that trespassed within the event’s premises were disabled and forced to land through the system’s signal jamming capabilities. Continue reading
Kruger Park Abandons Drone Anti-Poaching Programme
The Kruger National Park (KNP) is no longer using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to combat poaching, after a year-long evaluation period exposed a number of shortcomings, but is using other aviation assets successfully. Continue reading
FAA, Industry and Academia Partner on Flight Tests of Sense-and-Avoid Avionics System
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and partners Northrop Grumman and ACSS, an L3 and Thales Company, have announced a series of successful flight tests of the sense-and-avoid avionics system for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Continue reading
Hybrid UAV U-Lion with Three Flying Modes
Two PhD students in National University of Singapore, Unmanned System Research Group spent four years in developing the novel hybrid unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV), U-Lion as shown in Figure 1. U-Lion is a hybrid UAV which can take-off and land vertically like helicopter UAVs, and transit to cruise flight like normal airplanes. Continue reading
General Atomics Gets $39M USAF MQ-9 Support Contract
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Poway, California, has been awarded a $39,122,913 modification (06) to task order (0017) on previously awarded contract FA8620-15-G-4040 for MQ-9 contractor logistics support. Continue reading
New Drone-Launched Precision Bomb Used in Syria ?
Viper Strike
In one sense the death of Abu al-Khayr al-Masri is no mystery. The Pentagon has acknowledged that it carried out a drone strike near Idlib in Syria which killed Al-Masri, who was described as “a core al-Qaida leader” on February 4. However, this was very different to the usual attacks carried out by unmanned aircraft. Continue reading
Neva Aerospace Launches VTOL-Optimised Turbines for Heavy-Duty Aerial Robots
Heavy duty aerial robots have made a major leap from wish-tech to becoming next generation real-tech innovation after the success of early aeronautical engineering development work by Neva Aerospace. Having secured essential international patent protection of its concepts, the company is now sharing its ideas for aerial robotic platforms (ARPs) with the public announcement of its Vlinder concept. Continue reading