The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk has been a staple of U.S. military operations going back more than 30 years, but the Pentagon is now closer than ever to ditching one of the iconic chopper’s most important components: the pilot. Continue reading
Category Archives: Applications & Testing & Experience
ScanEagle Conducts Railway Monitoring with BNSF
Launching at a tower site near Vaughn, New Mexico, Insitu accomplished the first commercial beyond visual line of sight operation with an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in the contiguous 48 states. Continue reading
Camcopter’s Successful Shipboard Trials in South Africa
Schiebel’s CAMCOPTER S-100 Unmanned Air System (UAS) continues its successful shipboard trials when demonstrating its outstanding capabilities to the South African Navy from 20 to 23 October 2015 at False Bay, Western Cape, South Africa. Continue reading
Russia Will Test Unmanned Tiltrotor Aircraft By 2016
State testing of the Granat-5 unmanned tiltrotor aircraft designed for the Russian Navy will begin before the end of the year, a spokesman of the developing company, Izhmash Unmanned Systems announced. Continue reading
US Army Tests Drone Swarms
In this season’s Network Integration Evaluation at White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss, coordinated units of remotely operated and automated aircraft will be used to represent a possible threat on tomorrow’s battlefields.
US Forest Service Explores Use of Unmanned Aircraft to Improve Firefighter Safety
Lockheed Martin and KAMAN Corporations demonstrated for federal officials how the remotely piloted K-MAX helicopter can be used to perform wildland firefighting scenarios, including cargo drops, single target water drops, and progressive line building with a bucket. The demonstration provided officials from the U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management the opportunity to evaluate the capabilities of the unmanned helicopter. Continue reading
Watchkeeper Flown in UK Civil Airspace
For the first time, an unmanned aircraft was flown alongside commercial aircraft, which in a couple of years, could lead to pilotless cargo flights, search-and-rescue operations and unmanned environmental monitoring from UK airports. The flight was part of a National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) project to test drone technology. Continue reading
Solar Plane Prepares for Amazon Mission
Student engineers from ETH Zurich are preparing to fly their world-record breaking solar plane over the Amazon rainforest. The team is fitting its AtlantikSolar unmanned aerial vehicle for a nearly 250-mile, 12-hour flight as it seeks to push the endurance limits of solar planes.