Russian Emergencies Minister Opens Unmanned Aviation Centre

PuchkovRussia’s emergencies ministry on Sunday opened an unmanned aviation centre at the ministry’s Moscow region department. The ceremony was attended by Minister Vladimir Puchkov.

“The unmanned aviation center will help improve the quality of monitoring and raise the level of crisis response,” he said. The minister said drones would be used for aerial surveying to establish precise coordinated of emergency situation, damaned facilities, epicenters of wildfires and man-caused fires. Apart from that, in his words, drones would be used to monitor the flood situation and ice cloggings. Continue reading

Air Bases Report Increase in Near-Collisions with Drones

Rogue toy drones – a hot-selling Christmas gift this season and last – are starting to interfere with military operations at several bases across the country. With sales of consumer drones expected to approach 700,000 this year, military officials say they are bracing for the problem to get worse and are worried about the potential for an aviation disaster. Continue reading

Tern Moves Closer to Full-Scale Demonstration of Unmanned VTOL Aircraft

Tern

Small-deck ships such as destroyers and frigates could greatly increase their effectiveness if they had their own unmanned air systems (UAS) to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and other capabilities at long range around the clock. Current state-of-the-art UASs, however, lack the ability to take off and land from confined spaces in rough seas and achieve efficient long-duration flight.  Continue reading