Air defences are often the only thing standing between enemy aircraft and their targets, but up until now, it’s pretty relatively easy to destroy them. That’s because even mobile air defences typically must stop in order to shoot, making the job easier for aircraft dedicated to knocking them now. Continue reading
Tokyo Police Snatch Illegal Drones Out of the Sky
Tokyo police have adopted a new system for dealing with illegal drones. They now have a fleet of drone catchers, each equipped with a 10-foot net that can capture a drone without letting it fall to the ground.
Source: Tech Insider
DHS: Drug Traffickers are Spoofing Border Drones
The US Department of Homeland Security has turned to using small drones to monitor its borders, but drug traffickers have apparently already found a way to avoid surveillance.
Russian Emergencies Minister Opens Unmanned Aviation Centre
Russia’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
Heron Reaches 70,000 Operational Flight Hours In Afghanistan
Israel Aerospace Industries‘ (IAI) Heron-1 Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) recently marked its 70,000th flight hour in Afghanistan, after less than 7 years of operation in the country. This follows Heron’s completion of 25,000 flight hours last month under German Air Force operations in Afghanistan. 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
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
FAA Drone Laws Clash with Stricter Local Rules
Frank Carollo, a longtime member of the City Council in Miami, had worked for several weeks fine-tuning a proposal to limit the use of recreational drones, the increasingly popular remote-controlled flying devices. Minutes before the start of the vote on the rules this month, lawyers from the Federal Aviation Administration called him. Continue reading