New Zealand’s only operating de Havilland Venom is shown here at Tauranga Airport, Tauranga, New Zealand. Continue reading
New York City Council Considers Drone Ban
The New York city council is eyeing a potential ban of private drones and the addition of fines, in two separate bills. The first bill is “more of an outright ban” of drones, proposed by Council member Dan Garodnick, and the other will create fines and areas where drones are prohibited, proposed by Council member Paul Vallone. The two bills may be combined, but that decision will be determined by further council committee review.
Drone-Hunting Blimp Over Washington
On Friday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, will launch a giant drone-hunting blimp over Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds just east of Washington D.C. The system includes a 242-foot balloon (technically called an aerostat because it’s connected to the ground) that can stay up for a month at a time and a radar to detect — among other potential threats— drones.
Northrop Grumman Gets $657M Global Hawk Contract for South Korea
Northrop Grumman Corp has won a $657.4 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to provide South Korea with four RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft, the company and the Defense Department announced on Tuesday.
Parrot Invests $2M in Sensing Solutions for Precision Agriculture
MicaSense, a sensor and information company has raised $2M in Series A funding from Parrot. MicaSense delivers a fully integrated hardware solution for agricultural remote sensing from any unmanned aerial platform, tightly coupled with cloud-based analytics to provide crop health information to growers. The funding will enable MicaSense to expand its engineering and manufacturing capabilities to support a growing network of customers worldwide.
US Navy’s Robo-Shark
The American military does a lot of work in the field of bio-mimicry, stealing designs from nature for use in new technology. After all, if you’re going to design a robot, where better to draw inspiration than from billions of years of evolution? The latest result of these efforts is the GhostSwimmer: The Navy’s underwater drone designed to look and swim like a real fish, and a liability to spook the bejeezus out of any beach goer who’s familiar with Jaws.
EMSA Picks Life Ray for European Maritime Surveillance System
The new unmanned aerial system AR5 Life Ray, developed by technological Group TEKEVER, was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) to create the first European maritime surveillance system composed of UAS. Continue reading
Israel to Issue RFI for Personal UAS
Israel’s military is preparing to issue a request for information (RFI) for a so-called “personal UAS” for use by infantry soldiers.