UAS industry leaders in Dayton have announced that they will work with a North Dakota organization to develop and market UAS services for agriculture.
UAV Factory Penguin B Flies 26 Hours with a Two-Stroke Model Engine
On the late evening of August 10th of 2011, the UAV Factory team set out for a flight with the aim to break the 40 hour endurance record with a two-stroke model engine. The aircraft was the 20 kg, Penguin B , manufactured by UAV Factory Ltd.
US Missile Defense Agency Testing Reaper as Missile Hunter
The General Atomics Reaper may eventually go from hunting terrorists to hunting hostile ballistic missiles. It may get a new mission as a frontline cueing system for the burgeoning U.S. missile defence architecture. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) officials say the Reaper and its Raytheon MTS-B sensor are showing promise.
Pentagon Approves Larger Navy MQ-8 Fire Scout
The Pentagon has approved the requirement for an “endurance upgrade” to the U.S. Navy’s Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout, with a larger aircraft to provide increased payload and range to support special operations forces.
India Develops Own Gas Turbine Engine for its UCAV
Indian Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) officials say that the Kaveri aero-engine, which incidentally is over 22 years in the making by now with a sanctioned cost of Rs 2,893 crore ($388M), can power unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) because they “do not require the kind of higher thrust” needed for the indigenous Tejas LCA (light combat aircraft).
Raven Crashes in Mogadishu
Security officials in Somalia say that a UAS crashed into a house near the Libyan Embassy in the capital, Mogadishu, on Friday, but they did not provide details about who was operating the unmanned aircraft.
Hackers Target Vanguard and InfraGard
The hacker group AntiSec has released a 1GB cache of stolen documents from two organizations with ties to US law-enforcement agencies. Vanguard Defense Industries manufactures the ShadowHawk for law enforcement and security in the private sector, while InfraGard is a partnership between the FBI, businesses, academic institutions, and law-enforcement agencies.
DARPA, US Army and Rockwell Collins Video of Damage Tolerance Control Testing on Shadow
Rockwell Collins has just made this video available of the October 2010 test flight of an AAI RQ-7B Shadow equipped with its damage-tolerant flight control system. Under the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Damage Tolerance programme, 20 inches of the Shadow’s wing was blown off in flight. The autonomous control system automatically recovered the aircraft to controlled flight, adjusted the autopilot gains to compensate for the loss of an aileron, and landed the aircraft safely.