an independent online news service for the Unmanned Aircraft Systems world
African peacekeepers fighting al-Qaida’s allies in Somalia are about to get their first UAS, courtesy of the Pentagon. Under a proposed $45 million counter-terrorism package, Uganda and Burundi, two major contributors to the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia will get four small unarmed Raven UAS. Continue reading
Northrop Grumman and Cassidian have confirmed that the Euro Hawk test-bed, the German version of the RQ-4 Global Hawk, will fly to Germany for payload integration and testing.
The UAE was seeking armed Predators from the US in 2004, secret US diplomatic cables revealed. Although UAE officials claimed they needed them “to control [the UAE`s] long land and maritime borders”, it is not altogether clear from the cables and can only be speculated why the Emirati authorities needed armed unmanned aircraft and who the real target for such long-range weapons systems might be.
An International Security Assistance Force remotely piloted aircraft crashed in eastern Afghanistan yesterday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using its Predator B unmanned aircraft system to provide streaming video of the flood zones along the Mississippi River. Continue reading
Scheibel’s Camcopter S-100 recently performed high-voltage power line monitoring flights for several days in Austria. At an average airspeed of 30 knots (55 km/h) also the poles, surge arresters and isolators were inspected.
It seems that the locals do not share the official view about the developments at ParcAberporth, as this reader’s letter to the local newspaper suggests: “Reports about the CAA allowing ACP to enable UAS to fly over a large swathe of Wales cannot pass without comment.
Boeing has received a $480,000 study contract from the U.S. Navy to support pre-Milestone A activities including development of a concept of operations, an analysis of alternatives, and an investigation of potential material solutions for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) programme.