Japan Airlines intends to lease or purchase up to 50 of Vertical Aerospace’s in-development VA-X4 air taxis from aircraft lessor Avolon. Continue reading
Mesa Air Group Partners with Flirtey on Drone Delivery Business
Mesa Air Group, Inc. has signed an agreement with aerospace technology company Flirtey to order 4 delivery drones, with an option to order an additional 500 aircraft. The agreement marks Mesa becoming the first scheduled airline to launch drone delivery in the U.S. Continue reading
Canada Hospitals Test Drones for Lung Transplant Transport
Unither Bioelectronics has set its sights on transforming the way we think of transplantable organ transportation, either donor organs or manufactured organs. In September 2021, in a proof-of-concept flight, the company transferred donor lungs for transplant between two hospitals using its proprietary aerial drone organ transportation technologies. Continue reading
UK Tests Raytheon’s High-Energy Laser C-UAS Weapon
Raytheon UK has been awarded a demonstrator contract to provide a High-Energy Laser Weapon System, or HELWS, to the UK Ministry of Defence. Raytheon UK will deliver the MOD’s high-energy laser demonstrator to show the application of directed energy weapons technology to help protect the UK armed forces from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in today’s battlefield. Continue reading
Korean Air Partners with Insitu for UAV Development
Park Jung-woo (left), head of Korean Air’s aerospace business division, and senior director at Boeing Randy Rotte
Korean Air Lines Co., South Korea’s biggest carrier, announced that it has partnered with Boeing to jointly develop an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in preparation for future mobility demand. Continue reading
Leonardo’s AWHero Rotary UAS Gets Military Certification in Italy
Leonardo’s AWHero RUAS (Rotary Uncrewed Aerial System) has received basic military certification from Italy’s DAAA (Direzione degli Armamenti Aeronautici e per l’Aeronavigabilità), the Directorate for Air Armaments and Airworthiness. This achievement marks the world’s first military certification for a RUAS in the 200kg class. Continue reading
Unwanted Global Hawks Being Transformed to Support Hypersonic Missile Tests
Northrop Grumman is going to repurpose four ex-U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk drones as Range Hawk surveillance platforms to monitor hypersonic missile tests. Continue reading
Apple Drone Patent Describes UAS in Cellular Networks
In March Patently Apple posted an IP report titled “Apple has Won a Patent relating to Drones, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” and more importantly relating to drones connected to cellular networks. Below is Apple’s patent FIG. 9 from the March patent that illustrates a three-dimensional space for which an optimum scanning angle has been determined for a particular drone location. Continue reading