Australia Releases 2019 Airbus Zephyr Crash Report

In 2019 an Airbus Zephyr high-altitude UAV broke up in-flight after encountering unstable atmospheric conditions which resulted in a series of un-commanded rolls and an uncontrolled spiral descent over remote northern Western Australia, according to a new Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report. Continue reading →

Matternet Partners with Japan Airlines

Matternet announced that it is expanding operations to Asia through a new business partnership with Japan Airlines (JAL). The partnership is to deploy the Matternet M2 drone system in Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s new “drone logistics business development project”, and utilize the system to assess drone delivery opportunities in Japan. Continue reading →

Vertical Aerospace Gets £2.3M Government Funding for Smart Charger

Vertical Aerospace has received investment from the UK Government, through the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) Programme, to fund the development of a smart charger for their electric aircraft. The charger will increase Vertical’s in-flight performance and safety for their recently unveiled passenger model, VA-1X. Continue reading →

Northrop Grumman Gets $9M US Navy Triton Retrofit Contract

US Navy MQ-4C Triton taxis at Andersen Air Force Base on April 29, 2020

Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., San Diego, California, is awarded a $9,018,804 firm-fixed-price modification (P00023) to previously awarded fixed-price-incentive-successive-target contract N00019-17-C-0018. Continue reading →

Schiebel and Nordic Unmanned Monitor Sulphur Emissions in World’s Busiest Shipping Lane

Schiebel, together with partners Nordic Unmanned and the NORCE Research Institute AS, is operating the CAMCOPTER S-100 to monitor sulphur emission in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in the strait of Pas-de-Calais, for the French Maritime Authorities. The operation started on 23 September and will run for three months. Continue reading →

JARUS: Where are you? – The Silence is Deafening

The Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS), an international working group bringing together the representatives of 61 national aviation authorities (NAAs) & EASA, has done a lot of good work and supplied the international drone community with a significant number of highly valued guidance documents.

However, since its last Plenary Meeting in Chengdu, China in October 2019, nothing has been heard from JARUS.

Continue reading →