Applications & Testing & Experience
Aurora Flight Sciences was awarded a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Rapid Reaction Technology Office (RRTO) to provide a specialized Skate Small Unmanned Aerial System (SUAS), designed for autonomous operations in urban environments. The "Urban Beat Cop" (UBC) programme will demonstrate the ability
Payloads
Sentient announced that its automated target detection solution – Kestrel Land MTI – will actively support the two complete Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) systems that the Australian Army is acquiring under the Defence Capability Plan Joint Project (JP) 129 Phase 2, in their surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition missions. Operated by
Business News
Swift Engineering, a high-tech race car and aerospace firm off Avenida La Pata in San Clemente's commercial district, broke ground on a new 15,000-square-foot, $3-million manufacturing centre. Armed with the latest design technology and poised to increase its manufacturing capacity by at least 600 percent, the firm
News
US Air Forces Central Command just posted this video taken from a MQ-1 Predator of the last convoys crossing the border out of Iraq December 17, 2011, at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. US Air Forces Central Command provided more than 14 Air Force and US Navy aircraft
Military UAS
The US military’s deployment of MQ-9 Reaper UAS to the Seychelles, a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean, generated $3.1 million in revenue for local businesses during their first four months of operations, according to an unclassified US diplomatic cable buried in the database of State Department cables
Aircraft Propulsion & Energy
L2 Aerospace’s Instant Eyes is a 9-inch UAS, can be set up and launched in about 20 seconds, reaching up to 2,500 feet high. When it hits its target altitude, it deploys a sensor platform with a parachute, which takes five-megapixel images of the ground below and transmits
Accident Reporting
Iran plans to put foreign UAS it has in its possession on display in the near future, according to an informed source close to the Tehran Times. National reporters and foreign ambassadors based in Tehran will be allowed to visit the exhibition. The latest domestically manufactured electronic warfare equipment will
News
Russia’s Ridus News Agency recently published an impressive series of hexacopter aerial shots of the demonstrations in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on December 10th. Onlookers may have thought it was the police monitoring the security situation on the scene of mass protests, but in fact the UAS camera was
Accident Reporting
Last week a three-foot model airplane crashed into a federal building in Waltham, Massachusetts. Federal investigators from DHS and the FBI promptly began investigating the incident, but so far no evidence exists to suggest any foul play. Special Agent Greg Comcowich, a spokesman for the FBI, said, “The Department of
Research
Research presented to this month's Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation in Melbourne by Richard Moore of The Vision Centre and the University of Queensland shows that small UAS can use insect-like visual navigation for navigation. Navigation using a compass to tell direction is not precise enough, says
Regulatory Matters
The US Army has decided to shut down its first-ever effort to fly unmanned aircraft using just ground-based radar because the endeavor was taking up needed resources without providing enough benefits, according to an official leading the programme. The flights at El Mirage flight operations facility in California -- the
Accident Reporting
A day after the announcement of the downing of a RQ-170 in Iran, the Public Intelligence website received an FOUO report entitled "Operating Next-Generation Remotely Piloted Aircraft for Irregular Warfare" published in April 2011 by the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. One of the many issues that