By Tony Capaccio Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) — The sale of as many as four Northrop Grumman Corp. Global Hawk drones to help improve South Korea’s reconnaissance capability may have stalled. The delay, combined with a potential reduction in U-2 surveillance flights over and near North Korea, might degrade U.S. and South Korea ability to monitor events in the communist...
The Lockheed Martin K-MAX has been flown by the US Marine Corp “out to one of the forward operating bases without a load,” Lockheed Martin’s Jeffrey Brown tells Aviation Week. “These flights were test flights in preparation for sustained operations.” Adm. Bill Shannon, program executive officer for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, approved Lockheed Martin/Kaman’s K-MAX unmanned helicopter for a...
From BFBS The Ministry of Defence has signed a new £40 million contract with BAE Systems to ensure the UK retains a leading edge in the next generation of combat air systems. The four-year Future Combat Air System (FCAS) Focused Research contract aims to sustain and develop the UK’s critical technology and skills in this field. It will inform...
On 15 December, Claude-France Arnould, EDA Chief Executive, and Magali Vaissière, ESA Director for Telecommunication and Integrated Applications, signed an Arrangement on a demonstration project for an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)-based mission. It represents the first jointly funded activity since the entry into force of the Administrative Arrangement between EDA and ESA on 20 June 2011. The project with a value...
Research was presented to this month’s Autralasian Conference on Robotics and Automation in Melbourne by Richard Moore of The Vision Centre and the University of Queensland. He says small and easy-to-maneuver unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or pilot-less aircraft can be used for a range of purposes. These include crop dusting, tracking whales, monitoring bushfires, as well as border surveillance...
Just as privacy concerns are raised by ACLU and others over drone use in the USA, Quorum Court in Arkansas has approved the use of aerial imagery to collect data on property sizes. Not at the moment from UAS but it does not take much of an imagination to realise they could be used for this service. Looking at...
Swedish UAV manufacturer CybAero AB, listed on NASDAQ OMX First North in Stockholm, in collaboration with the Norwegian Coast Guard and Coastal Agency, has conducted a series of flights with its unmanned helicopter, the APID 60, in winds up to gale force. The flights took place over the Arctic Ocean, near the Norwegian village of Vardø, on behalf of...
By Jeff Schrock, Randolph, Tucker and Upshur County Reporter CLARKSBURG - An unidentified object traveled through several counties in our area, and if you did a double take you weren’t alone. An unmanned military aerial drone passed through North Central West Virginia Sunday morning. The cargo left California two weeks ago and is heading to Washington, D.C. The West Virginia State...
HUNT VALLEY, Md., Dec 19, 2011 AAI Logistics & Technical Services, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. TXT +0.11% company, announced today that it has earned the highly selective Sweden Armed Forces Technical School maintenance training provider certification. It is the first unmanned aircraft system (UAS) training provider to have earned this designation, and only the sixth altogether; other...
Melbourne, Australia – 19 December 2011 – Under the Defence Capability Plan Joint Project (JP) 129 Phase 2, the Australian Army is acquiring two complete Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) systems. Sentient announced today that its automated target detection solution – Kestrel Land MTI – will actively support the TUAV systems in their surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition missions. Operated by...
sUAS News recently received a copy of a letter (posted as part of this article) that essentially lays out a litany of process grievances that spans a six year plus timeline. The letter serves to highlight issues that appear to conflict with the public’s best interest and defense contractors “standard stuffing” the process, a condition pandemic in the global UAS...
Huntsville, AL (October 18, 2011) – The AEgis Technologies Group is now the largest provider of 3D visualization and embedded training devices for unmanned systems. More than 2,700 licenses have been purchased for Vampire™ (Visualization and Mission Planning Integrated Rehearsal Environment) embedded training software for Raven, Wasp and Puma AE small unmanned air vehicles. AEgis is delivering licenses to...
Riverine Squadron (RIVRON) 3 Detachment (Det.) 1 launched an Aqua Puma All Environment (AE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) from the weather deck of USS Oak Hill (LSD 51) in support of Amphibious – Southern Partnership Station 2012. The Aqua Puma is a hand-launched, high-wing monoplane with an electrically driven pusher propeller capable of water landings. It can fly for...
BY JACK BARNES, Global Macro Trends Specialist, Money Morning If you don’t know about AeroVironment Inc. (NASDAQ: AVAV), it’s a name you need to follow. My fascination with the founder of AeroVironment, which designs, develops, produces, and supports aircraft and energy systems, started when I was 12 years old. History was made that year when a man-powered aircraft flew across the English Channel for...
From Stratfor This week, the media spotlight fell on the small island nation of Seychelles, a former French and British colonial possession off the east coast of Africa. On Monday, China’s ministry of national defence announced that Beijing was considering using the port on the main island of Mahe for naval purposes, in response to an offer from Seychelles....
TEHRAN – Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Saturday that Iran is in the process of manufacturing new assault unmanned aerial vehicles. Vahidi made the remarks less than two weeks after Iran announced that its armed forces had downed a U.S. spy drone, named the RQ-170 Sentinel, which had penetrated 250 kilometers into Iran’s airspace. The defense minister also pointed...
Adam Townsend from the Sam Clementine Patch reports Just this week, 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 center. Armed with the latest design technology and poised to increase its manufacturing capacity by at least 600 percent, the firm plans to double its workforce...
NEW YORK – A report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union finds that protections must be put in place to guard Americans’ privacy from surveillance by unmanned aerial drones. Next month the Federal Aviation Administration is expected to propose new rules to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to gain permission to use drones in the...
MANASSAS, VA 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) program will demonstrate the ability of an SUAS platform to perform missions typical to...
I expect we will be seeing lots more about this story. Just what have the Customs Predators been upto? From the Grand Forks Herald GRAND FORKS — The revelation that the Grand Forks SWAT Team not only used an unmanned aerial vehicle to make recent arrests, but also has used the aircraft in the past to perform similar reconnaissance...
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Cassidian on behalf of EADS Deutschland GmbH and Alenia Aeronautica to jointly investigate the potential cooperation in the field of Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV). Alenia and Cassidian are aiming to strengthen their technological know-how in order to establish a leading role in the...
Russia today reports another instance of sUAS being used for journalism. As the Murdoch owned Daily Drone based in the USA has discovered its not all that legal. Recently a citizen mapping group took aerial images of an occupy protest from kites. Perhaps bringing this aerial observation technique onto regulators radar. Would you believe it as I pressed send...
New Market Dynamic to Shift Procurement Methods and Require Militaries to “Do More With Less” CAMBRIDGE, MA, NSR’s annual review of the government and military satellite market shows the industry stands to continue revenue gains until 2020 but will need to provide higher level solutions for less cost, and via a host of new procurement methods. The shaky global...
Its off the blocks, but not and you must excuse the pun to a flying start. The United States Airforce has ordered just one example of the General Atomics Predator C, Avenger for use in Afghanistan. “This aircraft will be used as a test asset and will provide a significantly increased weapons and sensors payload capacity on an aircraft that...
Well the cat is out the bag, the US Police can call in Grand Forks Predators if they need help. The Daily Mail from the UK reports Meet the Brossarts, a North Dakota family deemed so dangerous that the local sheriff needed unleashed an unmanned Predator drone to help bring them in. The Brossart’s alleged crime? They wouldn’t...
From Press TV the worlds most objective news source. Iran plans to carry out reverse engineering on an American spy drone downed by the Iranian military and mass-produce aircraft that can outmaneuver US unmanned aerial vehicles, an Iranian lawmaker says. Iran will carry out reverse engineering on the captured RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft at the next step, member of...
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — MBDA Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of European missile manufacturer MBDA, has purchased Northrop Grumman’s Viper Strike munitions business in Huntsville, and the company plans to grow further here. “We’re been fortunate to find this opportunity, and extremely fortunate it’s in Huntsville,” said Jerry Agee, the chair, CEO and president of MBDA Inc., after a ribbon-cutting ceremony...
