PATUXENT RIVER, Md. | The MQ-8B Fire Scout, the Navy’s only unmanned aircraft to operate on land and at sea, departed Jan. 17 from Mayport, Fla., aboard USS Simpson (FFG 56) for a six-month deployment to western Africa. Personnel from Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Light (HSL) 60 Detachment 4 and Northrop Grumman took Fire Scout on its third at-sea deployment...
A good news drone story for a change. Showing once again just how useful simple platforms can be for aquiring imagery. Every environmental department really ought to have one. A Dallas sUAS enthusiast testing his camera equiped drone noticed something awry with the images he had taken. Speaking to sUAS News he said. I was looking at images after...
Lockheed Martin are moving forward with SURGE-V, The goal of the SURGE-V program will be to develop a hybrid power and propulsion system for UAVs smaller than 20 pounds that enables these aircraft to operate on missions longer than four hours. The aim is to demonstrate such a small UAV propulsion system in an operational environment. Last Friday Lockheed Martin...
Andrew Tridgell talks about Team Canberra UAVs attempt to rescue Outback Joe this year at this years Linux.conf.au After a years gap things will start to hot up now for the OBC. The Ballarat Linux conference also sported a high altitude balloon launch. CanberraUAV will be using the Ardupilot autopilot from DIYdrones and have already added some handy features...
nEUROn, the technology demonstrator for a European UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) was officially presented by Charles Edelstenne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dassault Aviation, to the representatives of the six countries collaborating in the project (France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and Greece). The representatives of the partner countries were able to see the nEUROn for the first...
Rheinmetall and Cassidian have agreed to pursue Rheinmetall’s Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) activities together in a Joint Venture. It was agreed in a contract that Cassidian should hold 51 percent and Rheinmetall 49 percent of the shares in the newly established Joint Venture. The ownership interests are to be assigned to Cassidian by mid-2012 once all the necessary authorisations...
Portland, OR – December 20, 2011 – FLIR Systems (NASDAQ: FLIR) announced the availability of its newest camera in the Tau family, the Tau CNV, a rugged compact and low-power CMOS HD camera for ultra low-light, video rate imaging applications. The Tau CNV color and monochrome cameras deliver near starlight-level imaging and are designed for security, military EO systems, hyperspectral...
MicroSurvey is excited to announce that The Hexagon Group has entered into an agreement to acquire all outstanding shares of MicroSurvey Software Inc., the leading Canadian based developer of surveying and mapping software for the land surveying, construction, and forensic markets. “MicroSurvey has grown very rapidly in the last 2 years and the acquisition by Hexagon gives us the...
Russian Helicopters has received 5 billion rubles ($160 mln) from the federal budget for the development of three types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). After charging that smaller domestic developers wasted public funds – and pointedly purchasing Israeli drones for military trials – the Defense Ministry has switched to a big holding with sufficient capacity to develop and produce indigenous...
Sarah Dasher For the Santa Cruz Valley Sun In the back corner of an engineering building at the University of Arizona, Professor Sergey Shkarayev and his students study the mechanics of flight. At 9 p.m. on a Thursday, students are still gathered there, surrounded by circuit boards, batteries, disembodied wings. The lab even looks like a small airplane hangar-vast...
After over one year of positive research and experimental tests, the UNOSAT team has acquired its first Mini-UAV in late 2011 and placed orders for a second unit in 2012, while a third unit is planned for 2013. Mini-UAV, or “unmanned aerial vehicle”, are very light and easy-to-fly electric planes carrying digital cameras and able to fly for a...
Lockheed Martin may have just fired the starting gun on sUAS autopilot maker acquisitions. Well done the Procerus team! Lockheed Martin is acquiring Procerus Technologies, maker of autopilot, targeting, and payload technologies for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based in Orem, Utah. Procerus customers include domestic and international governments, as well as industry and academic institutions. The company’s Kestrel autopilot system, among the...
UAV Factory would like to present the second generation of the portable ground control station for the unmanned aircraft vehicles. UAV Factory’s off-the-shelf portable Ground Control Station (GCS) is a flexible and universal solution for controlling unmanned vehicles and payloads. By using a unique, modular electronics compartment (MEC), application specific hardware can be quickly installed. This flexibility allows the...
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL, Jan 17, 2012 World Surveillance Group Inc. a developer of lighter-than-air unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs”) and related technologies, announced today that the Company has completed initial demonstrations of its Argus One UAV to the U.S. Department of Defense (“DoD”) at the U.S. Department of Energy Nevada Test Site (“N2S2″). The Argus One flight exercises were sponsored...
Iranian State radio stated on Tuesday that it will send a model of the Beast of Kandahar that dropped into their lap last month. They will also create 70,000 copies of the model to be sold in Iran for around $4 or 70,000 rials. The miniature of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone will be sent to the Obama administration...
Registration is taking place for the event in Eindhoven, take advantage of an early bird discount. € 145 (Deadline: 12 February 2012), register now Unmanned Aircraft Systems are becoming increasingly important for non-military applications such as aerial photography, GEO-information, agricultural remote sensing and application, pipeline and power line surveillance, fisheries and wildlife monitoring, fire-fighting, weather and climate studies, security, law...
Thales and Aerovisión have given a real flight demonstration of the UAV Fulmar (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for the European Agency Frontex, the organism in charge of coordinating the border control operations of the European Union member states. Fulmar is a wholly Spanish project that is a global solution that uses the Maritime Surveillance Systems of ThalesGroup. These systems supply...
CLMax Engineering and Procerus Technologies (www.procerus.com) have worked together to integrate Procerus’ closed loop vision-based terminal guidance technologies, OnPoint Onboard (TM), into the Piranha Micro Air Vehicle. The combined system provides users a method to rapidly deploy and precisely deliver lethal and non lethal payloads within one meter of a selected target. Successful engagements have been completed in high...
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Department has purchased a small drone aircraft for $14,000 to use in investigations and in search and rescue operations. Sheriff’s officers demonstrated the 4-foot-long, 9-pound vehicle Friday. The plane can stay airborne for an hour, fly at an altitude of 400 feet and send video and infrared images to ground controllers. “If we get the...
Probably by this summer, the Army will be floating a new idea past the troops for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Not a program of record, but something the Army expects to test in Afghanistan this summer, the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle. It’s a hybrid air vehicle — like a blimp — that can carry multiple ISR payloads for more...
CHELMSFORD, Mass., 13 Jan. 2012. The Mercury Federal Systems subsidiary of Mercury Computer Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:MRCY), a provider of commercially developed, application-ready intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) subsystems, provided its onboard real-time image processing and storage subsystems to the Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) for the U.S. Air Force’s Gorgon Stare (GS) persistent surveillance system, currently deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom. The Air Force’s Gorgon...
Beginning to be posted left right and centre with Information Week leading the charge. It was well known that XP was the OS of choice. U.S. Air Force switched drones’ ground control operating system after a credential-grabbing malware outbreak. Security expert thinks it’s more than coincidence. By Mathew J. Schwartz InformationWeek January 12, 2012 02:59 PM Did a Windows virus outbreak...
Interesting this, in that Armenia is friendly with both Russia and Iran. In the frames of Armenian Robots Open Championship (ArmRobotics) the Union of Information Technologies Enterprises (UITE) announces registration for the ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’ (UAV) contest. The participants of this contest must design and prepare robots which must recognize the navigation signs and send pictures of the area...
RCAPA cites incongruities in the UAS ARC charter and what is transpiring as part of an alleged “public process”. The charter and membership roster FOIA requested by sUAS News is applicable and of concern to the small business, end-user and academic community stakeholders. This egregious oversight is yet another example of what many in the global airspace integration community...
An Aeryon Scout is assisting Canadian Police officers in a missing man search. Chatham-Kent police will use a drone helicopter today to search for Brandon Sands, a 25-year-old Wallaceburg man missing since Dec. 24. Sands was last seen leaving a house party around 1 a.m. Police say he left after feeling ill and vomitting and was not wearing a...
Using a Grand Forks Predator to help in a civil arrest may have opened up a can of worms for rule makers in the USA. Harley Geiger Policy Counsel from the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote to sUAS News to underline CDT’s position. Some sensible stuff here. As you are aware, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) intends to issue...
This one caused a wry smile from Patrick and I, we have several FOIA’s in and yep they take ages to respond. Government Withholds Information on Drone Flight Authorizations San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), demanding data on certifications and authorizations the agency has issued for the...
