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A United States Reaper drone was forced to make an emergency landing as its GPS signal was jammed while traveling in Polish airspace. The drone landed near the town of Mirosławiec in northwestern Poland on Tuesday, March 19, Knewz.com has learned. Poland’s Command of the Armed Forces announced the emergency landing in a post on X. The agency shared a photo of the MQ-9 Reaper without saying why it made an emergency landing. According to Newsweek, the Pentagon confirmed the emergency landing of the piloted aircraft. The defense agency added that the aircraft was "conducting routine training operations when it...

German frigate Hessen caused a blunder in the Red Sea as it led EU's anti-Houthi mission. The German warship opened fire at American MQ-9 Reaper drone as it spotted it flying in the area. The warship mistook it for being a Houthi drone, however, its missiles failed to reach the drone due to a reported "technical defect." RT News reported that the Reaper drone was flying in the area with its transponder shut off. Watch for more details.

WASHINGTON -- A Russian Su-27 fighter jet intercepted and struck the propeller of a U.S. military MQ-9 "Reaper" surveillance drone on Tuesday, causing it to crash into the Black Sea, in the first such incident since Russia's invasion of Ukraine over a year ago. NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Army General Christopher Cavoli, briefed NATO allies about the incident, which was roundly condemned by the White House and the Pentagon -- which warned of the risk of escalation. Two Russian Su-27 jets carried out what the U.S. military described as a reckless intercept of the American spy drone before...

UPDATES: Western military sources told AFP Tuesday there had been an "incident" involving a US-made Reaper drone flying over the Black Sea, an area of intense NATO military activity close to the Ukraine war frontlines

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- An MQ-9 Reaper drone has bagged its first air-to-air kill of another small, aerial vehicle in a controlled simulation, an official revealed to Military.com this week. The successful test late last year showed the U.S. Air Force that an unmanned vehicle like the MQ-9 has the ability to conduct air-to-air combat, much like its manned fighter brethren such as an F-15 Eagle or F-22 Raptor, according to Col. Julian Cheater, commander of the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. "Something that's unclassified but not well known, we recently in November … launched an air-to-air...

It’s been just over a year since the world witnessed some of the world’s top online Web sites being taken down for much of the day by “Mirai,” a zombie malware strain that enslaved “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as wireless routers, security cameras and digital video recorders for use in large-scale online attacks. Now, experts are sounding the alarm about the emergence of what appears to be a far more powerful strain of IoT attack malware — variously named “Reaper” and “IoTroop” — that spreads via security holes in IoT software and hardware. And there are indications that...

TOULON, France --- France has decided to arm its surveillance drones in West Africa as part of counter-terrorism operations against Islamist militants, Defense Minister Florence Parly said on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron has made fighting Islamist militants his primary foreign policy objective and the move to armed drones fits into a more aggressive policy at a time when it looks increasingly unlikely Paris will be able to withdraw from the region in the medium to long-term. France has six Reapers France currently has five unarmed Reaper reconnaissance drones positioned in Niger's capital Niamey to support its 4,000-strong Barkhane counter-terrorism...

Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Force's newest and most advanced "hunter-killer" drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagon's favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups. The Reaper has been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures that have caused the 21/2-ton drone to lose power and drop from the sky, according to accident-investigation documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator, but have been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise...

President Obama has engaged in “propaganda” encouraging people to “hate the police,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) charged a day after two city police officers were shot and killed in their patrol car by a man who posted anti-police messages to his social media account.

Bamako - A notorious Islamist militia leader known as "Red Beard" has been killed in French missile strikes in north-eastern Mali, a senior Malian army officer told AFP. Omar Ould Hamaha was a commander of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim), armed groups which occupied northern Mali for almost ten months in 2012. "Omar Ould Hamaha, the terrorist of Malian nationality, is one of ten terrorists killed last week by French planes," the officer said late on Thursday. Hamaha's death was confirmed by a regional security source who said...

Rush Limbaugh thinks that in Obama's American "the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering 'yeah, right on, right on, right on.' Of course everybody said the white kid deserved it he was born a racist, he's white." Glenn Beck believes that Obama is a "a guy who has exposed himself, over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture....I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem...This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat, a senior Obama administration official said Saturday. The Libyan national who was the network's former operational leader rose to al-Qaida's No. 2 spot after the U.S. killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistan compound in May. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that al-Qaida's defeat was within reach if the U.S. could mount a string of successful attacks on the group's weakened leadership.

In Syracuse, the new top guns are under cover. Commanders of the Air National Guard crews operating unmanned Reaper drones over Afghanistan from Hancock Field are insisting that pilots not be publicly identified. The policy is an about-face for the 174th Air Wing of the Air National Guard, which once identified its pilots and trumpeted their endeavors. During the 1992 Persian Gulf war, Syracuse-based pilots prominently displayed their names on the fuselages of their F-16 fighter jets. Pilots and family members spoke openly about the pressures, sacrifices and triumphs of deployment. The change of policy reflects what the unit commander...

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. U.S. officials...

The United States is planning to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles in the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to combat piracy. The use of land-based drones is a new approach to deter ship hijackings in the region. The spokesman for the U.S. military's Africa Command, Vince Crawley, says several Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles will be in the Seychelles by late October or November. He says they will be used to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions throughout the Indian Ocean region.

The Reno Gazette Journal has a sit-down with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who addresses the Ted Kennedy question in, um, an interesting way. Q: How will U.S. Sen. (Edward) Kennedy's death affect things? A: I think it's going to help us. He hasn't been around for some time. We're going to have a new chairman of that committee, it'll be, I don't know for sure, but I think Sen. (Chris) Dodd, (D-Conn.). He has a right to take it. Either him or (U.S. Sen. Tom) Harkin, (D-Iowa), whichever one wants it can have it. I think he (Kennedy)...

The next-generation surveillance package for the Air Force's MQ-9 Reaper drones, named for Medusa's stony glare, will provide an unprecedentedly broad view of the battlefield spanning time and space The military’s unblinking eye in the sky, which keeps watch over operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is about to get even beadier. A new multi-camera sensor the U.S. Air Force is adding to its killer spy drones will exponentially broaden the area troops can monitor, and the technology lets a dozen users simultaneously grab different slices of the image. Called the Gorgon Stare, it represents the next big step in...

Reporting from Washington -- The Pentagon is preparing to graduate its first pilots of unmanned drones from the elite U.S. Air Force Weapons School -- a version of the Navy's Top Gun program -- in a bid to elevate the skills and status of the officers who fly Predators, one of the military's fastest growing aircraft programs.... [snip]

The top hierarchy of al-Qaeda has taken such a hit from US missile strikes that Osama bin Laden and his deputy have had to replace people in the terrorist organisation with men they have never met, according to Western intelligence sources. A Predator drone: from as far away as Nevada, in the heart of the US, controllers on the ground are able to strike bases used by the leadership of al-Qaeda in the borderlands of Pakistan. Casualties have been heavy and new leaders are often not well-known A dozen of al-Qaeda’s “senior management” have been killed by Predator drone attacks,...

The RAF has used an unmanned drone to kill a Taliban leader for the first time, the Mail has learned. Two 'pilots', controlling the robot via satellite from an airbase outside Las Vegas, spotted a target thousands of miles away in southern Afghanistan. They ordered the £10million Reaper drone to carry out an airstrike. Sources at the Ministry of Defence said the strike, which took place in the last ten days, killed a 'high value' Taliban target, but officials would not confirm the insurgent's identity. The attack marks a symbolic watershed in Britain's use of military airpower. Many in the...