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While combat drones are not allowed in the U.S. airspace without a special certificate from the FAA, the military is in a fix over the 7, 500 military drones deployed overseas, that need to be recalled home.... After returning home, the robotic aircraft would be stationed in military bases around the nation for use in emergencies... Last week, Congress approved legislation requiring the FAA to create a plan for wide-scale integration of drones in the national airspace by 2015.

Subs, silos, UAVs: Rumors cloud Israel's Iran clout By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Asked about the profusion of foreign reports that their armed forces could soon attack Iran, Israeli officials tend to smile and shrug enigmatically, seemingly content to let such guesswork simmer. The diplomatic dumbshow, which preserves military secrecy while keeping war-wary world powers negotiating for a halt to Tehran's nuclear programme, also conceals genuine bemusement in Israel at some of the assumptions abroad about its capabilities. "This is speculation which is not entirely connected to reality," Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, a former top Israeli general, said...

'Israeli drone spying on Turkey almost shot down' Turkish media outlet claims fighter jets called up to intercept unmanned aerial vehicle circling over missile batteries, radar equipment An Israeli drone flying over Turkey was nearly intercepted by Turkish aerial defense forces, an Istanbul-based media outlet reported on Tuesday. Two F-16 fighter jets were called-up to the area, but failed to locate the drone. "The Israeli 'Heron' drone was detected spying on military headquarters in Turkey's southern Hatay province," the report stated, adding that "the aircraft hovered over the Turkish forces in order to capture images of missile batteries and radar...

Afghan officials say an American reconnaissance drone has crashed in Afghanistan's southeastern province of Paktia, Press TV reports. A Tuesday statement released by NATO confirmed the incident but claimed that the unmanned aircraft made an emergency landing “due to technical malfunction.” According to locals, US-led forces have cordoned off the site of the incident. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also claimed that members of the militant group shot down the drone in the Ahmadabad district of the province. The Taliban say they have shot down several aircraft and NATO choppers in different parts of Afghanistan over the past few months. Activities...

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian military official told the Monitor, calling the downing an "electronic ambush" of secret drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," he added. The engineer added that the Iranians were able to make the drone land "on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center."

TEHRAN, IRAN –  Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces, state TV reported Monday. Tehran has flaunted the drone's capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle. Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, who is on the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for the "invasion" by the unmanned aircraft.

Iran will reverse-engineer the US drone it captured on December 4, Iran's Press TV quoted a senior Iranian official as saying Sunday. Parviz Sorouri, member of the Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, said that his country will "mass produce" the drones in the near future. He also said that the Iranian version would be "of higher quality" than the original RQ-170 Sentinel, according to the Press TV report.

The aircraft shown on Iranian television today likely was not the American stealth drone that crashed in Iran last week, as the Iranian government claimed, but was likely just a model, U.S. officials told ABC News. Today U.S. officials said the drone did not land intact.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington— The radar-evading drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior U.S. official, raising fears that the aircraft's sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals. It was unclear whether the drone's mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said. Though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's military said on Sunday it had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran, a military source told state television. "Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying.

Azerbaijan is expected to acquire 60 small Israeli-designed unmanned aerial vehicles built under license in the oil-rich former Soviet republic that's moving closer to the Jewish state as the Baku government modernizes its military. The burgeoning military and intelligence alliance between the countries is causing growing concern in Iran, Azerbaijan's southern neighbor, and in nearby longtime rival Armenia. The Israeli Aerostar and Orbiter 2M UAVs are being manufactured by Baku's Azad Systems Co., a joint venture between Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry and Aeronautics Defense Systems of Israel.

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp. The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned...

Egypt eyes to buy Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles Monday, September 19, 2011 İPEK YEZDANİ - ipek.yezdani@hurriyet.com.tr ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News According to an executive at Turkish Aerospace Industries, the new Egyptian government is interested in buying Turkey-made unmanned planes. Some Middle East countries prefer Turkey rather than Israel or the US, defense experts say. Turkey will also sell six multi-role tactical platform naval vessels to the North African country Egypt is interested in buying made-in-Turkey unmanned aerial vehicles called Anka from a Turkish defense company, the Hürriyet Daily News has learned. Egyptian and Turkish authorities talked about a possible...

Israel, Germany jointly develop UAV arms system By YAAKOV KATZ 07/09/2011 Loitering weapons system combines drones developed by both nations. A rare look into Israel’s unmanned weapons capabilities was revealed on Tuesday with an announcement by Germany’s Rheinmetall that it had jointly developed with Israel a loitering weapons system based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The system, called WABEP, which in German stands for “Weapons system for standoff engagement of individual and point targets,” was developed by Rheinmetall together with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a world leader in the development of UAVs and loitering weapons. The WABEP is a...

Engineers at the University of Southampton have designed and flown the world’s first ‘printed’ aircraft, which could revolutionise the economics of aircraft design. The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed, including wings, integral control surfaces and access hatches. It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer. No fasteners were used and all equipment was attached using ‘snap fit’ techniques so that the entire aircraft can be put together without tools...

After five years behind locked doors, researchers at Lockheed Martin's Intelligent Robotics Laboratories in New Jersey have emerged with a working prototype of the "Samarai," a tiny DARPA-commissioned surveillance drone. The nano air vehicles (NAVs), modeled after falling Maple leaf seeds, are designed to be super light weight and agile for vertical lift off, hovering, and navigation in tight spaces. Like your favorite $5 Subway sammie, these surveillance bots are a foot long, but instead of being shoveled in your mouth, they're thrown like boomerangs into flight and controlled using a tablet app or a basic remote. These eyes in...

First Russian strike UAV to be showcased at Moscow air show Lutch, Russia's first unmanned air vehicle (UAV) designed to carry out air strikes, will be shown at the Moscow air show next week, according to its producer, Vega. "Vega will show a full-scale mock-up of the Lutch medium-range UAV at MAKS 2011," a Vega representative said. "Lutch is designed for optical reconnaissance, radar, radio-relay and electronic reconnaissance missions," he added. Lutch can also carry guided weapons on fuselage pylons or in a fuselage weapons bay. "Up to 150-170 kilograms of ammunition and weapons control systems can be carried," Vega...

Wireless drone sniffs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, phone signals By: Declan McCullagh August 4, 2011 11:19 AM PDT LAS VEGAS--Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it's war flying. A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas. "Nobody's really looking at this from a threat perspective," said Mike Tassey, a security consultant who works for the U.S. government intelligence community. "There's some pretty evil stuff you can do from...

The promise of 3D printing has finally taken off with the development of a drone that takes just a week to createUnder darkening skies on a grass airstrip in the UK's Wiltshire Downs, north of Stonehenge, I am watching half a dozen aeronautical engineers rushing to assemble an uncrewed aircraft before the weather takes a turn for the worse. They are hoping to show how 3D printing will revolutionise the economics of aircraft design – by flying the world's first fully "printed" plane. Led by Andy Keane and Jim Scanlan of the University of Southampton, the team believes that 3D...

After more than 40 years, France has ended its ban on weapons trade with Israel. Paris has decided to purchase the Heron TP (Eitan) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from Israel Aerospace Industries. With a wingspan just about as wide as a Boeing 737 (26 meters), the Eitan flies up to an altitude of 40,000 feet and can remain airborne for up to 36 hours. The drone is able to carry a wide variety of equipment with which to conduct its reconnaissance missions due to its size – possibly even missiles. The Eitan went into service in Israel approximately 18 months...

Chinese firms developing armed drones; eyes Pakistan for sales WASHINGTON: China has ramped up its research in drone technology and is in the process of building armed, jet-propelled unmanned planes, which it plans to sell to countries like Pakistan. Though much of this work remains secret, the large number of drones at recent exhibitions underlines not only China's determination to catch up in that sector -- by building equivalents to the leading US combat and surveillance models, the Predator and the Global Hawk -- but also that its desire to sell this technology abroad, a media report has said. "No...

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

At the most recent Zhuhai air show, the premier event for China’s aviation industry, crowds swarmed around a model of an armed, jet-propelled drone and marveled at the accompanying display of its purported martial prowess. In a video and map, the thin, sleek drone locates what appears to be a U.S. aircraft carrier group near an island with a striking resemblance to Taiwan and sends targeting information back to shore, triggering a devastating barrage of cruise missiles toward the formation of ships. Little is known about the actual abilities of the WJ-600 drone or the more than two dozen other...

PICTURE: China's Global Hawk counterpart breaks cover By Greg Waldron China appears ready to reveal another of its developmental military aircraft, with new images having emerged showing what appears to be a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle. Posted on the China Defense Mashup website, the aircraft was photographed at Chengdu airfield, where the J-20 stealth fighter also emerged late last year, shortly before making its surprise flight debut from the site in January. China Defense Mashup speculates that the newly-spotted vehicle is the Xianglong: an intended counterpart to the USA’s Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk.

Click the following link to see the video Stalking Sphere

Suspected US Drone Strikes Kill 18 in Pakistan Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 4:00 pm UTC Posted 13 minutes ago Pakistani intelligence officials say three U.S. drone strikes have killed at least 18 militants in the country's northwest tribal region. All of Monday's strikes were in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. Officials say missiles hit a compound, an Islamic seminary and a vehicle near the main town of Wana. Foreign militants, including Arabs and Uzbeks, were said to be among those killed. The attacks come just days after the reported death of senior al-Qaida operative Ilyas Kashmiri in a...

US drones fired a salvo of missiles into a compound in Pakistan's tribal district of North Waziristan on Friday, killing eight suspected militants, local security officials said. The attack came just four days after US commandos shot dead Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's garrison city of Abbottabad, hundreds of kilometres from the tribal belt and just two hours' drive from the capital. "A compound and a vehicle were targeted by US drones in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan killing eight militants," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Eight missiles were fired on the...

Additional test flights to take place of the next few weeks Boeing first unveiled a near-complete version of its Phantom Ray unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) nearly a year ago. This week, the company announced that its Phantom Ray has completed its first flight. > "Autonomous, fighter-sized unmanned aircraft are real," said Phantom Ray program manager Craig Brown. "The UAS bar has been raised. Now I’m eager to see how high that bar will go."

A US drone attacked a Saudi Al-Qaeda leader in southern Yemen on Thursday, but missed and killed two local Al-Qaeda members, a security source and witnesses told AFP. The drone had targeted the Saudi as he drove to the home of local Al-Qaeda men, the security source said, asking not to be identified. When the two local Qaeda men rushed out in their own car, they were hit and killed by the drone. The security source did not specify that the unmanned aircraft was American and there was no official word from the Yemeni authorities on who carried out the...

Mystery plane kills two in Sudan air raid Posted 4 hours 53 minutes ago An air strike on a car on Sudan's Red Sea coast killed its two passengers and destroyed the vehicle, the head of the state assembly said. "A plane bombed a small car which was coming from Port Sudan airport to the town... There were two people in the car and both were killed. The vehicle was completely destroyed," Mohammed Tahir said. The unidentified plane, which struck about 10:00pm (local time), flew in from the Red Sea to which it then returned, Mr Tahir added. There was...

We've built a flying saucer, boasts Iran (even if it does look like it belongs in a 1950s B-movie) By Michael Theodoulou Last updated at 1:36 AM on 18th March 2011 It's not clear how far or how high it can fly – or even how big it is and what makes it take off. But an aircraft created by scientists in Iran is, they claim, the world’s first flying saucer. Called the Zohal - or Saturn in English - it said the unmanned spaceship is designed for 'aerial imaging' but added it can be used for 'various missions'. The...

MIRAMSHAH: A US drone strike on Thursday killed at least 22 militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region, DawnNews reported. There were conflicting accounts about the target of the attack in the Dattakhel region of North Waziristan. The area is a stronghold of Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander who harbours and sends militants across the border to fight western forces in Afghanistan. One official said the missiles targeted a house as elders loyal to Bahadur were trying to mediate between two warring militant groups inside. Another official said the drone attacked a vehicle in the area that was passing...

Freeper Rotorcraft Pilots...Kaman has been working on an UAV version of the KMax and their is a fire / water delivery version of it. Can American ingenuity combine the 2 and get a few to Japan to help cool the Reactors ASAP?Do we as a Nation "Still Have it"?I look forard to your responses....

BAE Systems signs up for UK-French drone BAE Systems has signed an agreement with French defence company Dassault to build a self-piloting drone which will be used by both countries' air forces, as part of the Government's plan to cut defence costs by purchasing more kit with other nations. By Amy Wilson The memorandum of understanding between BAE and Dassault, builder of the Rafale fighter jet, will see the two companies fund a development programme. They hope that will lead to an order from the two governments within the year, to build a demonstrator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with the...

South Korea To Buy Global Hawk Mar 11, 2011 By Robert Wall, Amy Butler The U.S. and South Korea have reached a handshake agreement for the sale of the Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft, according to program sources. The sale, which could take place as soon as this year, will include four of the high-flying UAVs. Though the Global Hawk is designed to carry a variety of payloads, including imagery sensors, radars and signals intelligence collectors, South Korea has been approved for the Block 30I version, which includes an electro-optical/infrared system. Seoul eventually would like a signals intelligence capability; but...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – An Iraqi al-Qaida operative was believed to be one of 15 militants killed in two U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The officials said the man, identified as Abu Zaid al-Iraqi, handled the terrorist group's finances in Pakistan. He was not known to be on any published U.S. lists of wanted al-Qaida leaders, and U.S. officials do not normally acknowledge the existence of the CIA-led missile program or talk about who is being killed. The two strikes, coming roughly 24 hours apart, were the first...

The U.S. Navy is building on the successful first flight of the stealthy, tailless Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator as a pivotal step toward the long-held goal of marrying persistent, autonomous unmanned intelligence and strike aircraft with the reach of its fleet of aircraft carriers. “We’re celebrating the centennial of Naval aviation, and if we fast-forward 100 years, then we’ve added three words—unmanned, autonomous and LO [low-observable] relevant,” says Capt. Jaime Engdahl, the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) project director. The X-47B flight-test program, which began with a 29-min. flight at Edwards AFB, Calif., on Feb. 4 will answer questions...

Call it China’s ‘Christmas surprise.’ In a series of grainy photos given a pass by government Internet censors starting December 25, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force unveiled the country’s first stealth fighter prototype, the Chengdu J-20. For alarmists, the Pacific balance of power seemed to shift in an instant. Armed with hundreds of fast, elusive J-20s in coming years, the PLAAF could dominate the South China Sea, reaffirming China’s rise as a global power and elbowing aside less audacious, tech-savvy rivals. ‘(The) Asia-Pacific’s political landscape will be changed as China’s military capability can win over countries in this region,’...

A suspected U.S. drone apparently crashed in Yemen, was recovered by local police and then stolen by al Qaida, according to AFP. The plane was an MQ-1 Predator being used to support ongoing special operations missions against terrorists there. U.S. special ops troops have been in the country for quite some time, helping to train local security forces in fighting al Qaeda. Yes, drones crash quite frequently in combat zones for a variety of reasons. What’s interesting here is the Yemeni government’s inability to secure the wreckage, even when it can get its hands on it. The drone crashed in...

Northrop Grumman Corporation will field the first systems in the upgraded RC-12X Guardrail fleet, providing the U.S. Army with unparalleled signals intelligence (SIGINT) capability, under a recent task order awarded by the U.S. Army. This is a critical step toward making this mission-critical capability operational, scheduled for second quarter of this year. The RC-12X Guardrail is the Army's premier airborne SIGINT sensor and ground processing system, providing instantaneous precision geo-location and identification of threats to enable the Brigade Combat Team's Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze and Disseminate (F3EAD) battle command process. The RC-12X Guardrail Modernization program extends the life of...

Newly-leaked diplomatic cables provide evidence that Boeing partnered with a Brazilian company to work on a previously undisclosed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) project. The dispatch from the US embassy in Brasilia dated 15 January 2009 came during the most intense period in the competition for the F-X2 fighter contract, which involved the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. On 13 January 2009, US Ambassador Clifford Sobel met with Nelson Jobim, then Brazil's minister of defence, to discuss Boeing's position in the competition, the cable says. The issue of technology transfer prompted Nelson to praise Boeing's work with an undisclosed Brazilian company.

Northrop Grumman’s X-47B unmanned combat air system (UCAS-D) demonstrator successfully completed its long-delayed first flight at Edwards AFB, Calif on Feb 4. The stealthy, single-engine UCAS took off early in the afternoon Pacific time and landed some 29 mins later, having achieved an altitude of 5,000-ft. Aimed at gathering air vehicle management system data, the first flight also marks the start of a roughly 50-flight, year-long Block 1 envelope expansion test campaign at Edwards AFB. Initial flight rate is expected to be once per week, rising to twice a week later in 2011. Northrop and U.S. Navy officials passed the...

The Defense Department has awarded $148.2 million to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of Poway to provide 24 of its MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles to the U.S. Air Force. The delivery date was not announced. The Reaper, which was earlier known as Predator B, is a medium-to-high altitude UAV that is widely used for reconnaissance and surveillance. But it also can be outfitted with many types of weapons, including Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and the Paveway II, a laser-guided bomb. GAAS has more than 3,200 employees in San Diego County, more than half of whom work on UAV programs.

Though most experts hold a grim outlook for the Pentagon's budget, the unmanned aerial vehicle community remains in a positive mindset - at least about funding. Unmanned systems are competing well with other varied defence interests, says Dyke Weatherington, deputy director for the Pentagon's unmanned aircraft systems at the Association for Unmanned Vechicle Systems International's (AUVSI) 2011 Unmanned Systems Program Review 2 February in Washington DC. But UAVs face other challenges in securing their permanent position in defence arsenals, Weatherington and a panel on the future of unmanned air programmes say, particularly perception problems. As UAVs go up against large...

All of a sudden it was there, but then like any good stealth aircraft it vanished. Now the “Beast of Kandahar” has resurfaced in new photos, spurring aviation and defense wonks to once again speculate about the function and purpose of such a stealthy-looking unmanned aerial system. The Beast, also known as the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, first appeared in 2009 in the skies over Kandahar in Afghanistan. It was later revealed to be a product of Lockheed’s Skunk Works and property of the U.S. Air Force, but that’s about all that was revealed. What the RQ-170 is designed to...

The Air Force says three of the problems with its Gorgon Stare UAV camera system, according to DoDBuzz. Apparently, reports that the system suffered from numerous problems “was a draft memo that was later revised in January,” Buzz cites an Air Force spokesman as saying. The problems identified by Pentagon weapon testers are not likely to delay the fielding of the system, according to the service. Still, the project won’t be fielded until commanders downrange accept that it will work as promised: “The January memo includes three issues that we have identified and have fixes in place. The first was...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — A series of unmanned US drone strikes in a lawless district of Pakistan on Sunday killed at least 13 militants, officials said, as tribesmen took to the streets to protest the aerial campaign. The first two attacks took place in Datta Khel, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of North Waziristan's main town of Miranshah. The third was in Mando Khel, around 60 kilometres south of the town. In the first strike two missiles were fired on a vehicle seconds after it stopped outside a house in Datta Khel, officials said. "The US drone hit a car...

.K. military officials are preparing plans to bridge capability gaps that have emerged out of last year’s Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) even as they brace for further cuts to plug remaining funding shortfalls. On the agenda for a Jan. 25 meeting are issues such as how to transition carrier strike capability in the absence of a fully operational aircraft carrier, and whether the planned Scavenger medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft program can take on missions associated with the canceled Nimrod MRA4 maritime patrol aircraft and R1 Sentinel. The latter is due to be withdrawn from service once Afghanistan operations...

U.S. denies Turkey's request for combat UAVs ANKARA — The United States has banned a range of advanced weapons for export to Turkey. Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama has rejected a Turkish request for combat unmanned aerial vehicles as well as advanced munitions. They said the administration's decision came after consultations with Congress late last year. "There has been deep suspicion of Turkey in the United States, especially by Congress," an official said. So far, the Senate has blocked a Turkish request for the MQ-9 Reaper combat UAV by General Atomics. Ankara first relayed the Reaper request...

Pakistan negotiating drone deal with US From the Newspaper (14 hours ago) Today WASHINGTON: Pakistan is still negotiating a deal with the United States to acquire its own fleet of surveillance drones, and hopes to get six systems of the aircraft, diplomatic sources told Dawn. The drone system that the two countries are negotiating about is known as Shadow-200 and is currently used by the US Navy and the Marine Corps. It is launched from a trailer-mounted pneumatic catapult and is recovered with the aid of arresting gear similar to jets on an aircraft carrier. It is equipped with an...