Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Meet Nixie, a wearable camera concept that flies off your wrist and turns into a remote-controlled quadcopter. It's the bizarre-yet-appealing wearable camera drone nobody asked for... and now I kind of want it. Intel is holding a competition to encourage new wearable technology ideas, and the Nixie is one of the finalists. So far, it's still in development, so the flying wristlet camera is rough around the edges. Team captain Christoph Kohstall eventually wants you to be able to send the the Nixie flying with a gesture. It would recognize where you're standing, snap a picture, then return to the...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — University of Texas Police are investigating the use of a drone over Darrell K. Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night during the Longhorns’ home opener. KXAN’s cameras spotted the drone flying above the stadium. The drone had red and green lights on it. It also had a camera. We weren’t the only ones who spotted it. Police did too. During the second half of the game, officers found the operator of the drone, made him land it and then took the man into custody. The department told KXAN the man was a UT student, and he...

Google has built and tested autonomous aerial vehicles, which it believes could be used for goods deliveries. Google said that its long-term goal was to develop drones that could be used for disaster relief by delivering aid to isolated areas. They could be used after earthquakes, floods, or extreme weather events, the company suggested, to take small items such as medicines or batteries to people in areas that conventional vehicles cannot reach. "Even just a few of these, being able to shuttle nearly continuously could service a very large number of people in an emergency situation," explained Astro Teller, Captain...

US drones fired on an Islamic extremist mortar position in northern Iraq on Tuesday to protect Kurdish forces battling to rescue a group of Yazidi civilian refugees, the military said. The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the region's most powerful Sunni jihadist group, has driven thousands of members of the Yazidi minority from their homes and is besieging the refugees on an exposed mountain. Last week, the United States launched an air campaign to break the siege of Mount Sinjar, bring humanitarian relief to the Yazidis and support Kurdish troops protecting their capital Arbil. "US military...

Updated: August 1, 2014 11:32 AM The striking power and stealth of the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) concept was reduced to protect the role of the service’s next-generation of manned fighters, USNI News has learned. In particular, the change in UCLASS from a deep strike stealthy penetrator into the current lightly armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) focused aircraft was — in large part — to preserve a manned version of the F/A-XX replacement for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, several Navy, Pentagon and industry sources confirmed to USNI News. Industry, Pentagon and Navy...

An enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), apparently laden with explosives, was shot down by the IDF near the port city of Ashdod Monday morning. The interception caused a strong explosion to rock Ashdod and the air raid sirens went off. The Navy is reportedly looking for remains of the UAV. The Air Force conducted a rehearsal in April for an event in which an enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) infiltrates Israeli airspace. Both jet fighter and combat helicopter squadrons took part in the rehearsal, and practiced interception of a UAV near Israel's border, reported the Air Force website. The IAF...

Winners of the 2014 Dronestagram Photo Contest have finally been selected! Picking winners was a very difficult task especially because of the great quality of the photos that have been submitted. We tried to reward the photos that show the best the fantastic potential offered by drones in terms of image. It’s been an amazing first edition with many photos entered from everywhere in the world. Thank you all for joining in.We would like to extend a special thanks to our contest sponsors National Geograpic, Go Pro, Picanova, Droneshop and Parrot for generously offering amazing gifts !Are you one of...

Transcript: Shep Smith: Police in NY arrested two people for flying a drone over the George Washington Bridge not far from a police helicopter. The cops say the drone came within 800 feet of one of the police choppers before the pilot of the drone turned it away to avoid. Jonathan Hunt: One of the cops in this NYPD helicopter noticed some lights approaching just after midnight on Monday...on closer inspection he noticed those lights were actually a drone. Apparently the chopper pilot thought he needed to take evasive action to avoid being struck by that drone. He then followed...

According to a notice released by the United States Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration last Monday, the new regulations now include Amazon drones and even some toy planes. Before Monday's notice, the FAA had distinguished model aircraft from small drones according to their usage: commercial or recreational. Hobbyists were free to use model aircraft as they pleased but with these new rules, even toy quadcopters are considered drones and require users to have special permits to operate them. The Hubsan FPV X4 Mini RTF Quadcopter is targeted towards children but this, and other first-person-view model aircraft, will require a...

The National Park Service on Friday announced it was moving to ban drones on all its lands.. The move comes amid growing concern about hobbyists using drones to create dramatic videos. The ban would cover more than 84 million acres of public land. The director of the parks service cited safety concerns as well as potential harm to wildlife. "Imagine you're a big wall climber in Yosemite working on a four-day climb up El Capitan, and you're hanging off a bulb, ready to make a [difficult] move, and an unmanned aircraft flies up beside you and is hovering a few...

On the same day last month, airline pilots trying to land at two of the nation’s busiest airports got on their radios to report the unnerving sight of small rogue drones buzzing at high altitudes. In the first incident on May 29, the pilot of a commercial airliner descending toward LaGuardia Airport saw what appeared to be a black drone with a 10-to-15-foot wingspan about 5,500 feet above Lower Manhattan, according to a previously undisclosed report filed with the Federal Aviation Administration. In the second, two airliners separately approaching Los Angeles International Airport soared past what they described as a...

More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic, according to a year-long Washington Post investigation. Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

ABERDEEN, Md. (WJZ)—Soon, Maryland will be the home to a couple of new landmarks. Actually, sky-marks. As Mike Schuh reports, two large blimps will soon rise over Harford County and stay put. Radar blimps like these have been used on the battlefield to track the enemy, and in the Caribbean to intercept drug runners. Testing in Utah is complete. Now they’re being packed up and sent to Maryland. “There is some equipment already on grounds, yes,” said Kelly Luster, a spokesman for Aberdeen Proving Ground. What will they be looking for? Anti-ship cruise missiles, unmanned aircraft and swarming boats. These...

The maker of a drone that fires pepper spray bullets says it has received its first order for the machine. South Africa-based Desert Wolf told the BBC it had secured the sale of 25 units to a mining company after showing off the tech at a trade show in London. It is marketing the device as a "riot control copter" that can tackle crowds "without endangering the lives of security staff". But the International Trade Union Confederation is horrified by the idea. "This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move...

The U.S. since last year has been secretly flying unmanned surveillance aircraft in small numbers over Iraq to collect intelligence on insurgents, according to U.S. officials. Officials wouldn't say what types of drones were being used but said the flights were conducted only for surveillance purposes. The program was launched with the consent of the Iraqi government.

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials. But Iraq’s appeals for military assistance have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was closed when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s...

Secretary of state John Kerry has indicated that five Guantánamo Bay detainees released in exchange for an American soldier could be killed by drone strike if they return to the battlefield in Afghanistan. Kerry’s implied threat to the five Taliban fighters came as Republicans ramped-up their criticism of the deal to release Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner of the Taliban for five years until he was freed last week. The 28-year-old soldier has reportedly told medical staff at a base in Germany he was tortured and beaten by his captors, and once locked in a metal cage in total darkness...

There are lots of entrepreneurs who would love to fly drones — tiny unmanned aircraft — all over the country. They dream of drones delivering packages and taking photos, but there's a battle in the courts right now standing in their way. The battle is about whether it's legal for drones to take to the sky. The question at the core of the battle: Who owns the air? It's a question that goes back to the Middle Ages, to a Latin phrase that translates to "he owns the soil owns up to the heavens." In England, this phrase was the...

Israel has unveiled a new 6.5-pound hand-launched mini-drone for U.S. counter-terror units, but pro-Arab media are conducting a campaign to blame Israel when another country kills the wrong person with the drones.

A U.S. airliner nearly collided with a drone over Florida earlier this year, a federal official said, a near miss that highlights risks posed by the proliferation of unmanned aircraft in U.S. skies. A pilot of an American Airlines Group Inc. AAL +0.03% regional jet told officials that on March 22 he came dangerously close to a "small remotely piloted aircraft" about 2,300 feet above the ground near Tallahassee Regional Airport in Florida, said Jim Williams, head of the unmanned-aircraft office at the Federal Aviation Administration. Mr. Williams disclosed the incident publicly for the first time at a drone conference...