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A plane approaching Heathrow Airport is believed to have hit a drone before it landed safely, the Metropolitan Police has said. The British Airways flight from Geneva was hit as it approached the London airport at about 12:50 BST with 132 passengers and five crew on board. After landing, the pilot reported an object - believed to be a drone - had struck the front of the Airbus A320. Police said no arrests have been made. If confirmed, it is believed to be the first incident of its kind in the UK. A British Airways spokesman said: "Our aircraft landed...

After spending the past decade studying ground-nesting wasps a team of researchers from the Australian National University believe that they've unlocked the secret to the insects' uncanny homing abilities -- one they hope can be applied to future UAV development. Modern, autonomous UAVs have to be laden with high resolution cameras, GPS radios and a slew of other high-tech gadgetry in order to know where they are and where they're going. Wasps, on the other hand, only need their compound eyes and a daily refresher flight.

Israel is offering for sale a laser weapon that can shoot down artillery and mortar shells as well as rockets and small UAVs. Called Iron Beam it has a range of 2,000 meters and is expected to enter service in Israel by the end of 2015. There is a lot of action on Israeli borders for a system like Iron Beam and it will soon become evident if Iron Beam is the first effective laser air defense weapon or not. Each Iron Beam firing unit consists of a radar and control system and two lasers. These three elements can be...

Why We Need Swarms Of Autonomous Drones by ClaudiaR 12/10/2015 Most drones fly high above the terrain, connected to their human operators, alone, one by one for now. The main beneficiary of this semi-unmanned technology has been the army so far. Fly alone, identify the target, controlled from the center the get the green light to launch the missile. The autonomous drone of the future are independent and no longer alone, instead, fly and swim in groups. Just like locusts, we’ll have swarms of drones, communicating to each other and surrounding environment, like a mobile network of connected robots. Passed...

India is the latest country that has reportedly purchased Israeli drones, following reports earlier this week of similar purchases from both Russia and Switzerland. The Indian government approved the purchase from Israel last week of 10 missile armed Heron TP drones, Indian news outlet The Economic Times reported on Friday. The report noted that the acquisition of the drones, produced by Israel Aerospace Industries, was "crucial" and that it would "enhance India's cross-border military strike capability." A senior military source told ET that the project "has been accelerated under directions from the highest levels of government and that armed drones...

The state-owned China Central Television (CCTV) news channel has released a previously unseen video of Beijing’s AVIC Wing Loong unmanned air vehicle carrying out weapons testing. Conducted in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia in northern China in July, the testing saw the UAV fire eight weapon types at targets to show the flexibility of the system, AVIC says. “[UAVs] that can both reconnoitre and attack have to function like this. It is unknown what kinds of targets are on the ground,” Li Yidong, deputy chief engineer of Wing Loong at AVIC’s Chengdu Engines, told CCTV. “You cannot use just...

More than two decades of history and the memories of pilots who were instrumental in the development of unmanned aerial systems gathered at a small airstrip Friday morning to commemorate the last flight on Fort Huachuca of the Hunter. Developed in the early 1990s, the Hunter UAV was the first of its kind to be deployed in combat, with just 40 people trained in how to take off and land this large, two-propeller aircraft.

Shortly after Ukrainian troops captured two Russian Spetsnaz soldiers, a Ukrainian special forces unit of the Dnipro-1 Battalion shot down a $6 million Russian Forpost drone near Avdeevka in Eastern Ukraine. The Russian government was quick to distance itself from the soldiers, and even went so far as to parade their families in front of the media to deny their active status. However, the drone that was shot down that day is not something the Russian government can deny owning and operating... (includes a video)

In just a few years, communities that depend on the trucking industry for their vitality will be facing major economic disruption.Roscoe, Nebraska, is a good place to contemplate how the evolution of long-haul travel can change a community. This unincorporated settlement—some classify Roscoe as a “semi-ghost town”—sits about seven miles east of the city of Ogallala along U.S. 30, which follows the old Lincoln Highway route and before that, various overland migration trails to California, Oregon and Utah. Just off U.S. 30, opposite the Union Pacific freight-rail tracks, there’s an abandoned gas station with its former pump, pictured above, standing...

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday that drones will be an issue for federal, state and local security during the 2016 presidential race. Johnson made the comments in response to a question from NBC's Chuck Todd, who asked him whether the Secret Service was "panicked" about the proliferation of drones. Todd said he wondered how it would effect security at outdoor campaign events in 2016. “It is definitely an issue,” Johnson replied on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”He then went into an anecdote about a drone flying over his head at a graduation ceremony. “I was giving a commencement address a...

Jane’s Defence Weekly reports that Hezbollah has built a runway in the morthern Bekaa Valley to be used for drones, likely Iranian-made UAVs. New satellite images shows the runway in an area 10 kilometers south of the Lebanese village of Hermel.
Jane’s states: The short length of the runway suggests the facility is not intended to smuggle in weapons shipments from Syria or Iran as it is too short for nearly all the transport aircraft used by the air forces of those countries. An alternative explanation is that the runway was built for Iranian-made UAVs, including the Ababil-3, which has been...

It was a typical little news story on Washington’s drone wars -- six paragraphs from Yemen, the sort of minimalist report that, in these years, has also regularly come out of Pakistan or even, from time to time, Somalia. “A U.S. drone attack in Yemen killed four suspected al-Qaeda militants on Saturday in the southern province of Shabwa, local Yemeni security officials told Reuters.” Who those “militants” really were we seldom know; there’s rarely follow-up in the mainstream media. It’s just another barely noticed mini-triumph in Washington’s ongoing “covert” drone wars in the Greater Middle East. Those wars have been...

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.

At some point Sunday night, someone flew a small drone onto the grounds of the White House. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the drone -- or, to remove the ambiguity of that overly broad term, the small quadcopter -- posed no threat to the building or its inhabitants. The incident raises the question: Could a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pose such a threat? To answer that, we need to know the answer to three other questions. How far can a UAV fly? How is it controlled? And: What can it carry? Could a larger drone...

A ribbon-cutting is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 18, at Fort Huachuca to celebrate the creation of a new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle launch and recovery facility at the post. U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake are scheduled to attend the ceremony, which is being hosted by the 162nd Wing at the fort. The event will begin at 10 a.m. at the facility located at 14606 Air Guard Way. The ceremony will be hosted by the commander of the 162nd Wing, Col. Phil Purcell, and the commander of the 214th Reconnaissance Group, Lt. Col. Bobbi Doorenbos. Brig. Gen. Edward P. Maxwell,...

Pilots around the United States have reported a surge in near-collisions and other dangerous encounters with small drones in the past six months at a time when the Federal Aviation Administration is gradually opening the nation’s skies to remotely controlled aircraft, according to FAA records. Since June 1, commercial airlines, private pilots and air-traffic controllers have alerted the FAA to 25 episodes in which small drones came within a few seconds or a few feet of crashing into much larger aircraft, the records show. Many of the close calls occurred during takeoffs and landings at the nation’s busiest airports, presenting...

China has successfully tested a homemade laser defense system specially targeting small-scale drones flying at low attitude. The machine is able to shoot down various small aircraft within a two-kilometer radius and can do so in five seconds after locating its target, said a statement released Sunday by the China Academy of Engineering Physics, one of the system's co-developers. Characterized by its speed, precision and low noise, the system is designed to destroy unmanned, small-scale drones flying within an altitude of 500-m and at a speed below 50m/s, it said. The new laser system, which will either be installed or...

An investigation has been launched after France's state-owned EDF power company said unidentified drones had flown over seven of its nuclear plants. The first unmanned aircraft was spotted on 5 October and there had been further sightings up to 20 October, EDF said. Who is behind the drones is unclear but pressure group Greenpeace has denied any involvement. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says measures are being taken to "neutralise" the drones. Under French law, no aircraft is allowed to enter a 5km-wide (three-mile) zone around a nuclear plant, nor fly below 1,000m (3,300ft) there. The air force is responsible for...

Police brass haven’t talked about drones as potential weapons, until now, CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues reported Wednesday. The NYPD is actively looking for ways to stop an attack by a drone. The department told Pegues there is no intelligence showing an imminent threat, but over the last year the country’s largest police force has been increasingly concerned about a potential terror attack from the air by a drone. “We look at it as something that could be a terrorist’s tool,” Deputy Chief Salvatore DiPace said. “We’ve seen some video where the drone was flying at different targets along the...

Helicopter-type Gorizont drone © ITAR-TASS/Valery Matytsin (archive) MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. Ship designers are advancing the blueprint for a new-generation, multi-purpose warship to join Russia’s navy. Features of the planned corvette are still under wraps but the vessel is thought likely to carry a helicopter-type Gorizont drone within its armory. Planners at Russia’s Central Marine Engineering Design Bureau Almaz and United Shipbuilding Corporation expect the keel to be laid next year, possibly at St. Petersburg’s Severny shipyard though it is still unconfirmed. “As technical design is in progress I will not reveal the features of this new vessel but it...