Free Republic

Just as Russia had started to bring back some refinery capacity damaged by Ukrainian drone attacks earlier this year, a new wave of drone attacks hit a major refinery owned by Rosneft, for a second time.Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery southeast of Moscow caught fire after the overnight drone attack, an anonymous Ukrainian military source with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.The refinery in the region of Ryazan, whose main city of the same name is some 120 miles southeast of Moscow, was first attacked by drones in the middle of March. The first attack also led to a...

I find it interesting to note that during World War 1, we didn’t call it “World War 1,” because we didn’t recognize it as the first of many. It was first called the “European War.” Then American newspapers called it “World War.” And the British called it the “Great War.” Soldiers fighting and families left at home had no idea they were fighting “World War 1.” Then, it was FDR who first used the term “World War 2” in 1941. But soldiers fighting and those at home didn’t realize they were fighting “World War 2” until Roosevelt named it that.

Did you know when he came to office and ordered his first drone strike Obama killed 18 civilians in Pakistan, 4 of them children... He went on to order 506 more drone strikes triple the amount of the proceeding Bush admin. and even incinerated an American citizen and minor (Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki). Even the NY Times says his embrace of drone strikes would be his 'lasting legacy' (soaked in blood). Obama’s Embrace of Drone Strikes Will Be a Lasting LegacyIn January 2009, when President Obama came into office, he inherited two controversial covert counterterrorism programs from George W. Bush: the...

The idea triggered a full-scale revolt on the Google campus. Six years ago, the Silicon Valley giant signed a small, $9 million contract to put the skills of a few of its most innovative developers to the task of building an artificial intelligence tool that would help the military detect potential targets on the battlefield using drone footage. Engineers and other Google employees argued that the company should have nothing to do with Project Maven, even if it was designed to help the military discern between civilians and militants. The uproar forced the company to back out, but Project Maven...

Reuters analyzed more than 50 videos of drone attacks, collated research and spoke to over a dozen manufacturers, soldiers and officials about how the technology is transforming warfare.

A new high-tech laser weapon developed by the UK that is capable of shooting down enemy drones and missiles could be sent to Ukraine. The weapon, dubbed DragonFire, was originally slated for deployment by 2027, but Grant Shapps, the UK defense secretary, said he hoped to "speed up" production so it could be put to use on Ukraine's front line. Speaking to journalists on a visit to the Porton Down military research hub in Salisbury, England, Shapps said he would look to see if the pace can be increased even further "in order for Ukrainians perhaps to get their hands...

The conventional wisdom of the media and think-tanks agreed its line around the time the two-hundredth drone was shot down: Iran's assault on Israel was a flop. A record number of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles were launched by the mullahs against the Zionist Entity: For the flight from Persia, a drone takes nine hours, a cruise two hours, and a ballistic missile about twelve minutes. Not a single drone or cruise missile made it to Israeli soil. A few of the ballistics penetrated the country's air space, lighting up the sky over the Temple Mount yet killing not a...

The IDF releases footage showing Israeli Air Force fighter jets downing some of the 170 drones and 30 cruise missiles fired from Iran at Israel overnight.

British Royal Air Force fighter jets shot down a “number of” Iranian attack drones launched against Israel, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed on Sunday. RAF jets scrambled to protect Israel from their bases in Iraq and Syria intercepted and downed Iranian military drones, Prime Minister Sunak said while warning that “the fallout for regional stability would be hard to overstate” if the strikes on Israel had been successful.

The response to the ongoing attack on Israel is underway. This is the first time that Iran has fired on Israel from its own territory proper, so that's a bad progression in the direction of more direct involvement. U.S. forces in the area have reportedly shot down "dozens" of drones targeting Israel. They've also reportedly taken out missiles, as well. US shoots down Dozens of Iranian Drones & … pic.twitter.com/2dwlOTHMmk— cagrown5 (@cagrown5) April 14, 2024The U.S. was also coordinating with Jordan and Egypt. Jordan reportedly also took out ones crossing their airspace. Fox's Jennifer Griffin suggested the first wave might...

Iran launched a large-scale air attack on Israel using drones and ballistic missiles. It represented the biggest escalation from the Islamic Republic against the Jewish state in history, which has long used proxy militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen to do its dirty work. This is different, and the response from Israel and possibly the United States will be different, with reports circulating that Israel will retaliate against Iran regardless of whether lives are lost in the current attack. How will all of this unfold? Those with a heavy isolationist bent are already predicting doom and shouting "World War...

Iran launched a significant drone attack on Israel on Saturday, which is expected to take hours to reach its targets, as reported by Israel's military and confirmed by Iranian state media quoting Iran's revolutionary guards. Iran's Revolutionary Guards have stated that Operation 'True Promise' is a response to Israeli actions and is part of their strategy to punish Israel for its perceived crimes. According to a report by Israel's Channel 12 TV, Iran has also launched cruise missiles at Israel, with a shorter flight time than a drone. According to two regional security sources, Jordan has positioned its air defences...

American drones aren't performing as well as those from other countries, like China's, in Ukraine. The drones are glitchy, expensive, and get lost during flight, sources told The Wall Street Journal.... The problems with many US-made drones, particularly some of the smaller ones, are that they often don't function as advertised or planned and easily glitch when targeted by Russian jamming, sources told The Wall Street Journal. They are fragile and vulnerable to electronic warfare. For some of the systems that were sent to Ukraine, issues included not taking off, getting lost and not returning home, or simply failing to...

EA AIR SPACE 2024 — The Navy is in the nascent stages of evaluating how to bring autonomous combat drones to the decks of aircraft carriers, but the service’s top official for unmanned programs says one thing is certain: The drones will have to be cheap, topping out at about $15 million per unit. To keep prices low, the Navy will likely sacrifice the longevity of each so-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, said Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford, the Navy’s program executive for unmanned systems and weapons. Instead of being sustained over a 40-year lifecycle, a single drone could be catapulted and...

Reuters said Novatek had stopped operations at its Arctic LNG 2 project, which processes gas from the Utrenneye field on West Siberia' Gydan Peninsula, in the latest blow to Russian fuel exports. It comes as Russian exports funding Putin's war have been hampered by repeated drone strikes on oil facilities, blamed on Ukraine. One energy industry expert told Newsweek that state oil giant Rosneft had reduced daily oil processing in March by a fifth. Sanctions have caused a lack of specialist tankers to transport the LNG from Russia through thick sea ice. Six Arc7 tankers were due to be built...

They have become a familiar sight in the skies above parts of Russia: long-range enemy drones, buzzing their way to another target. In the biggest Ukrainian onslaught inside Russian territory since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion two years ago, Ukraine has in recent weeks carried out a series of attacks on Russian oil refineries and ports. On Tuesday, it hit a refinery and drone factory in the industrial region of Tatarstan - more than 800 miles from the border. The Ukrainian spy agency behind these drone strikes has its eyes on another target: the 12-mile long Kerch bridge connecting occupied Crimea...

In a sharp escalation of its drone campaign targeting strategic industries deep inside Russia, Ukraine seems to have fitted Cessna-style light planes with remote controls, packed them with explosives and flown at least one of them more than 600 miles to strike a Russian factory in Yelabuga, 550 miles east of Moscow.

Anti-Israel protesters frequently interrupted a star-studded fundraising event in New York... US Central Command says four drones from Yemen were shot down... 45 are dead in South Africa an eight-year-old girl the only survivor... Rising political tensions in Israel tonight as the High Court has ruled...These moves by the Attorney General and High Court can be interpreted as moves to bring down the Netanyahu government... The International Court of Justice ruling famine has begun in Gaza and Israel must allow more humanitarian aid... At the UN Security Council Russia vetoing...panel monitoring sanctions against North Korea... Israeli airstrikes on the Aleppo...

Uh-oh, Amazon. Looks like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not playing around when it comes to selling illegal signal jammers. The agency just went public with an investigation into Amazon and other major retailers for allegedly pushing these dodgy devices that can block your cell signal, GPS, and more. Typically advertised as “drone deterrents” or “privacy tools”, these nefarious gadgets are specifically designed to block radio frequencies. This has serious ramifications, cutting off cellular devices and GPS units and impacting emergency communication channels.

Air Base 201 in Niger was the U.S. Air Force's largest construction project in history: a massive drone center that cost American taxpayers $280 million. Thanks to a change in the Nigerien leadership, Americans may have to give up that investment for good. Niger's new nationalist government, which took power in a coup d'etat last year, has been trying to get rid of foreign military presence in the country. Over the weekend, Nigerien Col. Amadou Abdramane ordered U.S. troops out of Air Base 201, declaring on television that "the American presence in the territory of the Republic of Niger is...