drone

Drone aircraft have been a fixture of U.S. combat and intelligence operations for some years now. But in 2012, the U.S. military's use of unmanned aircraft like the Reaper reached unprecedented levels, in both absolute and relative numbers. Looking at Pentagon stats, Wired reckons that the record 447 drone strikes in Afghanistan last year accounted for 11.5 percent of the U.S. air war, more than double the level of the year before. It's easy to understand why military planners are leaning more and more on drones -- they're a bargain, relatively speaking; they'… Read more

PARIS -- LeWeb's focus this year on "the Internet of things" this year brought Net-enabled door locks, houseplant monitors, and footstep loggers to the conference stage. But the gadget that caught the most attention was a remote-controlled quadcopter.

Quadcopters are all the rage these days, popularized best by the Parrot AR.Drone. Here at LeWeb, startup Team BlackSheep showed its take on the tech with a model that's remotely piloted by an operator who sees what's going on from a camera mounted on the drone itself.

Raphael Pirker, founder of the company, piloted a TBS … Read more

OK, so it was on dry land, not on an aircraft carrier. But first steps are first steps.

On Thursday, the U.S. Navy carried out its first-ever steam catapult launch of the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System -- see the video embedded below -- and was apparently quite happy with the way things turned out. Before the UCAS demonstrator can make an actual take-off from a carrier, it needs to show that it can handle the unique rigors of being flung slingshot-style into the air instead of making a more leisurely jaunt down a runway.

"This test, in … Read more

How do you drive a jet-powered drone around the deck of an aircraft carrier? If you've ever guided a remote-control toy car around your kitchen floor, you'll have an idea.

Northrop Grumman said today that it has done its first shore-based tests of a wireless handheld controller that can steer its X-47B unmanned aerial vehicle, a key step toward getting the UAV ready for flight tests on an aircraft carrier in 2013.

In the trial run, which took place earlier this month, Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy used the project's Control Display Unit to roll … Read more

An activist group has organized an online petition to press Apple to stop blocking Drones+, an iPhone app that maps locations where U.S. drone strikes have occurred.

Apple had earlier described the app as "objectionable" and "not in compliance with the app store review guidelines." Apple's rules govern what apps can and can't contain in order to be made available in its proprietary App Store.

"Drones+ is an application that shows no depictions of the carnage of war and reveals no secret information. It simply adds a location to a map every … Read more

Apple has rejected an iPhone app designed to keep track of fatalities caused by U.S. drone strikes for its "objectionable" content.

The company withheld App Store approval for Drones+, an app that sends text messages to iPhones whenever the media reports casualties resulting from a drone strike and shows users the locations of drone strikes on a Google map. (See brief video demonstration below.) Apple has rejected the app three times this summer, the most recent of which cited App Store guidelines that prohibit "objectionable" content, according to Josh Begley, the app's creator.

"… Read more

I'm preparing for two very cool Reporters' Roundtable shows that I'll be recording this week. First up, we're doing a show on one of my favorite technology topics, mesh networks. Then, it's attack of the drones.

Mesh networking Mesh networking is when wireless devices pool together to share bandwidth and connections. Mesh networks can also be made more resistant to jamming and censorship than traditional point-to-point wireless. The tech is hard to implement, but the the military has been using mesh technologies to great effect for years, and commercial and consumer implementations of mesh networking pop … Read more

The use of drones is taking off in America.

Local governments and private businesses see them as a cheap and effective way of maintaining an eye from the sky.

But will the drones be fully under their control?

A college professor and his students say not necessarily.

A civilian drone aircraft was "hijacked" by Professor Todd Humphreys and his graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.

They were able to hack into the drone's GPS signals.

Later, in an exercise done in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security at White Sands, N.M., they … Read more

Last year a U.S. military drone doing reconnaissance in Iran disappeared. Iranian government officials there said they had steered the device off course by interfering with its GPS signals.

Such an attack, called GPS spoofing, had previously been considered theoretical. A research team at the University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated that the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle can be commandeered remotely. This demonstration highlights security concerns with plans to allow thousands of military and civilian drones in U.S. airspace by 2015.

"I think this demonstration should certainly raise some eyebrows and serve as … Read more