uav

Drone dogfights by 2015? U.S. Navy preps for futuristic combat

MONTEREY, Calif.--Imagine an aerial dogfight of epic proportions: Fifty aircraft on a side, each prowling the sky for advantage over dozens of adversaries.

If Timothy Chung has his way, such a battle could take place over Southern California by 2015. But before you worry that war is coming to American soil, you should know that Chung's vision is really about a high-tech game of Capture the Flag played by as many as a hundred small, lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles playing their role in a grand challenge of an experiment.

Chung is an assistant professor in the Systems Engineering … Read more

Hydrogen-fueled Phantom Eye UAV takes to the sky

The bulbous Phantom Eye UAV flew for less than a half-hour in its debut autonomous flight -- but that was just a bite-size test in preparation for eventually staying aloft for days at a time.

Boeing announced this morning that its Phantom Eye made a 28-minute flight at the end of last week, reaching an altitude of 4,080 feet and a cruising speed of 62 knots. The unmanned aircraft, which looks rather like a propane tank outfitted with wings and a tail structure, is powered by liquid hydrogen. Ground tests took place earlier this year.

Eventually, the Boeing-funded aircraft … Read more

Why does a two-bit Alabama town have two spy drones?

I would like to quote from the Web site of the City of Gadsden, Ala. (pop. 104,303):

Gadsden is the perfect place to live, raise a family and retire, while you enjoy relaxation, historical and scenic sites, cultural events and all sorts of entertainment and activities.

Why, then, would anyone in this perfect place have ordered two surveillance drones (in 2010, apparently) for use by the police department?

A similar question appears to have occupied the sleuths at the Gadsden Times. For in an act of concerned public-spiritedness, they confronted police chief John Crane with this disturbing information.

The … Read more

More drones take to the sky, like it or not

New documents shed light on which government agencies are experimenting with the domestic use of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones.

Drone use isn't restricted to Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Air Force. Legal authorization to fly drones has also been extended to police departments including ones in Herington, Kan., (population 2,526) and Gadsden, Ala., (which touts the nearby Foggy Hollow Bluegrass Gatherin' on its town Web site).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation had to sue the Feds to obtain the lists of drone approvals, which the Federal Aviation Administration finally released this week. A second list … Read more

Parrot AR.Drone quadcopter gets better specs and software

The cool smartphone-controlled Parrot AR.Drone quadcopter, first shown at CES in 2010, is getting some good updates that are being announced at this year's conference.

The biggest changes for the AR.Drone 2.0 are hardware and software improvements to make the device easier to fly. Better location and orientation sensors should make the drone more stable in the air, and a new pressure sensor will help it hold its altitude more accurately when it's more than a few feet off the ground (when the ultrasonic ground proximity sensor is ineffective).

On the software side, a new &… Read more

Wireless drone sniffs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, phone signals

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 sky."

The term war driving, meaning … Read more

Navy one step closer to aircraft carrier X-47B flights

The Navy recently took a big step closer to getting the X-47B robot stealth plane flying off aircraft carriers when it landed a Hornet fighter jet on the USS Eisenhower using unmanned systems.

The takeoff and landing in the Atlantic of the F/A-18D Hornet on July 2 used systems developed under the Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program. The X-47B, made by Northrop Grumman, is designed to use carriers as its base.

Carrier landings are one of the trickiest feats in aviation. While two airmen were aboard the Hornet, the avionics and software were the same as those that will be used in the X-47B.

The bat-winged stealth plane had its maiden flight in February and is designed to fly along pre-programmed paths and at "high subsonic" top speed, far faster than the Predator and Reaper drones. It will also have a much greater weapons payload of 4,500 pounds. … Read more

Northrop Grumman Firebird UAV lets pilots ride too

Northrop Grumman has unveiled a long-endurance unmanned spy plane which, in addition to surveillance gear, can carry pilots, potentially allowing it to fly in civil airspace.

The Firebird performed its first flight in February 2010. It can fly up to 30,000 feet and has an endurance of up to 40 hours in unmanned mode. It has a payload of 1,240 pounds and a wingspan of 65 feet.

It has high-def video, electro-optical and infrared sensors as well as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indicator (GMTI) systems. There are two weapons points on the wings.

Northrop's Scaled Composites designed the aircraft, which has an interface like a memory stick in that it can be plugged into a PC without the need of additional software.

Firebird will be demoed May 23 - June 3, 2011 at Empire Challenge 2011, held by U.S. Joint Forces Command in Arizona. If you can't make it, there's a promo video here. … Read more

Reporters' Roundtable: Drones, UAVs, and the unmanned war on terror

Technology helped U.S. SEAL commandos get to Osama bin Laden's compound, but the outcome of the raid depended on old-fashioned soldiering skills. This from a military force that has made history through robotics in pursuit of its goals. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been used for surveillance, and more recently for attacks, on targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. No other military, as far as we know, has put such stock in unmanned, autonomous, or remote vehicles.

Slideshow: First flight of the Phantom Ray

Today we're going to discuss the use of aerial drones, UAVs, and UCAVs with Spencer Ackerman, the main writer of Wired's great Danger Room blog.

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Some of our discussion points… Read more