Military
The US Navy has outlined a new timeline for buying services provided by a fleet of unmanned aircraft systems worth up to $874 million. The close-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) contract would replace the Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle with a ship-based, small UAS that would keep track of
Commercial
A Global Hawk based in Guam, is currently flying above Japan gathering imagery to help the Japanese Government direct its aid programme. The UAS has been deployed exclusively in relief efforts at the request of the Japanese government, according to a U.S. Forces spokesman. A similar mission was flown
Military
The US 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed in late February with the ScanEagle unmanned aircraft, marking the first time any MEU has taken the combat-proven UAS out to sea for an operational assignment. The lightweight ScanEagle is based aboard the dock landing ship Comstock, part of the Boxer Amphibious
Commercial
Aeryon Labs in Canada has announced it has been awarded a contract to supply its Aeryon Scout UAS to Halton Regional Police. The Aeryon Scout is a small, lightweight mini-helicopter that is remotely-controlled from the ground using a patent-pending map-based touch-screen computer interface. It will
Military
South Korea's military will bring forward its planned deployment of high-altitude UAS and stealth fighter jets to increase its surveillance capability and bolster its deterrence toward North Korea. The original plans were to deploy UAS by 2015 but a decision was taken recently to speed up the
Testing
Northrop Grumman's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System has completed a critical design review with the U.S. Navy. "It is gratifying to see the design mature from the Preliminary Design Review to the Critical Design Review over the past 12 months," said Steve Enewold,
Control Stations
A recent breakthrough in precise aircraft control with implications for both manned and unmanned flight is highlighted in a brief video which can be viewed below. The full paper describing this Apprenticeship Learning control method and its integration into a comprehensive design and analysis suite is available here. Abstract of
Electronic Sub-Systems
Russia has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying Israeli unmanned aircraft systems (and to acquire technology and components for joint UAS production. But at present these UAS are no more than expensive flying TV-cameras, the targeting information they produce is mostly useless, since there are no precise GLONASS
Testing
Northrop Grumman Corporation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center have just released pictures of a key risk reduction flight test in which Northrop Grumman's Proteus test aircraft and a NASA Global Hawk flew as close as 40 feet apart at an altitude
Test Ranges
A well-kept secret is the new CESVA UAS flight test centre which opened last year in Spain. Juan Secades, Director of the site, told UAS Vision: “We’ve had a lot of local clients - both military and commercial - who have been very satisfied with the experience, and now its
Commercial
Carinthian Tech Research (Austria), Schiebel GmbH (Austria), and Quest Innovations B.V. (The Netherlands) have developed an aerial multispectral imaging system to monitor the soil composition of agricultural land. The system is both faster and provides full sampling of the area to be examined, than the current practice of taking
Business
A survey by job seekers web-site Indeed revealed that in the USA, the average annual salary of a UAS Operator, or Remotely Piloted Aircraft Pilot, was $103,000 – somewhat greater than the average of $80,000 it found for Aircraft Pilots. For full results click here. Meanwhile, we came