Military
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced at a Pentagon news conference yesterday that the US would deploy armed Predator UAS to attack Libya government forces . Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Cartwright said that the first Predator mission in Libya had been scheduled for Thursday night
Commercial
Chris Anderson is founder of DIY Drones, the largest amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicle community on the web with 15,000 members, and of 3D Robotics, the commercial arm that serves the DIY Drones online store – “The Amateur UAV Superstore”. Chris is also editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, and wrote
Military
AeroVironment has announced that it received a firm-fixed-price contract delivery order valued at $11,500,000 for new digital Puma All Environment (AE) unmanned aircraft systems , initial spares packages and training services on April 11, 2011. The items were procured under the existing United States Special Operations Command
Testing
Lockheed Martin ’s Tactical Reconnaissance and Counter-Concealment-Enabled Radar, TRACER, has completed flight testing aboard a Predator B MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial System. TRACER is a dual-band (UHF and VHF) synthetic-aperture radar capable of detecting and geo-locating objects that are buried, camouflaged or concealed under foliage.
Commercial
MAVinci, based in Leimen near Heidelberg, Germany, has announced the introduction of SIRIUS II - a fully integrated orthofoto UAS. The system obtains aerial images and calculates orthofotos and three dimensional elevation models out of the image data. An orthofoto is a geometrically corrected aerial image such that the scale is
Commercial
Type in ‘drones’ on Google, and it won’t be long before you come across DIY Drones, the largest amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicle community on the web with 15,000 members, and the DIY Drones online store – “The Amateur UAV Superstore”. The site basically caters for the enthusiastic amateur who
Testing
Insitu Inc. announced that the Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (STUAS) Integrator completed its first Operational Assessment (OA-1), a critical milestone in the STUAS program execution. During OA-1, the STUAS Integrator system flew mission scenarios designed to assess operational suitability of the current Integrator UAS. The STUAS programme
Data Links & Communications
The Pentagon spends $500 million a year on commercial satellite communications to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Defense Information Systems Agency wants to cut those costs dramatically with a $440 million, 15-year lease of a single commercial satellite. DISA expects such a deal could meet 78 percent
Training
L-3 Communications has won a five-year contract under the U.S. Army’s STOC II contract for the U.S. Army’s Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (AVCATT) Post Deployment Software Support (PDSS) programme. L-3 Link Simulation & Training (L-3 Link) engineers will perform the work,
Military
Officials at U.S. Army Special Operations Command are developing tactics and plans for operating two companies worth of Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft, planned to come online beginning in 2013. “We’ve already recognized that we will need more personnel to conduct a Special Operations Force-specific task,” said Lt.
Military
AAI Unmanned Aircraft Systems just announced that its Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (TUAS) have achieved in excess of 600,000 total flight hours. Approximately 90 percent of these hours were amassed in support of combat operations at locations throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, fuelling an average of more than 100,
Propulsion
ADA Technologies, Inc. has received a $750,000 contract from the U.S. Air Force for research on an innovative nano-material-enabled power system for use in small to micro Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Specifically, ADA will create a high performance, cost effective and easy-to-manufacture lithium-ion battery