Testing
Turkey’s newest armed drone, the Bayraktar Akıncı (Raider), successfully completed a 16-minute maiden flight on December 6, 2019. The flight was undertaken from the Turkish Army’s Çorlu airfield in Turkey’s northwestern Tekirdağ province. The aircraft made a fully automatic takeoff and landing during the brief test. The
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Air travel before the Jet Age wasn’t always glamorous. The relentless noise and vibration from a piston powered propeller aircraft often made long flights even more exhausting. Most aircraft also couldn’t fly high enough to avoid bad weather, so air sickness was more common. After World War Two,
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The Air Force Academy brought a cutting-edge, multi-drone light show to its campus last month to celebrate its storied rivalry with West Point. As hundreds of drones moved in synchronization to delight the audience with messages like ‘Beat Army,’ the six-minute display showed how far unmanned aerial systems have come
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The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) recreational drone flyer test will be an important opportunity to educate recreational flyers about the rules of the sky as we continue to safely integrate drones into our nation’s airspace. A law passed in 2018 requires that recreational drone flyers pass an online
Weapons Systems
Russia’s leading aircraft manufacturer has said it is developing a new type of an aircraft complex based on high-speed drones that can be used in concert with advanced MiG-35 lightweight fighter jets and other warplanes. Russia's MiG Aircraft Corporation, which marks its 80th anniversary on Sunday, said
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Switzerland has received in-country the first of six Elbit Systems Hermes 900 unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), the government announced on 9 December. The Israeli-built medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAS, serial D-II, was shown to reporters at the Emmen air base from which it will perform border surveillance and disaster relief. As
Agriculture
As swarms of locusts continue to infest and destroy vegetation in Sindh and the issue has persisted for months, it has become evident that the authorities concerned have still not been able to control the situation. Farmers complain that farms in Karachi’s Malir area, where the attack happened, had
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Yesterday General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) began a series of demonstration flights using its MQ-9 Guardian Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA). The flights, being hosted by the Hellenic Air Force (HAF) and staged out of Larissa Air Base in Greece, showcase the maritime surveillance capabilities of the MQ-9, as well
VTOL
The US Navy (USN) intends to negotiate and award a contract to Bell to engineer an aft-cabin door redesign of the Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout to accommodate potential weapon stores. The work is intended to push forward weapon studies completed in late 2019 on the unmanned helicopter and follows
UAM/UTM
Lilium is a Munich, Germany-based aerospace startup developing a revolutionary on-demand air taxi service that is powered by the all-electric, vertical take-off and landing Lilium Jet. Just six months after revealing the all-electric, five-seater Lilium Jet for the first time, Lilium is now flying at speeds in excess of 62.
News
A satellite image that was posted on Chinese internet shows an impressive lineup of the Chinese military aerial drones, some of which are in development while others are operational. The lineup occurred at Malan Air Base, a known hub of testing for these types of systems. The image is yet
Business
The Japan Coast Guard plans to stop using and procuring Chinese-made drones in fiscal 2020 due to concerns over information security, Nikkei has learned. It will be the second case in which Chinese products are barred from consideration by Japanese government procurement programs. Equipment from China's Huawei Technologies