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The Lakemaid micro brewery started delivering beer to ice fishers using drones, at least until the FAA coldly shut their operation down. The FAA is currently reviewing their policies. According to the beer company’s president, Jack Supple, “They think it’s a great idea, though they’re telling me to stop.”

It’s a dilemma that comes with the territory if you’re an ice-fisher, when you run out of beer it’s going to be a long time before you can go grab a six-pack. Until now… Meet the Lakemaid Beer Drone. Wisconsin-based Lakemaid Beers - whose tagline is "Great Fishermen need Great Beer" - was inspired by Amazon’s announcement that it was planning on using ...

The aerostats — that is the term for lighter-than-air craft that are tethered to the ground — are to be set aloft on Army-owned land about 45 miles northeast of Washington, near Aberdeen Proving Ground, for a three-year test slated to start in October. From a vantage of 10,000 feet, they will cast a vast radar net from Raleigh, N.C., to Boston and out to Lake Erie, with the goal of detecting cruise missiles or enemy aircraft so they could be intercepted before reaching the capital. Defense contractor Raytheon last year touted an exercise in which it outfitted the aerostats...

If the Rev. Jeremiah Wright believes — as he’s claimed in the past — that he and President Barack Obama will be buddies again when he’s out of office, the firebrand preacher didn’t do himself any favors Wednesday. Speaking at a breakfast co-hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Wright said that while the civil rights leader proclaimed “I have a dream,” Obama says, “I have a drone.” Wright, Obama’s former pastor, called for King’s “revolution of values” and a rejection of the “three-headed demon” of “racism, militarism and capitalism” — the foundations of...

(Reuters) - An unmanned aircraft used by U.N. peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo crashed on Wednesday near the eastern town of Goma, sources at the airport and interior ministry said. ... A source at Goma's airport confirmed the incident. A spokesman for the U.N. mission was not available for comment. The Falco drones used by the U.N. force are manufactured by Selex ES, a unit of Italian defence group Finmeccanica. The firm was not immediately available for comment.

<p>The Roboplow was invented by Rob Kinkey and isn't some frail little 'maybe' like early robotic vacuum cleaners.: if anything, it's overkill with 6-wheel-drive, 50" plow-blade, and serious power from it's electric motors that have it tearing down the driveway (can do 'donuts', see video below).</p>

The Federal Aviation Administration will authorize test sites for drone aircraft in upstate New York, New Jersey and at least eight other states, the agency said on Monday, but integrating the aircraft into the nation’s airspace, set by Congress for 2015, will be phased in gradually. The agency picked six institutions to operate test locations, which will explore how to set safety standards, how to train and certify their ground-based pilots, how to ensure that the aircraft will operate safely even if they lose their radio links with the ground and, most of all, how to replace the traditional method...

While you were out shopping Sunday for those last-minute holiday gifts, the Navy pushed ahead with its own vision of an underwater sugar plum: a fleet of “long endurance, transoceanic gliders harvesting all energy from the ocean thermocline.” And you thought Jules Verne died in 1905. Fact is, the Navy has been seeking—pretty much under the surface—a way to do underwater what the Air Force has been doing in the sky: prowl stealthily for long periods of time, and gather the kind of data that could turn the tide in war. The Navy’s goal is to send an underwater drone,...

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Missiles fired by a U.S. drone slammed into a convoy of vehicles traveling to a wedding party in central Yemen on Thursday, killing at least 13 people, Yemeni security officials said. The officials said the attack took place in the city of Radda, the capital of Bayda province, and left charred bodies and burnt out cars on the road. The city, a stronghold of al-Qaida militants, witnessed deadly clashes early last year between armed tribesmen backed by the military and al-Qaida gunmen in an attempt to drive them out of the city. There were no immediate...

The US Air Force has secretly developed a new stealth drone for long-range reconnaissance missions that could be operational by 2015, according to a report Friday in an industry magazine. The unmanned drone, dubbed RQ-180, is currently in the testing phase at the top secret Groom Lake air base in Nevada -- the infamous "Area 51" where the Air Force tested the U2 spy planes in the late 1950s, Aviation Week said. The Air Force refused to comment when contacted by AFP. The new aircraft was reportedly built by Northrop Grumann, the company behind the Global Hawk and the X-47B...

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with funding from SwampWorks at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Department of Defense Rapid Reaction Technology Office (DoD/RRTO) demonstrated the launch of an all-electric, fuel cell-powered, unmanned aerial system (UAS) from a submerged submarine. "Developing disruptive technologies and quickly getting them into the hands of our sailors is what our SwampWorks program is all about," said Craig A. Hughes, Acting Director of Innovation at ONR. The successful submerged launch of a remotely deployed UAS offers a pathway to providing mission critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to the U.S. Navy's...

The Pentagon has loosened its guidelines on avoiding civilian casualties during drone strikes, modifying instructions from requiring military personnel to “ensure” civilians are not targeted to encouraging service members to “avoid targeting” civilians. ... Despite Mr. Obama’s pledge for more transparency on drone strikes, the administration “continues to answer legitimate questions and criticisms by saying, ‘We can’t really talk about this,’”

For all the hand-wringing over how many drones is too many drones, there’s one job for which they would appear to be perfectly suited: hunting pigs. The best article in the new issue of the Economist is a short piece about an outfit called Louisiana Hog Control that hunts pigs at night using a remote controlled plane outfitted with an infrared camera. Hunters on the ground, informed by the bright white blobs of porcine body heat illuminated on their video feeds, can then sneak up on the clever and twitchy critters and dispatch them to hog heaven.On a successful hunt...

<p>KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- At a ceremony held at a pockmarked airport in Congo's troubled east, the United Nations launched the first of five drones which will be used to gather intelligence about the myriad armed groups still lurking in the nation's vast jungles.</p>

BEIJING — China's first unmanned stealth drone made its first test flight in the latest advance for the domestic arms industry, state media reported Friday. Photos and video of the tailless delta-wing drone flying were posted on the websites of People's Daily and other major outlets. The location of the 20-minute flight made Thursday was identified only as a southwestern China testing base. The jet powered drone was identified as the Lijian, or "Sharp Sword," photos of which have been circulating for some time. The aircraft is similar to the X-47B drone being tested by the U.S. Navy for aircraft...

US airspace could be crowded with some 7,500 commercial drones within the next five years, this is part of the Federal Aviation Administration's new roadmap unveiled on Thursday. The announcement is the latest step toward transitioning drones from military use in the war on terrorism to collecting survey and weather data to assisting rescues and law enforcement operations. "From advancing scientific research and responding to natural disasters to locating missing persons and helping to fight wildfires, drones can save time, save money and, most importantly, save lives," said a statement by Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association for...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Officials at the 174th Attack Wing suspended all Reaper drone flights in Central New York Tuesday after one of the unmanned aircraft crashed into Lake Ontario about 12 miles from the eastern shore during a routine training flight. A Coast Guard helicopter and search vessel were unable to recover the $4 million drone, which crashed about 1 p.m. Tuesday, and were forced to call off the search late in the afternoon because of bad weather, said Col. Greg Semmel, commander of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. Semmel said he did not know what...

Last week, Amnesty International released a report on U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, concluding that as many as 900 civilians might have been killed and 600 seriously injured in the attacks since 2004, when the controversial program began. The United States launched between 330 to 374 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and September 2013, according to the report. And those strikes have created a culture of fear on the ground. "I wasn't scared of drones before," Nabeela, an 8-year-old whose grandmother, Mamana Bibi, was killed by a 2012 drone strike, says in the report. "But now when they fly...

Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif came to Washington this week with a mission — but also with some very bad timing. Under fire at home over the US drone war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the border country with Afghanistan, Sharif told Obama that the US had to stop its remote-control war: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he’d told President Barack Obama on Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes in his country needed to end.The remarks came as the two leaders met in person for more than two hours in high-level talks aimed at beginning to mend a historically troubled...

The head of the Pakistani Taliban was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan on Friday, several security sources told Reuters, -excerpt- Hakimullah Mehsud, who was believed to be in his mid-30s and was one of Pakistan's most wanted men, has been reported dead several times before. But late on Friday, several intelligence, army and militant sources across Pakistan confirmed he had been killed in the drone strike in the lawless North Waziristan region.