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MCSO DRONE CRASHES INTO LAKE CONROE Friday morning, during training exercises with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Drone, something went wrong and it crashed into Lake Conroe. Divers from the Montgomery County Precinct 1 Dive Team spent much of the day searching the bottom of Lake Conroe for the almost $300,000 drone helicopter. The drone which was purchased by Montgomery County in 2011 was almost entirely funded by Homeland Security Grants which were specifically designated for the purchase of drones.

The death toll of multiple U.S. drone strikes launched on Sunday against training camps of al- Qaida militants in Yemen's southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa has risen to 55, the Yemeni Interior Ministry said on Monday. Three local leaders were among the 55 dead militants, the ministry said in a brief statement on its website. It said that its security services are working to identify the nationalities of foreign fighters who were killed among al-Qaida militants in the airstrikes. The ministry described the air strikes as the strongest assault launched against the militants since 2012, when the army retook...

Matt Rosendale's shoots down a drone in a Campaign Ad. Link..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJBcBx1XFU4&feature=share

SANA, Yemen — An airstrike killed 13 people suspected as Qaeda militants in the central Yemeni province of al-Bayda on Saturday, a security official and tribal representatives said. Three civilians in a nearby car were also killed, they said. “An airstrike targeted cars that suspected Al Qaeda militants were in and killed 13 of them in the Sawma’a area of al-Bayda,” a security official said.

A group of hobbyists with a weirdly extensive machine gun collection decided to try a modern update to drone target practice. In this case, the targets were smaller drones ranging in size from remote-control toy airplanes to larger flying wings, about as big as the Army's hand-tossed RQ-11 Raven. Instead of special anti-air weapons, they tried a few different machine guns, which are more representative of the weapons insurgents might aim at drones. While many of the bullets fired hit the drones, it took direct hits to the tiny drone engines to make them stop flying. Verdict: It's possible to...

SPRINGFIELD — A Springfield man said he didn’t ignore commands, but rather was never told his remote-controlled drone camera was hindering CareFlight from responding to a crash scene until just before his arrest. Kele Stanley, 31, said he plans on hiring an attorney to help him fight the charges — a felony charge of obstructing official business and misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and misconduct at an emergency scene. He said he was booked into the Clark County Jail on three misdemeanor charges, but after he posted bond and as was being processed out of jail, the obstructing official business...

A Bay Area federal judge says the Obama administration can keep secret a memo spelling out the legal rationale for a 2011 drone attack in Yemen that killed a U.S. citizen and alleged terrorist mastermind.

Let’s review some of the most fascinating drones Pop-up drone Created by Bird Aerospace, this drone fires 300 feet into the air, self-assembles while mid-air, and can navigate around for up to 3 hours. Wow. It can stream HD video back to a pilot who’s 20 miles away. Footage gathered from the flight can be stored on an SD card inside the drone. Sonar Drone PescadAeroPescadAero is a flying sonar apparatus that specializes in completing tasks while in coastal territories. The drone can land in any body of water to gather footage with the camera. While the camera bobs about on...

In the skies above Yemen, the Pentagon’s armed drones have stopped flying, a result of the ban on American military drone strikes imposed by the government there after a number of botched operations in recent years killed Yemeni civilians. But the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone war in Yemen continues. In Pakistan, the C.I.A. remains in charge of drone operations, and may continue to be long after American troops have left Afghanistan. And in Jordan, it is the C.I.A. rather than the Pentagon that is running a program to arm and train Syrian rebels — a concession to the Jordanian government,...

A retired Marine with nearly two decades of aviation experience has stepped forward with a compelling theory about a mysterious plane that was spotted flying over Texas last month. On March 10, photographers Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett took pictures of three puzzling aircraft flying over Amarillo, and posted them online in hopes of identifying the planes. Retired-Marine James Vineyard has submitted one of the more interesting explanations, telling the Houston Chronicle he believes they are SR-72 Blackbirds - a spy plane that can cross the U.S. in less than an hour, unmanned.

first time. Aviation Week & Space Technology journalist Bill Sweetman has posted photos taken March 10 by two veteran sky watchers, Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett. In his blog post of March 28, Sweetman writes that he and two Aviation Week editors agree that the photos depict "something real." In other words, these pictures aren't easily explained away by reports of known military flights or the work of someone who got carried away with Photoshop. So what can aviation experts say about the object in the photos? "The photos tell us more about what the mysterious stranger isn't than what...

You have to hand it to the game-makers in the two major parties: they have done an outstanding job of putting the problems of the world into a convenient left-right paradigm. To the average conservative out there, Republican equals conservative, which equals good – while Democrat equals liberal, which equals bad. And to the average liberal out there, Democrat equals liberal, which equals good – while Republican equals conservative, which equals bad. So, all the party game-makers have to do is paint the other guys as liberal or conservative and all of the sheeple within the two parties will blindly...

‘Ukrainian’ drone downed above Moldova’s breakaway region A drone has been shot down over Transdniestr, Moldova’s breakaway region, the region’s security service has reported on its website. On March 23, the pilotless aircraft was photographing and videoing the republic. Transdniestr special services recovered the video record from the drone, the statement says. According to preliminary information, the unmanned aircraft was launched from Ukraine’s soil by a group of people allegedly linked to Ukraine’s security service, the Interior Ministry’s General Staff or supporters of ultra-nationalist movement Right Sector for an intelligence-gathering operation. Currently, Transdniestr’s security service is working on the identification...

Hong Kong Jeff Bezos at Amazon hasn't done it. Nor has Fred Smith at FedEx FDX +0.21% or Scott Davis at UPS. No American CEO has persuaded Washington to relax its chokehold on commercial drone use in the United States. But this month a 29-year-old Austrian entrepreneur living here in Asia broke Washington's drone monopoly, winning a court case that may clear the way for drones to deliver packages to your doorstep. Overseas and at home, the U.S. government has pioneered the use of drones for military, intelligence and law-enforcement purposes. But while other countries have applied drones—usually smaller, simpler,...

Bamako - A notorious Islamist militia leader known as "Red Beard" has been killed in French missile strikes in north-eastern Mali, a senior Malian army officer told AFP. Omar Ould Hamaha was a commander of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim), armed groups which occupied northern Mali for almost ten months in 2012. "Omar Ould Hamaha, the terrorist of Malian nationality, is one of ten terrorists killed last week by French planes," the officer said late on Thursday. Hamaha's death was confirmed by a regional security source who said...

A United States surveillance drone has been intercepted above the Ukranian region of Crimea, a Russian state arms and technology group said Friday. "The drone was flying at about 4,000 metres (12,000 feet) and was virtually invisible from the ground. It was possible to break the link with US operators with complex radio-electronic" technology, said Rostec in a statement. The drone fell "almost intact into the hands of self-defence forces" added Rostec, which said it had manufactured the equipment used to down the aircraft, but did not specify who was operating it.

A man has been arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle drugs into a prison using a drone, Australian police say. The drone was "hovering in the vicinity of a prison" in Melbourne on Sunday afternoon, police said in a statement. The drone appeared to have "four engines" and was carrying "a small quantity of drugs", police added. Australia's parliament recently held a roundtable on drones and privacy. During the roundtable, Brad Mason, secretary of the Australian Certified UAV Operators Association, said there was "a lot of illegal and unauthorised use of UAVs. "We understand that the regulator is doing its...

A Texas firm has revealed a personal security drone with a stun gun capable of unleashing 80,000 volts. The firm showed off the drone in a series of shocking demonstrations bringing a volunteer to the ground. It says the drone uses a smart app to track intruders, and once it had received the go ahead from a human operator, it fires taser darts and unleashes 80,000 volts. full headline:The app controlled smart security drone with a STUN GUN built in to zap intruders with an 80,000 volt dart

WASHINGTON – A federal judge has dismissed the Federal Aviation Administration's only fine against a commercial drone user on the grounds that the small drone was no different than a model aircraft, a decision that appears to undermine the agency's power to keep a burgeoning civilian drone industry out of the skies. Patrick Geraghty, a National Transportation Safety Board administrative law judge, said in his order dismissing the $10,000 fine that the FAA has no regulations governing model aircraft flights or for classifying model aircraft as an unmanned aircraft. FAA officials said they were reviewing the decision and had no...

You're gonna want to steer clear of this CUPID. The Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone, or "stun copter," can deliver 80,000 volts of pure projectile terror directly into the skin of an ill-intentioned hoodlum. This is serious business for Chaotic Moon, the folks behind SharkPunch and the Pizza Hut touch table. The Austin-based design studio created the flying machine as a tech demo, but CUPID could be quickly brought to production whenever a personal security or law enforcement client sees fit. This prototype unit is based on a Tarot Hexacopter, originally designed to carry a digital SLR for video and...