Free Republic

Pilots around the United States have reported a surge in near-collisions and other dangerous encounters with small drones in the past six months at a time when the Federal Aviation Administration is gradually opening the nation’s skies to remotely controlled aircraft, according to FAA records. Since June 1, commercial airlines, private pilots and air-traffic controllers have alerted the FAA to 25 episodes in which small drones came within a few seconds or a few feet of crashing into much larger aircraft, the records show. Many of the close calls occurred during takeoffs and landings at the nation’s busiest airports, presenting...

It is a battle to send a drone supersonic - and pits China against Britain. Experts have claimed that China's drone, called Dark Sword, is under secret development. It was unveiled in 2006 at an airshow, but has since disappeared from public view.

Iranian state TV has released video footage claiming the country has successfully replicated a highly sophisticated U.S. stealth drone that crashed over Iran in 2011. The video released Wednesday includes both aerial and ground footage, demonstrating a black pilotless aircraft closely resembling a RQ-170 sentinel stealth drone, flying over a mountainous area of Iran before touching down at an unmanned air base. Segments of the video appear to be genuine, David Cenciotti, founder of “The Aviatonist” a military aviation blog said, while some of the frames showing the drone landing appear to be computer generated, showing a smaller prototype model...

Almost three years ago, Iran reportedly downed a US drone. The RQ-170 Sentinel recon drone that was reportedly captured has apparently been reverse-engineered, and now, as Reuters reports, Iran state news agency IRNA reports the drone-clone has taken its first flight. Iran's Supreme Leader noted, "Today is a very sweet and unforgettable day for me." Of course, this 'news' should be taken with a modest pinch of salt but, as with everything in foreign policy these days, Brigadier General Ali Hajizadeh states that "a film of the flight will be released soon."  The clip of the downed drone from 2011......

China has successfully tested a homemade laser defense system specially targeting small-scale drones flying at low attitude. The machine is able to shoot down various small aircraft within a two-kilometer radius and can do so in five seconds after locating its target, said a statement released Sunday by the China Academy of Engineering Physics, one of the system's co-developers. Characterized by its speed, precision and low noise, the system is designed to destroy unmanned, small-scale drones flying within an altitude of 500-m and at a speed below 50m/s, it said. The new laser system, which will either be installed or...

An investigation has been launched after France's state-owned EDF power company said unidentified drones had flown over seven of its nuclear plants. The first unmanned aircraft was spotted on 5 October and there had been further sightings up to 20 October, EDF said. Who is behind the drones is unclear but pressure group Greenpeace has denied any involvement. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says measures are being taken to "neutralise" the drones. Under French law, no aircraft is allowed to enter a 5km-wide (three-mile) zone around a nuclear plant, nor fly below 1,000m (3,300ft) there. The air force is responsible for...

Police brass haven’t talked about drones as potential weapons, until now, CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues reported Wednesday. The NYPD is actively looking for ways to stop an attack by a drone. The department told Pegues there is no intelligence showing an imminent threat, but over the last year the country’s largest police force has been increasingly concerned about a potential terror attack from the air by a drone. “We look at it as something that could be a terrorist’s tool,” Deputy Chief Salvatore DiPace said. “We’ve seen some video where the drone was flying at different targets along the...

Let’s kick the Halloween week off with a couple of classic themed costumes: 1. The radio-controlled witch costume, designed by Otto Dieffenbach III, as seen flying over the ocean near Carlsbad California earlier this month: 2. The Religion of Pieces costume, designed by a radio controlled bomb compliments of the U.S. Air Force, as seen on a former member of ISIS, flying somewhere in the skies near Kurdistan earlier this month. Whichever costume you choose, please be sure to keep your head while wearing it, as these are actual flying models and may be dangerous if used improperly. Because what...

Helicopter-type Gorizont drone © ITAR-TASS/Valery Matytsin (archive) MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. Ship designers are advancing the blueprint for a new-generation, multi-purpose warship to join Russia’s navy. Features of the planned corvette are still under wraps but the vessel is thought likely to carry a helicopter-type Gorizont drone within its armory. Planners at Russia’s Central Marine Engineering Design Bureau Almaz and United Shipbuilding Corporation expect the keel to be laid next year, possibly at St. Petersburg’s Severny shipyard though it is still unconfirmed. “As technical design is in progress I will not reveal the features of this new vessel but it...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A hawk swooping in and attacking a drone while it was flying over a park in Massachusetts Wednesday was captured on video. (HT Drudge)

Gwyneth Paltrow's Los Angeles neighborhood is home to some unwelcoming artwork. Posters plastered on telephone poles and utility boxes mock the Oscar-winning actress's support for President Obama ahead of his visit to her home for a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday. There appear to be two different posters, each tacked up in multiple areas around Brentwood. One features a photo of Obama, torn away from the American flag. The poster reads "Conscious Uncoupling," a phrase popularized by Paltrow and her ex, rocker Chris Martin, when they called it quits

Video at source. Thousands of demonstrators turned out in downtown Hong Kong on September 29 to support a protest over Beijing’s decision to reject calls for open nominations for the election of Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017. In this footage, a drone captured the scale of the crowd making its way through the skyscrapers of the former British colony’s central business district.

Aerial footage filmed by a drone shows the large number of people joining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

"LOWER TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) — A New Jersey man was arrested after police say he shot down a neighbor’s remote control drone."

Drone Exemptions for Hollywood Pave the Way for Widespread Use By BROOKS BARNESSEPT. 25, 2014 LOS ANGELES — The commercial use of drones in American skies took a leap forward on Thursday with the help of Hollywood. The Federal Aviation Administration, responding to applications from seven filmmaking companies and pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America, said six of those companies could use camera-equipped drones on certain movie and television sets. Until now, the F.A.A. has not permitted commercial drone use except for extremely limited circumstances in wilderness areas of Alaska. Put bluntly, this is the first time that...

Meet Nixie, a wearable camera that flies off your wrist and turns into a remote-controlled quadcopter. It's the bizarre-yet-appealing wearable camera drone nobody asked for... and now we kind of want it. Intel is holding a competition to encourage new wearable technology ideas, and the Nixie is one of the finalists. So far, it's still in development, so the flying wristlet camera is rough around the edges. Team captain Christoph Kohstall eventually wants you to be able to send the the Nixie flying with a gesture. It would recognize where you're standing, snap a picture, then return to the wrist,...

A small, hobby-sized robot could herald the pilot of the future. At just 39.7cm (15.6in) tall, PIBOT -- a portmanteau of "pilot" and "robot" and not to be confused with Raspberry Pi-powered PiBot or 3D printer PiBot -- has been trained by researchers at KAIST to fly a human-sized aeroplane. The robot, presented at IROS Chicago earlier this month, has a video camera built into its "face", with software built in for runway detection and other visual cues. The rest of the buttons, sticks and switches allow the robot to control throttle, braking pitch, yaw, altitude, velocity, and direction, information...

Iran calls on the United Nations’ atomic agency to condemn Israel over the drone Iran downed above the Natanz uranium enrichment site. Snip .... accused Israel of a "flagrant violation" of the Islamic Republic's territorial integrity "in contravention of the principles of international law and provision of the United Nations charter." The Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Air Force claimed that the drone was an Israeli-made "Hermes" drone with a maximum flight range of 1,600 km (994 miles) and a 800-km (500 mile) combat radius. Israeli officials declined to comment on the allegation by its arch foe, which the Jewish state and...

(WXYZ) Allen Park, Mich. - A mystery drone is the talk of Allen Park, as a family there watched the flying device land in their backyard. The operator--nowhere to be found. "We freaked out," said homeowner Roman Urista. He and his family were sitting in the backyard around a fire recently, when the drone hovered overhead, lights on and propellers roaring. It crash landed in the family's yard, still buzzing. "It didn't look like a hobby toy to me," said Urista. The Drone, valued at around $500, was equipped with an onboard camera. The family was scared to go near...

It looks like Stonehenge. A doughnut. A giant sand castle. Those were just some of the comments a new drone video taken with a GoPro camera of the futuristic Apple Campus 2 was garnering after the eight-minute raw piece was posted to YouTube. As of Monday, the aerial image of the campus under construction in Cupertino on Tantau Avenue had more than 1.3 million views and 500 comments. "Wow, this looks huge," Dustin W. Stout wrote in the comments section of the video. "I've seen mockups previously of what the site is going to look like, but seeing it like...