Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Watch out, enemy drones. The U.S. military is developing laser weapons to smite you. The Office of Naval Research announced last week that it is building a laser weapon that will be able to shoot down aerial drones, spelling big trouble for any enemy who tries to target the U.S. Marines. GBAD – Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move – is a laser weapon designed to be installed on the Marines’ Humvees, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and other light tactical ground vehicles. Intended to provide an affordable alternative to traditional firepower, GBADs could prevent enemy drones from tracking and targeting...

Drone proponents prefer using the term Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or UAS for Unmanned Aerial System (latter term includes the entirety of the flying vehicle and the ground-base communications connection connecting the two). Whatever your preferred verbiage is, drones are poised to become a huge global business and the aerial devices are going to have a significant impact across a wide variety of industries. Historically, the military has been the biggest user/purchaser of drones; The Wall Street Journal estimated that the U.S. military spent about $3 billion on drone programs in 2012. And many aerospace companies continue to develop highly...

A member of the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) has threatened that the organization would soon use unmanned drones to attack Israel. The IS member, a Canadian who left his country to fight alongside the IS in the areas of Iraq and Syria it declared to be an Islamic Caliphate, claimed on Twitter that the group was developing these drones and that they would be unveiled in the near future. He further said that engineers who studied in the West are working on the drones. IS, he wrote, is expected to make use of these drones to attack...

US drones fired on an Islamic extremist mortar position in northern Iraq on Tuesday to protect Kurdish forces battling to rescue a group of Yazidi civilian refugees, the military said. The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the region's most powerful Sunni jihadist group, has driven thousands of members of the Yazidi minority from their homes and is besieging the refugees on an exposed mountain. Last week, the United States launched an air campaign to break the siege of Mount Sinjar, bring humanitarian relief to the Yazidis and support Kurdish troops protecting their capital Arbil. "US military...

Drones -- unmanned flying machines -- will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above. These fears aren't groundless. President Bush approved the use of armed drones against suspected terrorists overseas, and President Obama vastly increased their use. Drones have killed thousands of people in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, countries against which we have not declared war. Drones keep getting more sophisticated. The Air Force is now developing what it calls MAVs, Micro Air Vehicles, tiny drones that can quietly search for an individual terrorist...

Uh oh. Looks like ISIS is taunting Big Guy: “I say to America, that the Islamic Caliphate has been established, and we will not stop,” Abu Mosa told Vice. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq.”“We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House,” he continued. That’s not smart, I guess they don’t know how truly thin-skinned he is. And how much he hates it when his vacation is interrupted.So watch out ISIS, Big Guy is keeping his eye...

Professor and political activist Cornel West declared President Barack Obama a “war criminal,” arguing that his support of Israel and his drone policy make him complicit in the deaths of innocent people. The controversial activist made the comments at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, DC on Saturday, according to Talking Points Memo. West began his speech by pointing to the deteriorating situation in Gaza, where more than 1,800 Palestinians and more than 60 Israelis have been killed, criticizing Israel’s offensive in the region in front of a “Free Palestine” banner. His comments regarding President Obama begin at around the three-minute...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Senator Charles Schumer is calling for tighter federal regulations on drones. Schumer says he wants the Federal Aviation Administration and the Commerce Department to put several regulations into effect by the end of the year. He says small remote controlled aircraft have become hazardous in New York after a court decision to limit the federal government's ability to regulate them. The senator says private drones have benefits, but sometimes interfere with other aircraft and can be used to spy on people or deliver illegal drugs. Schumer says the FAA should consider several rules including a ban on drone usage by...

Model aircraft able to do what dogs, volunteers, and helicopters could not After authorities spent three days searching for a missing, elderly man in Wisconsin, a hobbyist launched his personal drone in a volunteer search effort and was able to locate the lost individual 20 minutes post launch. During the initial search phase, authorities used dogs, helicopters, and employed local volunteers to comb the Fitchburg countryside in search of Guillermo DeVenecia, an 82-year-old man suffering from Alzheimer’s. David Lesh, a drone enthusiast who uses his personal model aircraft to make videos for his skiing and snowboarding business, was in town...

Archeologists have stumbled upon a site where ancient people observed the stars thousands of years ago in Peru, a country famous for using drones to help uncover and map archeological treasures, as Reuters reported. Excavators working on a complex at Licurnique, in the country’s northern region, have uncovered evidence of an “astronomical laboratory,” that dates back between 3,500 and 4,000 years, according to Peru This Week.

With all the talk about PODs (personally owned drones) that could fly over your fence and peek into your pool or hover above your property, I was wondering if it could be SHOT down?? Is there an expectation of airspace owner ship / privacy immediately over your property? How far AGL (above ground level)is NOT FAA jurisdiction?I believe that this will be the next step into property rights intrusion.

They’re private eyes in the skies. Investigators are taking drones to new heights — using the remote-controlled aircraft to catch New Yorkers cheating on spouses, lying about disabilities and endangering their kids. “People want you to believe there’s all this negativity associated with drones . . . but they could be a very helpful tool,” said Olwyn Triggs, a gumshoe for 23 years and president of Professional Investigators Network Inc. in Glen Cove, LI. Triggs recently used a drone to find an upstate man suspected of insurance fraud. Signs on his rural property warned that trespassers would be shot, so she sent...

Iran reportedly has sent military advisers into Iraq and dispatched the head of its infamous Quds Force to help Baghdad strategize in its fight against Sunni militants, as the United States takes similar steps despite concern about Tehran's involvement.... Fox News confirms that Iran is flying surveillance drones over Iraq, something the U.S. also is doing. The New York Times reported that Iran, in addition, is sending tons of military equipment to the fellow Shiite-led government in Iraq and is dispatching military advisers. According to the Times, about a dozen officers from Iran's Quds Force have been sent into the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has armed drones flying over Baghdad to protect U.S. troops that recently arrived to assess Iraq's deteriorating security, the Pentagon said Friday. The military for more than a week has been flying manned and unmanned aircraft over Iraq, averaging a few dozen sorties daily for reconnaissance.

The National Park Service on Friday announced it was moving to ban drones on all its lands.. The move comes amid growing concern about hobbyists using drones to create dramatic videos. The ban would cover more than 84 million acres of public land. The director of the parks service cited safety concerns as well as potential harm to wildlife. "Imagine you're a big wall climber in Yosemite working on a four-day climb up El Capitan, and you're hanging off a bulb, ready to make a [difficult] move, and an unmanned aircraft flies up beside you and is hovering a few...

The U.S. government can kill an American citizen abroad if that person is plotting to attack Americans and U.S. authorities can't apprehend them, according to a newly declassified government memo. The document laid out the legal rationale for a drone-missile strike that killed terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. The 2010 memo, which a court released Monday, has been at the heart of a debate about the legality of the U.S. government ordering deadly force from a drone against a U.S. citizen overseas. The strike...

SAUSALITO, Calif. (CNN/KRON) — A swanky California hotel is offering decadent, high-tech accommodation in the hopes of luring high-end guests. That includes a unique way of delivering room service, via a drone. You can see in the video that the drone is holding two bottles of champagne — on their way to guests. It’s a flying bell hop. “I think we’re going to set ourselves apart,” said hotel manager Sieste Nabben. Nabben is the general manager of Casa Madrona, the hotel and spa that is offering the drone delivery service. They are located in Downtown Sausalito, right off the water....

More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic, according to a year-long Washington Post investigation. Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Defense Department has enough forces in the Persian Gulf to conduct airstrikes that would probably prevent Sunni insurgents from marching into Baghdad, but other missions would be far more complex and risk drawing the United States back into an Iraqi civil war, according to retired military commanders. The Pentagon announced that the USS Mesa Verde, an amphibious transport dock ship, had arrived in the gulf on Monday to join an aircraft carrier, a destroyer and a guided-missile cruiser. Together, the warships carry a large number of fighter jets and search-and-rescue aircraft, along with Tomahawk cruise missiles and other ordnance,...

Multiple videos have been posted online showing what uploaders described as hockey fans destroying a Los Angeles Police Department drone outside the Staples Center Friday night after the LA Kings won the NHL's Stanley Cup. Riot police were called in to break up what the LA Times described as a "melee" outside the arena following the King's victory over the New York Rangers. In one clip posted online, a drone can be seen hovering over the crowd of hockey fans before it was knocked out of the sky by people throwing shoes and clothing: