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Amateur drone hobbyists, beware! If you happen to make one red cent from any video filmed with your small drone – or if Uncle Sam thinks you are -- you might soon receive an unwelcome notice in the mail or an ominous visitor at your door. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is cracking down on what it deems to be “commercial use” of drones or “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” (UAVs), as it prefers to call them. The agency is turning amateur hobbyists and small business owners into potential outlaws should they ignore the FAA’s demands to “cease and desist” from operating...

It was a typical little news story on Washington’s drone wars -- six paragraphs from Yemen, the sort of minimalist report that, in these years, has also regularly come out of Pakistan or even, from time to time, Somalia. “A U.S. drone attack in Yemen killed four suspected al-Qaeda militants on Saturday in the southern province of Shabwa, local Yemeni security officials told Reuters.” Who those “militants” really were we seldom know; there’s rarely follow-up in the mainstream media. It’s just another barely noticed mini-triumph in Washington’s ongoing “covert” drone wars in the Greater Middle East. Those wars have been...

Drones have been seen flying over several sensitive landmarks in Paris in a night-time mystery that French police say is being taken seriously. At least five of the unmanned aerial machines were spotted between midnight on Monday and 0600 on Tuesday, and none of the operators has been caught. The first appeared over the US embassy and there were later sightings near the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Concorde. French police believe the drone flights could be linked. Small drones are easy to buy but their appearance in recent months over sensitive locations has worried French authorities.

When people discuss business uses for drones, they tend to jump to the novelty end of the consumer market—from the drone hobbyist with a GoPro camera to a complete overhaul of delivery services. “In the press, you always hear that Amazon will deliver a book, or pizzas will come to your house,” says Amar Hanspal, senior vice president at Autodesk, during a recent discussion on drones at Gigaom Structure Connect. “That is a cute thing to talk about, but the real action is in B2B industrial applications. That is where we’re watching the democratization of a broad use of drones...

YORK --- A woman in York called law enforcement last week to report a very unusual peeping tom. The woman told the York County Sheriff's Office she woke up around 2 a.m. on Feb. 11, and saw a light outside her window on Lomita Road. When she got up to investigate, she saw that the light was attached to what the incident report describes as a flying "drone." The drone then flew away from the woman's home toward a Duke Energy building. By the time the woman contacted sheriff's deputies on Monday, she said she had already contacted Duke as...

Drone on, the government says. Just not through the night sky. Or close to an airport. Or out of the operator's sight. And probably not winging its way with a pizza or package, any time soon. Long-anticipated rules proposed Sunday will open an era in which small (under 55 pounds) commercial unmanned aircraft perform routine tasks — crop monitoring, aerial photography, inspections of bridges and cell towers, and much more. But not right away. Final rules are probably two to three years away.

A newly leaked document by the Federal Aviation Administration may offer a first look at upcoming regulations for drones, and the laws discussed appear to be somewhat favorable for photographers who fly camera drones.

Drone-safety debates have inflamed after a pilot reported having a close encounter with a remote-controlled device at 4,000 feet while navigating a Southwest Airlines flightto LAX. The plane was making its final descent into the Los Angeles airport Sunday when the pilot reported the close call, according to audio obtained by NBC News:

Twice authorities have intercepted drones being used to deliver contraband into prisons, leaving German states planning new ways of keeping criminal activity away from criminals. But is the law behind the curve on this new technology? The justice ministry in Lower Saxony said that in future it might deploy so-called “drone-trackers”—devices equipped with infrared, night vision and sometimes even radar—at prisons. “We’re aware of this problem and are keeping an eye on it,” said Lower Saxony justice minister Antje Niewisch-Lennartz. Drones have only recently appeared on governments’ radars. At the end of January, a drone carrying a package containing a...

The Obama administration earlier this year turned down a request from Jordan for Predator spy drones that would help it locate targets in the war against the Islamic State. The refusal, disclosed by a House Armed Services Committee, member, is gaining importance today since Jordan has emerged as a critical player in a U.S.-led coalition to destroy the terror group. On Tuesday, the Islamic State released a video of its execution by fire of a capture Jordanian pilot. Jordan retaliated on Thursdaywith F-16 air strikes on the Syrian town of Raqqa and is vowing a relentless war against the Islamic...

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.

President Obama on Tuesday said the U.S. needs to create a “regulatory structure” for the domestic use of drones — one day after a small, unmanned quad copter was discovered on the South Lawn of the White House. “There are incredibly useful functions that these drones can play in terms of farmers who are managing crops and conservationists who want to take stock of wildlife,” Obama told CNN. He noted that companies like Amazon are experimenting with using drones to deliver packages. “But we don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all for it,” he added. The president...

One of the main challenges NASA engineers face is the very low density of the Martian atmosphere. To be able to lift off in such a thin atmosphere, the blades of the Mars Helicopter have to spin much faster than here on Earth, a report by Discovery News explains. Even operating only a few minutes a day, NASA says the solar-powered helicopter could enormously accelerate the pace of scientific discovery on the planet. Some envision swarms of these inexpensively built, automated drones zipping daily over the Martian landscape, collecting geological and atmospheric data over a large area. Given the fast...

At a time when America's ability to track and respond to dangerous international threats is already spread thin, Yemen as it exists today is on the verge of collapse amid reports that violence from Shiite Muslim rebels has forced the country's top leaders to resign... Prime Minister Khaled Bahah also announced his resignation, saying Yemen's leaders did not want to be dragged into "an unconstructive political maze," according to the BBC. Instability in Yemen, which had been divided into North and South Yemen before 1990, threatens both regional and world security... Attacks by Houthi rebels -- who are thought to...

Too many missions and too few pilots are threatening the ‘readiness and combat capability’ of America’s unmanned Air Force, according to an internal memo. The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of drones is being strained to the “breaking point,” according to senior military officials and an internal service memo acquired by The Daily Beast. And it’s happening right when the unmanned aircraft are most needed to fight ISIS. The Air Force has enough MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. It just doesn’t have the manpower to operate those machines. The Air Force’s situation is so dire that Air Combat Command (ACC),...

The drone needs to be able to fly indoors at speeds up to 45 mph, automatically navigating through complex indoor environments without communication with outside operators, DARPA says.

While drones may be a must-have present for thousands of people this Christmas, it appears they are far less popular with kangaroos. This video shows the incredible moment a kangaroo punched a drone that was getting too up close and personal out of the sky.

There are lots of hypocrisies surrounding the recently released executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. But they pale in comparison to the current Democratic silence about President Barack Obama's policy of targeted drone assassinations. Since 2004, drones have killed an estimated 2,400 to 3,888 individuals in Pakistan alone, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. An estimated 345 to 553 individuals in Yemen have been killed in drone strikes over the same period. The BIJ reports that the Obama administration has "markedly stepped up the use of drones. Since...

The U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command’s recent announcement that it has successfully completed tests on its GhostSwimmer unmanned underwater vehicle prompted an immediate rebuttal from Russia: They, too, are close to unmanned submarine drones. The U.S. Navy first trumpeted its successful test on Friday.

In the aftermath of the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report focused on Bush-era techniques, the Obama administration's own counterterrorism practices are coming under increased scrutiny. Gruesome details of forced rectal feedings without medical necessity, waterboarding, and sleep deprivation were chronicled in the report's executive summary, dredging up harsh practices employed during the George W. Bush administration. But on Capitol Hill, Republicans charge that the Central Intelligence Agency's approach to counterterrorism has not grown more humane—it's merely shifted. "Obviously, we don't interrogate prisoners anymore," says Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who chaired the Intelligence Committee during the Bush administration....