Free Republic

San Bernardino County supervisors unanimously agreed Tuesday to offer $75,000 in rewards for help in tracking down drone operators who interfered with firefighters during three major wildfires this summer.. After the unmanned devices were spotted flying above flames and smoke from the blazes this year — which altogether burned about 36,000 acres — fire crews were forced to ground water-dropping aircraft. Officials said the delays allowed the fires to spread, resulting in devastating property losses. ... And for about 25 minutes, officials had to halt tankers over the July 17 North fire, which jumped Interstate 15 near California 138 and...

Sweat the small stuff. That’s the unofficial motto for this year’s edition of the military exercise Black Dart, a two-week test of tactics and technologies to combat hostile drones that begins Monday on the Point Mugu range at Naval Base Ventura County in California. The military categorizes Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) by size and capability, from Group 5 drones that weigh more than 1,320 pounds and can fly above 18,000 feet like the Reaper, down to Group 1, mini- and micro-drones less than 20 pounds that fly lower than 1,200 feet. Previous Black Darts have covered threats to troops overseas...

The father of an 18-year-old boy who built a drone with a gun attached and posted video of it on YouTube with the title "flying gun" says they broke no laws. The footage appears to show a gun affixed to a drone hovering several feet off of the ground in a wooded area. The gun appears to discharge several times while the drone is in flight. In the posting, Austin Haughwout, 18, describes the device as a "homemade multi-rotor with a semi-automatic handgun mounted on it."

Swiss Post, Swiss WorldCargo and Matternet are jointly testing the commercial use of logistics drones. The three companies are investigating specific uses of drone technology and examining the cost-effectiveness of these business ideas. They will be carrying out drone tests in July 2015 for this purpose. The widespread use of drones is not expected within the next five years. The focus is primarily on their use in exceptional cases or the transport of special items. In spring 2015, Swiss Post, Swiss WorldCargo (the air freight division of Swiss International Air Lines) and Matternet (a logistics drone manufacturer based in California)...

Top terrorist in Yemen now heads 'steadfastly to God' . . . or somewhere. Drone strike kills Al Qaeda's No 2 in commandIt seems like we get these number two guys a lot, but in fairness, we did get that number one guy some time back. Even so, the more dead Al Qaeda the better. So nice job, America, and no apologies for the use of the drone. The objective of war is not to die for your country, as Gen. Patton is rumored to have said. It’s to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his - not...

...Enrique Iglesias was recovering on Sunday after some of his fingers were sliced when he grabbed a drone during a concert in Tijuana, Mexico... “During the show a drone is used to get crowd shots and some nights Enrique grabs the drone to give the audience a Point of View shot. Something went wrong and he had an accident,” the statement read. “He decided to go on and continued playing for 30 minutes while the bleeding continued throughout the show ..."

China tried to electronically jam U.S. drone flights over the South China Sea in a bid to thwart spying on disputed island military construction, U.S. officials said. Global Hawk long-range surveillance drones were targeted by the jamming in at least one incident near the disputed Spratly Islands, where China is building military facilities on Fiery Cross Reef. Disclosure of the jamming came as a U.S. Navy P-8 surveillance flight on Wednesday was challenged eight times by the Chinese military to leave the same area. “This is the Chinese navy … This is the Chinese navy … Please go away …...

US military scientists have invented a miniature drone that fits in the palm of a hand, ready to be dropped from the sky like a mobile phone with wings. ... With no motor and only about 10 parts, the Cicada resembles a paper airplane with a circuit board. It is designed to glide to programmed GPS coordinates after being dropped from an aircraft, a balloon or a larger drone, researchers said. ...outfitted with a range of light-weight sensors, including microphones. "They are robotic carrier pigeons. You tell them where to go, and they will go there," Edwards said.

The 2016 presidential election is attracting an unusually large number of hopefuls. The Republicans will probably field more than a dozen candidates and the Democrats, as many as five. Presently, very few of these supposed contenders have a real chance of becoming president. Republicans Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz are long shots. On the Democratic side, that term applies to everyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton.. ~snip~ If you tell them in private, "You do not have a chance to be president," they will point to underdogs who won, such as Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, or front-runners who...

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday that drones will be an issue for federal, state and local security during the 2016 presidential race. Johnson made the comments in response to a question from NBC's Chuck Todd, who asked him whether the Secret Service was "panicked" about the proliferation of drones. Todd said he wondered how it would effect security at outdoor campaign events in 2016. “It is definitely an issue,” Johnson replied on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”He then went into an anecdote about a drone flying over his head at a graduation ceremony. “I was giving a commencement address a...

Hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the show brought together drone makers, military types, and business leaders from around the globe. (Google founder Larry Page was spotted briefly on the showroom floor.) All were looking for the next thing in UAV design. Here’s a look at some of the most interesting, innovative and outlandish drones Defense One ran across. 1. The SnowGoose BRAVO from Canada-based Mist Mobility Integrated Systems Technology, or MMIST, is an update to the company’s SnowGoose CQ-10A cargo drone. The original played a role in U.S. Special Operations Command missions for years. The Bravo...

China’s military plans to produce nearly 42,000 land-based and sea-based unmanned weapons and sensor platforms as part of its continuing, large-scale military buildup, the Pentagon’s annual report on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) disclosed Friday.

Heartbreaking news, and a demonstration of the limit of remote-control warfare. The US drone program in Pakistan inadvertently killed two Western hostages being held by al-Qaeda, including an American whose family had repeatedly appealed for his release based on his age and health: A U.S. drone strike in January targeting a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and Italian being held hostage by the group, senior Obama administration officials said.The killing of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto is the first known instance in which the U.S. has accidentally...

Can the president kill you? The short answer is: Yes, but not legally. Yet, President Obama has established a secret process that involves officials from the Departments of Justice and Defense, the CIA, and the White House senior staff whereby candidates are proposed for execution, and the collective wisdom of the officials then recommends execution to the president, who then accepts or rejects the recommendation. If the recommendation is to kill and the president rejects the recommendation, the CIA is directed to arrest the person. If the president accepts the recommendation to kill, then death is ordered. This is not...

Click here for video. King Kong's got nothing on her. A chimp being filmed by a drone for a television show based out of a zoo in the Netherlands decided she wasn't too keen on the invasion of privacy and swatted the drone from the sky, but the finished film was "special" nonetheless, according to the zoo. When a drone hovered over the chimpanzee exhibit at Burger's Zoo, while filming "Burgers' Zoo Natuurlijk" Friday, "the intelligent primates immediately discovered the spying little plane and right away armed themselves with long sticks against this inquisitive electronic intruder," the zoo's website said....

First they supplanted secretaries, factory workers and store clerks. Now robots are setting their sensors on one of the world’s oldest jobs: herding sheep. Michael Thomson says his homemade drone is the fastest way to move the roughly 1,000 sheep on his sister’s spread in Dannevirke, New Zealand, to greener pastures. Workers on the 200-acre ranch typically have used horses or all-terrain vehicles to herd the animals and check on their condition. Those all are tasks his quadcopter, a helicopter with four rotors, can do in a fraction of the time, says Mr. Thomson, 22 years old. “There are limitations,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department says it can find only four emails sent between former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and her staff concerning drone strikes and certain U.S. surveillance programs, and those notes have little to do with either subject. She asks for a phone call in one, a phone number in another. She seeks advice on .. information leaks, and accidentally replies .. about decorations. The messages also reveal Clinton used an iPad to email while secretary of state .. The four emails were obtained by The Associated Press under a 2013 Freedom of Information Act request ..

VANCOUVER – Spurned by U.S. regulators, Amazon.com has turned to the one country where flying delivery robots are still welcome: Canada. On Monday, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper revealed that the online retail giant is testing its latest prototypes for package-carrying drones at a top-secret site in British Columbia. “We are rapidly experimenting and iterating on Amazon Prime Air … including outdoors at a rural test site in Canada,” wrote Amazon spokesperson Kristen Kish in an email to the National Post. --- Located a mere 600 metres from the U.S. border, the Canadian testing grounds fulfill a lingering threat by Amazon...

The CIA official who led the hunt for Osama Bin Laden is being removed from his post, it has been revealed. The head of the agency's Counter­terrorism Center, who also directed drone campaigns which killed thousands, has been in the position for nine years and is described as a 'true hero'.

The U.S. has removed all remaining personnel from Yemen as Shiite rebels controlling the country’s capital called for others to join its battle against government forces. The State Department said in a statement it is removing personnel due to the “deteriorating security situation” in the country. The State Department also said it will continue to engage the Yemeni people and international community to support the country’s political transition. […] The U.N. Security Council has called for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Yemen as well. The closed-door meeting is expected to take place Sunday. …