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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.

At some point Sunday night, someone flew a small drone onto the grounds of the White House. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the drone -- or, to remove the ambiguity of that overly broad term, the small quadcopter -- posed no threat to the building or its inhabitants. The incident raises the question: Could a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pose such a threat? To answer that, we need to know the answer to three other questions. How far can a UAV fly? How is it controlled? And: What can it carry? Could a larger drone...

A ribbon-cutting is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 18, at Fort Huachuca to celebrate the creation of a new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle launch and recovery facility at the post. U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake are scheduled to attend the ceremony, which is being hosted by the 162nd Wing at the fort. The event will begin at 10 a.m. at the facility located at 14606 Air Guard Way. The ceremony will be hosted by the commander of the 162nd Wing, Col. Phil Purcell, and the commander of the 214th Reconnaissance Group, Lt. Col. Bobbi Doorenbos. Brig. Gen. Edward P. Maxwell,...

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...

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...

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...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Meet Nixie, a wearable camera concept 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 I 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...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — University of Texas Police are investigating the use of a drone over Darrell K. Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night during the Longhorns’ home opener. KXAN’s cameras spotted the drone flying above the stadium. The drone had red and green lights on it. It also had a camera. We weren’t the only ones who spotted it. Police did too. During the second half of the game, officers found the operator of the drone, made him land it and then took the man into custody. The department told KXAN the man was a UT student, and he...

Google has built and tested autonomous aerial vehicles, which it believes could be used for goods deliveries. Google said that its long-term goal was to develop drones that could be used for disaster relief by delivering aid to isolated areas. They could be used after earthquakes, floods, or extreme weather events, the company suggested, to take small items such as medicines or batteries to people in areas that conventional vehicles cannot reach. "Even just a few of these, being able to shuttle nearly continuously could service a very large number of people in an emergency situation," explained Astro Teller, Captain...

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...

Updated: August 1, 2014 11:32 AM The striking power and stealth of the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) concept was reduced to protect the role of the service’s next-generation of manned fighters, USNI News has learned. In particular, the change in UCLASS from a deep strike stealthy penetrator into the current lightly armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) focused aircraft was — in large part — to preserve a manned version of the F/A-XX replacement for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, several Navy, Pentagon and industry sources confirmed to USNI News. Industry, Pentagon and Navy...

An enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), apparently laden with explosives, was shot down by the IDF near the port city of Ashdod Monday morning. The interception caused a strong explosion to rock Ashdod and the air raid sirens went off. The Navy is reportedly looking for remains of the UAV. The Air Force conducted a rehearsal in April for an event in which an enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) infiltrates Israeli airspace. Both jet fighter and combat helicopter squadrons took part in the rehearsal, and practiced interception of a UAV near Israel's border, reported the Air Force website. The IAF...

Winners of the 2014 Dronestagram Photo Contest have finally been selected! Picking winners was a very difficult task especially because of the great quality of the photos that have been submitted. We tried to reward the photos that show the best the fantastic potential offered by drones in terms of image. It’s been an amazing first edition with many photos entered from everywhere in the world. Thank you all for joining in.We would like to extend a special thanks to our contest sponsors National Geograpic, Go Pro, Picanova, Droneshop and Parrot for generously offering amazing gifts !Are you one of...

Transcript: Shep Smith: Police in NY arrested two people for flying a drone over the George Washington Bridge not far from a police helicopter. The cops say the drone came within 800 feet of one of the police choppers before the pilot of the drone turned it away to avoid. Jonathan Hunt: One of the cops in this NYPD helicopter noticed some lights approaching just after midnight on Monday...on closer inspection he noticed those lights were actually a drone. Apparently the chopper pilot thought he needed to take evasive action to avoid being struck by that drone. He then followed...

According to a notice released by the United States Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration last Monday, the new regulations now include Amazon drones and even some toy planes. Before Monday's notice, the FAA had distinguished model aircraft from small drones according to their usage: commercial or recreational. Hobbyists were free to use model aircraft as they pleased but with these new rules, even toy quadcopters are considered drones and require users to have special permits to operate them. The Hubsan FPV X4 Mini RTF Quadcopter is targeted towards children but this, and other first-person-view model aircraft, will require a...

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...

On the same day last month, airline pilots trying to land at two of the nation’s busiest airports got on their radios to report the unnerving sight of small rogue drones buzzing at high altitudes. In the first incident on May 29, the pilot of a commercial airliner descending toward LaGuardia Airport saw what appeared to be a black drone with a 10-to-15-foot wingspan about 5,500 feet above Lower Manhattan, according to a previously undisclosed report filed with the Federal Aviation Administration. In the second, two airliners separately approaching Los Angeles International Airport soared past what they described as a...

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.