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There have been a number of articles lately about the U.S. developing a new unmanned aerial vehicle in secret. Dave Majumdar, at Air Force Times, recently had an article about how the U.S. Air Force’s decision to postpone development of a next generation unmanned combat aircraft suggests that service might be developing something else in the “black world.” The article quoted USAF intelligence chief Lt.-Gen. Larry James who said that there is no immediate need for a next generation replacement for the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. And the Predator-C Avenger UAV the USAF is buying will be used only as...

Jordi Munoz had no training. Scant schooling. Little money. He also had a video-game console and nothing else to do. So he built his own drone. A Mexican native, Mr. Munoz married an American citizen and moved to Riverside,Calif., in 2007. While waiting for his green card, the 21-year-old was marooned in his apartment, unable to work, attend school or obtain a driver’s license. On the other hand, he had an Internet connection. A Nintendo Wii. A radio-controlled toy helicopter his mother had given him to help kill time. Tinkering with the Wii’s control wand and a $60 gyroscope he...

DARPA is unveiling a portable laser weapons system, HELLADS, which seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. The new laser application, created by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems with a custom power system from Saft Batteries, will help change the way the American military fights future wars. Current military laser systems are bulky contraptions which are mainly the size of a passenger jet, while the proposed DARPA weapon can fit on the back of a flatbed truck. The 150-kilowatt, solid state laser weapon is strong enough to take down drones or other aerial targets; a prototype is expected to be...

Iran and Middle East-based extremist groups are stepping up their activities in South America, aiming to make friends and score cash, a senior U.S. military official says. Tehran intends to build military drones in Washington's backyard for the Venezuelan military led by Hugo Chavez, U.S. Southern Command chief Gen. Douglas Fraser told reporters Wednesday during a breakfast meeting in Washington "I would put it in the Scan Eagle class of UAV," Fraser said. "It's not up into the Predator class." The Southern Command chief was referring to two U.S.-made drone aircraft used by the American military. The Scan Eagle is...

In-flight electrical failure caused a Northrop Grumman EQ-4 to crash in Afghanistan on 20 August, says a newly-released accident investigation report. The aircraft crashed approximately 195km (120 miles) northwest of Kandahar. Specificlly, an electrical connector to an unidentified line replacement unit partially separated. This caused electrical damage inside the LRU, which cut power to the actuators that controlled ailerons and spoilers. Within 1min of the power failure, the aircraft lost control after hitting minor turbulence. "The Board President also found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that LRU installation methods were a contributing factor in the mishap," continues the report....

Last year the U.S. Air Force decided to extend the life of its U-2 fleet and cut back on the use of large UAVs for strategic reconnaissance. One of the many upgrades U-2s will now receive will be better cockpit pressurization. Currently, pilots operate in a cockpit pressurized to conditions found at 9,600 meters (30,000 feet). This puts more strain on the pilot's body. That, and the fact that they breathe pure oxygen while up there, means they tend to be completely exhausted after returning from a long mission. So pressuring the cockpit to the level of a lower altitude...

China usually holds its military hand very close to the vest--that, or things “mysteriously” leak that it doesn’t (does) want the world to know about--so we’re left to wonder why the People’s Republic has decided to publish this in the journal Advanced Materials Research. Nonetheless, it’s pretty interesting. Chinese navy researchers have plans for a new submarine hunting scheme that uses ship-launched UAVs running genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms narrow down a range of possibilities to an optimal solution much the way evolution does (at least in a simplified sense)--by weeding out the weaker offspring and mating the best with the...

Things could get a lot busier for the Navy's fleet of Fire Scout drones with the service's decision to drop plans for a new, medium-range unmanned aircraft. The larger C model version of the MQ-8 Fire Scout might fill some of the requirements left unfilled by the Navy's decision to cancel the Medium-Range Maritime Unmanned Aerial System program earlier this year. The Navy stands to save $200 million in fiscal 2013 and $1.3 billion over the next five years as a result of the MRMUAS cancellation, Naval Air Systems Command spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove said in an email. The MRMUAS was...

Even though Global Hawk is built in his district, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon told me today that he would not personally push to save the Block 30s from oblivion. "I will not be involved in trying to force something just because it's best for my district," McKeon said today during the interview on C-Span's Newsmakers show. The Air Force killed the Global Hawk Block 30 purchase in the 2013 defense budget, arguing that the venerable U-2 reconnaissance plane does a better job for less. That cut is estimated to save the Pentagon $2.5 billion. The chairman...

Buried in a long list of Pentagon budget proposals for the next five years is the Air Force’s recommendation to retire a fleet of 18 brand-new Global Hawk Block 30 unmanned surveillance aircraft. Four of them haven’t even been delivered yet, and are already destined for the boneyard. Air Force leaders have defended their decision, contending that the $67 million apiece Global Hawk has become too pricey, and that the Cold War era U-2 spy aircraft can still do the job. Further, they insist that axing the Block 30 version of the Global Hawk hardly means the end of the...

The draft of the federal budget for 2013 pulls back the throttle on the rival Global Hawk program. An Air Force general says the U-2, a design that dates to the 1950s, is "the stronger system." Score one for old-school aircraft against the upstart drones. Perhaps it's just a brief respite from the seemingly inevitable winds of change propelling unmanned aircraft ever higher in the Pentagon's airpower depth charts, but the venerable U-2 spy plane has won a key vote of confidence over the unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk. That victory came not in a head-to-head aerial dogfight, but in a...

America's new long-range bomber program is "underway," will involve somewhere between 80 and 100 planes and will be delivered sometime in the mid-2020's. "And that's about all we're saying," Air Force Secretary Mike Donley told reporters. It's been known for some time that the bombers will not fly alone but will be part of a family of systems that may include UAVs and other systems. The really interesting part of all this is the secrecy and why it's so dark. It would seem to indicate several things: that the U.S. does not want potential competitors such as China or Russia...

Unmanned aerial vehicles have become a potent portion of the U.S. Air Force inventory and an indispensable weapon in the global war on terror. But a budget crunch and turf wars with old-guard pilots could threaten progress made during 10 years of combat, experts said. “There’s not going to be a way of putting this genie back in the bottle,” retired Navy Vice Adm. Joseph W. Dyer told National Defense. “The world has changed. That doesn’t mean advocates of today’s manned aircraft won’t try to put it back in the bottle. But it ain’t going.” The Defense Department is aiming...

While combat drones are not allowed in the U.S. airspace without a special certificate from the FAA, the military is in a fix over the 7, 500 military drones deployed overseas, that need to be recalled home.... After returning home, the robotic aircraft would be stationed in military bases around the nation for use in emergencies... Last week, Congress approved legislation requiring the FAA to create a plan for wide-scale integration of drones in the national airspace by 2015.

Subs, silos, UAVs: Rumors cloud Israel's Iran clout By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Asked about the profusion of foreign reports that their armed forces could soon attack Iran, Israeli officials tend to smile and shrug enigmatically, seemingly content to let such guesswork simmer. The diplomatic dumbshow, which preserves military secrecy while keeping war-wary world powers negotiating for a halt to Tehran's nuclear programme, also conceals genuine bemusement in Israel at some of the assumptions abroad about its capabilities. "This is speculation which is not entirely connected to reality," Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, a former top Israeli general, said...

'Israeli drone spying on Turkey almost shot down' Turkish media outlet claims fighter jets called up to intercept unmanned aerial vehicle circling over missile batteries, radar equipment An Israeli drone flying over Turkey was nearly intercepted by Turkish aerial defense forces, an Istanbul-based media outlet reported on Tuesday. Two F-16 fighter jets were called-up to the area, but failed to locate the drone. "The Israeli 'Heron' drone was detected spying on military headquarters in Turkey's southern Hatay province," the report stated, adding that "the aircraft hovered over the Turkish forces in order to capture images of missile batteries and radar...

Afghan officials say an American reconnaissance drone has crashed in Afghanistan's southeastern province of Paktia, Press TV reports. A Tuesday statement released by NATO confirmed the incident but claimed that the unmanned aircraft made an emergency landing “due to technical malfunction.” According to locals, US-led forces have cordoned off the site of the incident. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also claimed that members of the militant group shot down the drone in the Ahmadabad district of the province. The Taliban say they have shot down several aircraft and NATO choppers in different parts of Afghanistan over the past few months. Activities...

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian military official told the Monitor, calling the downing an "electronic ambush" of secret drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," he added. The engineer added that the Iranians were able to make the drone land "on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center."

TEHRAN, IRAN –  Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces, state TV reported Monday. Tehran has flaunted the drone's capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle. Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, who is on the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for the "invasion" by the unmanned aircraft.

Iran will reverse-engineer the US drone it captured on December 4, Iran's Press TV quoted a senior Iranian official as saying Sunday. Parviz Sorouri, member of the Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, said that his country will "mass produce" the drones in the near future. He also said that the Iranian version would be "of higher quality" than the original RQ-170 Sentinel, according to the Press TV report.