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The aircraft shown on Iranian television today likely was not the American stealth drone that crashed in Iran last week, as the Iranian government claimed, but was likely just a model, U.S. officials told ABC News. Today U.S. officials said the drone did not land intact.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington— The radar-evading drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior U.S. official, raising fears that the aircraft's sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals. It was unclear whether the drone's mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said. Though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's military said on Sunday it had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran, a military source told state television. "Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying.

Azerbaijan is expected to acquire 60 small Israeli-designed unmanned aerial vehicles built under license in the oil-rich former Soviet republic that's moving closer to the Jewish state as the Baku government modernizes its military. The burgeoning military and intelligence alliance between the countries is causing growing concern in Iran, Azerbaijan's southern neighbor, and in nearby longtime rival Armenia. The Israeli Aerostar and Orbiter 2M UAVs are being manufactured by Baku's Azad Systems Co., a joint venture between Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry and Aeronautics Defense Systems of Israel.

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp. The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned...

Egypt eyes to buy Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles Monday, September 19, 2011 İPEK YEZDANİ - ipek.yezdani@hurriyet.com.tr ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News According to an executive at Turkish Aerospace Industries, the new Egyptian government is interested in buying Turkey-made unmanned planes. Some Middle East countries prefer Turkey rather than Israel or the US, defense experts say. Turkey will also sell six multi-role tactical platform naval vessels to the North African country Egypt is interested in buying made-in-Turkey unmanned aerial vehicles called Anka from a Turkish defense company, the Hürriyet Daily News has learned. Egyptian and Turkish authorities talked about a possible...

Israel, Germany jointly develop UAV arms system By YAAKOV KATZ 07/09/2011 Loitering weapons system combines drones developed by both nations. A rare look into Israel’s unmanned weapons capabilities was revealed on Tuesday with an announcement by Germany’s Rheinmetall that it had jointly developed with Israel a loitering weapons system based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The system, called WABEP, which in German stands for “Weapons system for standoff engagement of individual and point targets,” was developed by Rheinmetall together with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a world leader in the development of UAVs and loitering weapons. The WABEP is a...

Engineers at the University of Southampton have designed and flown the world’s first ‘printed’ aircraft, which could revolutionise the economics of aircraft design. The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed, including wings, integral control surfaces and access hatches. It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer. No fasteners were used and all equipment was attached using ‘snap fit’ techniques so that the entire aircraft can be put together without tools...

After five years behind locked doors, researchers at Lockheed Martin's Intelligent Robotics Laboratories in New Jersey have emerged with a working prototype of the "Samarai," a tiny DARPA-commissioned surveillance drone. The nano air vehicles (NAVs), modeled after falling Maple leaf seeds, are designed to be super light weight and agile for vertical lift off, hovering, and navigation in tight spaces. Like your favorite $5 Subway sammie, these surveillance bots are a foot long, but instead of being shoveled in your mouth, they're thrown like boomerangs into flight and controlled using a tablet app or a basic remote. These eyes in...

First Russian strike UAV to be showcased at Moscow air show Lutch, Russia's first unmanned air vehicle (UAV) designed to carry out air strikes, will be shown at the Moscow air show next week, according to its producer, Vega. "Vega will show a full-scale mock-up of the Lutch medium-range UAV at MAKS 2011," a Vega representative said. "Lutch is designed for optical reconnaissance, radar, radio-relay and electronic reconnaissance missions," he added. Lutch can also carry guided weapons on fuselage pylons or in a fuselage weapons bay. "Up to 150-170 kilograms of ammunition and weapons control systems can be carried," Vega...

Wireless drone sniffs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, phone signals By: Declan McCullagh August 4, 2011 11:19 AM PDT LAS VEGAS--Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it's war flying. A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas. "Nobody's really looking at this from a threat perspective," said Mike Tassey, a security consultant who works for the U.S. government intelligence community. "There's some pretty evil stuff you can do from...

The promise of 3D printing has finally taken off with the development of a drone that takes just a week to createUnder darkening skies on a grass airstrip in the UK's Wiltshire Downs, north of Stonehenge, I am watching half a dozen aeronautical engineers rushing to assemble an uncrewed aircraft before the weather takes a turn for the worse. They are hoping to show how 3D printing will revolutionise the economics of aircraft design – by flying the world's first fully "printed" plane. Led by Andy Keane and Jim Scanlan of the University of Southampton, the team believes that 3D...

After more than 40 years, France has ended its ban on weapons trade with Israel. Paris has decided to purchase the Heron TP (Eitan) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from Israel Aerospace Industries. With a wingspan just about as wide as a Boeing 737 (26 meters), the Eitan flies up to an altitude of 40,000 feet and can remain airborne for up to 36 hours. The drone is able to carry a wide variety of equipment with which to conduct its reconnaissance missions due to its size – possibly even missiles. The Eitan went into service in Israel approximately 18 months...

Chinese firms developing armed drones; eyes Pakistan for sales WASHINGTON: China has ramped up its research in drone technology and is in the process of building armed, jet-propelled unmanned planes, which it plans to sell to countries like Pakistan. Though much of this work remains secret, the large number of drones at recent exhibitions underlines not only China's determination to catch up in that sector -- by building equivalents to the leading US combat and surveillance models, the Predator and the Global Hawk -- but also that its desire to sell this technology abroad, a media report has said. "No...

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

At the most recent Zhuhai air show, the premier event for China’s aviation industry, crowds swarmed around a model of an armed, jet-propelled drone and marveled at the accompanying display of its purported martial prowess. In a video and map, the thin, sleek drone locates what appears to be a U.S. aircraft carrier group near an island with a striking resemblance to Taiwan and sends targeting information back to shore, triggering a devastating barrage of cruise missiles toward the formation of ships. Little is known about the actual abilities of the WJ-600 drone or the more than two dozen other...

PICTURE: China's Global Hawk counterpart breaks cover By Greg Waldron China appears ready to reveal another of its developmental military aircraft, with new images having emerged showing what appears to be a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle. Posted on the China Defense Mashup website, the aircraft was photographed at Chengdu airfield, where the J-20 stealth fighter also emerged late last year, shortly before making its surprise flight debut from the site in January. China Defense Mashup speculates that the newly-spotted vehicle is the Xianglong: an intended counterpart to the USA’s Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk.

Click the following link to see the video Stalking Sphere

Suspected US Drone Strikes Kill 18 in Pakistan Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 4:00 pm UTC Posted 13 minutes ago Pakistani intelligence officials say three U.S. drone strikes have killed at least 18 militants in the country's northwest tribal region. All of Monday's strikes were in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. Officials say missiles hit a compound, an Islamic seminary and a vehicle near the main town of Wana. Foreign militants, including Arabs and Uzbeks, were said to be among those killed. The attacks come just days after the reported death of senior al-Qaida operative Ilyas Kashmiri in a...

US drones fired a salvo of missiles into a compound in Pakistan's tribal district of North Waziristan on Friday, killing eight suspected militants, local security officials said. The attack came just four days after US commandos shot dead Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's garrison city of Abbottabad, hundreds of kilometres from the tribal belt and just two hours' drive from the capital. "A compound and a vehicle were targeted by US drones in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan killing eight militants," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Eight missiles were fired on the...