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'Steath Latvian drones set to swarm across English Channel'
A Latvian drone firm taking a punt at both the professional and military markets reckons its new model can stay aloft for five hours and fly for almost 100 miles (160km). Atlas Dynamics, a Riga-based upstart founded two years ago, says its Blue-J drone is "ideally suited for large-scale security and inspection missions" and …
Not quite sure where your performance doubts are coming from? 30 seconds Googling found an established drone company selling off the shelf aircraft that weigh 10 kg and can carry 10 kgs of fuel/payload. They state that it uses .75 l/hour of fuel, so 5 hours might need 4 kg of fuel. What is unreasonable in thinking that a company might be able to engineer a drone to carry a 14kg payload, maybe by flying slower, or using lighter material or a lighter engine?
Another day, another toy. Real stabilised HD camera systems weigh 25 to 45 kg and need 500 Watt of electricity.
Instead of trying to look at something with a blurry toy camera, the military can just send a guy to go and sit on a hill with a pair of binoculars. Therefore, to be useful, a UAV needs to be significantly better than a guy with binoculars or a small telescope, otherwise it is pointless.
Another day another expert.
In this particular case...Good luck seeing detail at 60 kilometres (or 10) with your binoculars What if you don't want to look at optical wavelengths? Maybe you want to sneak up and listen to a wifi signal. What if you want to look at something and the ground is flat? What if the bad guy (or zebra, or hole in a pipeline) decides to stand on the other side of a brick wall? And when the bad guy decides he doesn't want to be looked at and lobs a large rock at the camera, you only have to get another one off the shelf, you don't have to write a telegram to it's next of kin.
Have you even bothered to look at the quality of imagery that even modest consumer grade drones can acquire now?
Rick Smith, founder and CEO of body camera and Taser maker Axon, believes he has a way to reduce the risk of school children being shot by people with guns.
No, it doesn't involve reducing access to guns, which Smith dismisses as politically unworkable in the US. Nor does it involve relocating to any of the many countries where school shootings seldom, if ever, occur and – coincidentally – where there are laws that limit access to guns.
Here's a hint – his answer involves Axon.
Nine members of non-lethal weapons-maker Axon's AI ethics board resigned Monday after the company's CEO announced plans to build drones equipped with tasers to prevent US school shootings.
When an 18-year-old shot dead nineteen students and two teachers, whilst wounding several others at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Axon's founder and CEO, Rick Smith, began thinking about how he could help stop mass shootings. His best idea: deploying taser-equipped drones in classrooms and public venues.
Axon develops body cameras and non-lethal weapons for law enforcement. Smith thought he could combine both capabilities and install them onto a drone that, in theory, could immobilize shooters. Smith announced Axon had formally begun developing such systems last week.
The latest drone headed to Ukraine's front lines isn't getting there by air. This one powers over rough terrain, armed with a 7.62mm tank machine gun.
The GNOM (pronounced gnome), designed and built by a company called Temerland, based in Zaporizhzhia, won't be going far either. Next week it's scheduled to begin combat trials in its home city, which sits in southeastern Ukraine and has faced periods of rocket attacks and more since the beginning of the war.
Measuring just under two feet in length, a couple inches less in width (57cm L х 60cm W x 38cm H), and weighing around 110lbs (50kg), GNOM is small like its namesake. It's also designed to operate quietly, with an all-electric motor that drives its 4x4 wheels. This particular model forgoes stealth in favor of a machine gun, but Temerland said it's quiet enough to "conduct covert surveillance using a circular survey camera on a telescopic mast."
US military researchers are trying to turn in-flight refueling tankers into laser-shooting "airborne energy wells" for charging drones, and they want the public's help to figure out how.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) published a request for information (RFI) from anyone willing and able to contribute their tech, with a few caveats. It needs to fit on existing in-flight refueling tankers (the newer KC-46 and Cold War-era KC-135, specifically) and be able to deliver 100kW of power.
Militaries around the world have been using in-flight refueling for decades to extend aircraft patrols and long-range missions. With a history of development stretching back to the 1920s, the practice has since developed into a standard part of operating an air fleet powered by aviation fuel.
Chinese academics have christened an ocean research vessel that has a twist: it will sail the seas with a complement of aerial and ocean-going drones and no human crew.
The Zhu Hai Yun, or Zhuhai Cloud, launched in Guangzhou after a year of construction. The 290-foot-long mothership can hit a top speed of 18 knots (about 20 miles per hour) and will carry 50 flying, surface, and submersible drones that launch and self-recover autonomously.
According to this blurb from the shipbuilder behind its construction, the Cloud will also be equipped with a variety of additional observational instruments "which can be deployed in batches in the target sea area, and carry out task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional view of specific targets." Most of the ship is an open deck where flying drones can land and be stored. The ship is also equipped with launch and recovery equipment for its aquatic craft.
In a first for a major Chinese tech company, drone-maker DJI Technologies announced on Tuesday that it will temporarily suspend business in both Russia and Ukraine.
"DJI is internally reassessing compliance requirements in various jurisdictions. Pending the current review, DJI will temporarily suspend all business activities in Russia and Ukraine. We are engaging with customers, partners and other stakeholders regarding the temporary suspension of business operations in the affected territories," declared DJI in a canned statement.
Last week the company issued another statement clarifying that it did not market or sell its products for military use and "unequivocally opposed attempts to attach weapons to [its] products." DJI also said it "refused to customize or enable modifications that would enable [its] products for military use."
Video After some careful study, it turns out the brain of an insect is pretty good at separating signal from noise.
Researchers from the University of South Australia, Flinders University, and Australian defense company Midspar Systems found that to be the case when they teamed up to reverse-engineer the visual systems of hoverflies. Why? To improve acoustic drone detection software.
Specifically, they wanted to use a bug's visual pathways to detect acoustic signals. It's the first time this particular approach has been taken, though insect vision has been used to improve detection systems in the past.
Wing will this Thursday launch a commercial drone delivery service in a major US metropolitan area, a first for the Alphabet-owned startup.
The company was spun out of X, Google's moonshot lab, in 2018 to build and operate a drone-delivery business. Since then, Wing has set up operations in Helsinki, Finland, and Canberra, Australia to bring shoppers all sorts of items, from biscuits to burgers, to their doors. It also operates in the US in Christiansburg, Virginia, and is expanding to its first urban area within the country this week: the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
Chinese drone-maker DJI has denied multiple allegations it has aided Russia's military during the illegal invasion of Ukraine – an extraordinary claim, as the firm has previously come to the attention of US authorities for leaking data and aiding human rights abuses.
DJI's involvement in Russia's illegal invasion first became an issue around March 11, when allegations emerged that Ukrainian users were unable to use a DJI drone detection product called DJI AeroScope that the Chinese company bills as "a comprehensive drone detection platform that rapidly identifies UAV communication links, gathering information such as flight status, paths, and other information in real time."
Russian users could run AeroScope, leading to accusations that DJI was assisting Moscow.
State-controlled media in China is proudly reporting the use of robots to facilitate the “temporary closed-off management” of Shanghai, which has experienced a new surge of COVID.
The city of 26 million plus residents has been locked down as cases reportedly surge past the 13,000 mark each day, a new high for the city and a level of infection that China will not tolerate under its zero COVID policy. City authorities have quickly created 47,000 temporary hospital beds and increased capacity to four million tests each day. All residents have been required to take a test.
Robots are helping to enforce the lockdown. Police have employed “drones equipped with a broadcasting system to patrol key areas.” The craft “publicize latest news and anti-pandemic prevention and control measures to the local communities." Which looks and sounds like this.
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