The Marines want to unleash swarms of loitering munitions on its adversaries.
Category: drones – Page 78
Meet the Smellicopter is a tiny drone developed by scientists at the University of Washington, capable of detecting smells like gas leaks, explosives, or even the survivors of a natural disaster. This amazing, obstacle avoiding UAV doesn’t use a man-made sensor to smell: it uses a moth antenna to navigate towards an odor.
A research paper published in IOP Science describes Smellicopter as “A bio-hybrid odor-guided autonomous palm-sized air vehicle.” The advantages to such a vehicle are clear: the tiny drone can travel in places that humans cannot or should not: the rubble of buildings after a natural disaster; zones where chemical leaks or spills may have occurred; or conflict zones that may contain chemical or explosive weapons.
The truly unique aspect of this amazing little drone is the use of a moth antenna: tiny, delicate, and amazingly sensitive.
A conflict monitor says an engine, akin to those used in V-1 flying bombs, was found in Iraq in 2017.
Drone services company DroneUp has been approved for an industry-first FAA Waiver for flight over people and moving vehicles to support drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits anywhere in the U.S.
Scaling drone delivery throughout the country will require flight over people and moving vehicles, something that U.S. drone regulations currently prohibit without a waiver. Now, DroneUp, LLC announces that it has been approved “for the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) Section 107.39 Operation Over People Waiver allowing the unrestricted flight over non-participating persons and moving vehicles to support the drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits,” according to a press release.
“DroneUp’s 107.39 waiver is the first to allow drone delivery operations over people anywhere in the United States without predefined operating areas, locations, or routes. The waiver is also a first to allow unrestricted delivery overflight of moving vehicles.”
DroneSeed will be allowed to operates drones beyond visual line of sight.
DroneSeed, a company that uses fleets of drones to reforest areas burned in wildfires, received approval in October from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for its heavy-lift drones to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and to expand its use of heavy-lift drone swarms to California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.
The FAA’s action allows DroneSeed to begin reforesting once a fire is contained and airspace is clear. Their aircraft drop seeds that are encapsulated in vessels consisting of four to six seeds, fertilizer, natural pest deterrents, and fibrous material which absorbs water and increases survivability.
The company has designed a system around a swarm of drones that can drop tree seeds in places where they have a decent chance of survival. First they survey the area with a drone using lidar and a multispectral camera to map the terrain and the vegetation. Software then identifies areas with invasive species or other plants the landowner wants to eliminate that could compete with the new trees. Then a drone can apply herbicide to only the patches that need it, rather than dumping pesticide over the entire landscape. The next step is to use artificial intelligence to sort through the mapping data to find areas where a dropped seed is most likely to germinate, in order to avoid, for example, rock, roads, and unburned locations. After the aircraft is launched, it operates autonomously flying a grid pattern with five drones.
The latest rescue took place last month, when sherriff’s deputies found a missing 93-year-old woman in a dark field in Missouri – using a DJI drone with a thermal imaging camera. That brings the total to more than 500 lives saved by drones, according to DJI’s project counting the lives that would have been lost without direct intervention of drone technology.
DJI began the project back in 2017 when they published a paper called “Lives Saved: A Survey of Drones in Action” which found that even back in 2016 – 2017, drones saved lives at the rate of nearly 1 per week. That first paper has evolved into the DJI Drone Rescue Map, which allows viewers to explore rescue incidents all over the world.
The project was started in response to bad press about drone technology. Research has shown that a negative drone event – even one that later is found to be inaccurate or untrue – averages more than 10x the publicity than a positive drone event. That’s a problem for a new industry struggling against negative public perception and fears over privacy issues and misuse of drone technology.
Landing pads, special mailboxes and more: A future where delivery drones buzz through neighborhoods could prompt architects and builders to rethink.
The Marine Corps is looking for industry sources to produce a man-portable system capable of launching swarms of kamikaze drones over contested battlefields, according to a new notice.
In a request for information published earlier this month, Marine Corps System Command detailed a fresh need for an “individually operated, man-portable, anti-materiel, anti-personnel ground-launched loitering munition system” for fielding to grunts in the coming years.
The so-called Organic Precision Fire-Infantry (OPF-I) capability will consist of a fresh infantry-operated system capable of launching drones that can conduct explosive strikes and are “capable of swarming” over a 20-kilometer range for up to an hour and a half, according to the notice.
It seems some countries are now switching to drone swarms.
From Syria to Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh, this new method of military offense has been brutally effective. We are witnessing a revolution in the history of warfare, one that is causing panic, particularly in Europe.
In an analysis written for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow, argues that the extensive (and successful) use of military drones by Azerbaijan in its recent conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh holds “distinct lessons for how well Europe can defend itself.”
Gressel warns that Europe would be doing itself a disservice if it simply dismissed the Nagorno-Karabakh fighting as “a minor war between poor countries.” In this, Gressel is correct – the military defeat inflicted on Armenia by Azerbaijan was not a fluke, but rather a manifestation of the perfection of the art of drone warfare by Baku’s major ally in the fighting, Turkey. Gressel’s conclusion – that “most of the [European Union’s] armies… would do as miserably as the Armenian Army” when faced by such a threat – is spot on.