AircraftNews.Com

US to Base Drones in Seychelles to Fight Piracy

The United States is planning to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles in the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to combat piracy. The use of land-based drones is a new approach to deter ship hijackings in the region.

The spokesman for the U.S. military’s Africa Command, Vince Crawley, has said several Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles will be in the Seychelles by late October or November. He says they will be used to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions throughout the Indian Ocean region.

“We have people going in individually for very short trips right now. We plan to start sending some of the teams that will assist in the September-October time frame. And then it would take a month to begin the flights,” said Crawley. “It is widely recognized that western Indian Ocean piracy is extremely disruptive to international trade and this is simply a U.S. contribution to the international effort against piracy.” Read more…

AUSTRALIAN troops in Afghanistan have gained a major new platform to assist in the fight against Taliban insurgents with the RAAF acquiring Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Heron Manufactured by Israel Aerospace industries is a 26 M span 1500 kg pilotless vehicle capable of remain aloft for over a day and can deliver high quality real time images in the visual infra red and microwave spectrums.
Powered by a piston engine and cruising at 100 kts it is GPS guided and can take off and land autonomously. There is the option for it to be either pre programmed or remote controlled or a combination of both. Read more…

Point. Click. Kill: Inside The Air Force’s Frantic Unmanned Reinvention

The age of remote-control warfare isn’t coming–it’s here, and not even the Air Force, which made it happen, is entirely prepared. Here, a firsthand look at the struggle to train thousands of drone pilots virtually overnight.
Without traffic, it takes Captain Adam Brockshus about 45 minutes to drive from his four-bedroom suburban home outside Las Vegas to Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada. His commute follows Highway 95 northwest through a stretch of the Mojave freckled with Joshua trees and flanked by arid mountain ranges. He trains pilots for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet this desolate drive may be the most harrowing part of his job. Tall, blond and new-daddy doughy, Brockshus spends the rest of his day in a windowless room full of office chairs and computer monitors, teaching 20-somethings how to fly war drones 7,500 miles away. Although his is, for all intents, a desk job, it may be one of the most critical posts in today’s Air Force. The number of unmanned aircraft missions has more than tripled in the past two years, and the Air Force can’t train people fast enough to keep up with the demand.

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Queensland researchers have developed a system allowing them to use mobile phone technology to fly pilotless planes.

In April, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) completed a successful flight of a small pilotless plane over Kingaroy in Queensland’s South Burnett region.
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Organizers of next week’s centennial Paris Air Show said Monday the world’s biggest aviation industry gathering won’t be diminished by the global economic crisis, which has hit the aviation industry hard.

Organizers expect around 300,000 visitors this year, half of them professionals, about the same as the last show in 2007 — despite notable no-shows such as business jet makers Gulfstream and Cessna.

“This year again, despite the crisis we consider that it is a considerable success because we’re full,” said Louis Le Portz, the air show’s chief executive. Roughly the same number of exhibitors will be present as in 2007, around 2,000, Le Portz said. Read more…

An insidious changes in recent times in Military aviation has been the advent of Unmanned aircraft. Pilots sit at desks on one continent flying remote drones on another. These can and do launch missiles that can wreak enormous damage. The pilot then goes home to his dinner and watches TV or does his chores. There is the potential here to fundamentally change the nature of warefare with some very unpleasant consequences such as the further dehumanisation of the “target”.
Just imagine how easy it may become to make a decision to bomb a village in Afghanistan because the choice is seen as eliminating a risk to “our boys over there” with on the one hand the saving of noble souls fighting for freedom to be balanced against on the other hand the unavoidable collateral loss of some Ethnic non-combatants.
There is now a proliferating multitude of both big small and in between unmanned vehicles.
Maybe it is now time for some more general discussion of what is being done in our name on the battlefields of the world.
As an example of the capability now being offered consider the KillerBee® Unmanned Aircraft System offered by Ratheon. Read more…

Drone aircraft used for storm predictions

The U.S. government is experimenting with a new weapon in its quest for more accurate hurricane tracking and predictions: unmanned airplanes.

Like the U.S. military, which uses unmanned Predator drone aircraft to track terror suspects and even attack targets, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is sending remote control planes where it’s too dangerous for even the bravest pilots to fly — into the guts of some of nature’s most powerful storms.

Their Mark 3 model planes have proved rugged in early test flights, and NOAA has high hopes riding on them.

“This is one of the pioneering new technologies to improve hurricane predictions, ” said Robert Atlas, director of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab on Virginia Key.
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