As Iran and China and who knows who else scrambles to unlock the secrets of the U.S. Air Force’s stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel drone, North Korea is moving to reverse engineer some 1970s-vintage target drones. Yup, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency is reporting that the North has bought up old MQM-107D Streaker target drones from Syria […]
Drones
Check this out. We’ve been wondering how the cancellation of the C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft would impact the Army’s tactical airlift needs. While the Air Force says canning the JCA won’t hurt anyone, it looks like the Army is eying the optionally-manned K-MAX helo to carry realatively small but urgent loads of cargo to remote […]
Aviation Week dropped a heck of a story yesterday when it revealed the Air Force’s newest X-plane, the X-56A. The the flying wing is being designed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks to test out the technologies that will allow a new crop of reconnaissance planes to stay aloft at high altitudes for long periods of times; think days or weeks. […]
In case you guys haven’t seen this video, it’s awesome. It shows a swarm of tiny quadrotor UAVs flying in numerous formations, performing figure eights with each other and even flying around obstacles. Talk about sense and avoid! The little drones (monsters?) were developed and programmed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, […]
The Air Force is paying Northrop Grumman $47 million to equip two more Block 20 RQ-4 Global Hawks with BACN. You know, the communications link that allows different types of datalinks to communicate with one another; allowing troops on the ground to easily share info with pilots in jets overhead even if they’re out of […]
