• More UAVs, personnel, money for U.S.-Mexico border protection

    The Obama administration bolsters U.S.-Mexico border protection; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved UAV flights over the Texas border from the Big Bend to the Rio Grande Valley; after Republicans in the Senate threatened to seek funds for 6,000 National Guardsmen to stop human and drug smuggling, Obama decided to deploy 1,200 Guard members in Southwest states until more Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers could be hired and trained; the president sent his $600 million funding request to Congress earlier this week to hire 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, 160 ICE agents, 20 CBP officers, and 20 new CBP canine teams

  • USAF chooses Missouri, Montana bases for MQ-1, MQ-9 ground control stations

    The U.S. Air Force on Monday announced its basing decision for the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper ground control stations: Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, and Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota

  • DHS looking to UAVs to bolster border security

    With the future of SBINet — the ambitious but trouble-plagued virtual fence project along the U.S.-Mexico border — unclear, DHS says it is now considering expanding its UAV fleet to beef up border security

  • $800 million for 53-mile of border fence (it was supposed to be 655 miles)

    The original plan of the Secure Border Initiative (SBINet) called for spending $833 million to build a virtual fence — a system of sophisticated sensors, cameras, and other barriers — along 655 miles of U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, New Mexico, and a slice of Texas, at a cost of about $1.2 million per mile; Boeing, the prime contractor, used $800 million to build the system along only 53 miles of border at a cost of $15.1 million per mile; the virtual fence’s technology is now judged a failure

  • Border Patrol decides not to purchase a balloon to aid communication among agents

    An Arizona-based company makes a balloon that carries light-weight communication gear at 60,000 to 100,000 feet above the earth, and can extend the range of two-way radios on the ground as much as 40-fold; the Border Patrol showed interest in the balloon as a means to help its agents better communicate with each other and with law enforcement in remote border areas; but Border Patrol decided not the to pursue the balloon option

  • Robot assembles itself, then flies

    Soldiers and first responders often find themselves in situations of surveillance or search and rescue, in which they may have to figure out on the fly what size and shape surveillance or search-and-rescue robot they need; Swiss researchers develop a flying platform made up of autonomous wheeled vehicle that lock together to share the task of controlled and autonomous flight; this self-sufficient wheeled DFA has another advantage: if one of the parts of which it consists breaks, the robot can reconfigure itself or substitute in a different part

  • Autonomous vehicles to map battle environments

    War is always accompanied by the fog of war; to pierce that fog, researchers at Cranfield University are working on developing swarms of autonomous military vehicles capable of sharing and overlapping video images to create high-resolution 3D panoramic scenes of dangerous battlefield areas

  • UN criticism of U.S. UAV war not likely to stop CIA drone strikes

    A UN report on the U.S. UAVs against terrorists and insurgents calls on countries to lay out rules and safeguards for carrying out the strikes, publish figures on civilian casualties, and prove they have attempted to capture or incapacitate suspects without killing them

  • U.S. military to adopt NFL's instant replay technology

    U.S. Air Force drones collected roughly 1,800 hours of video a month in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009, nearly three times as much video than in 2007; sifting through this growing mountain of information is difficult, so the military wants to use the same instant replay technology used in professional football games; after all, U.S. broadcasters handle 70,000 hours daily of video

  • World's largest airship inflated Wednesday for the first time

    The world’s largest airship — 235 feet long and 65 feet in diameter — was inflated on Wednesday for the first time; the test took place inside the Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Alabama which, the proprietors state, can hold as many as 1,500 cattle (“with milking parlor”); the airship features many innovations, including propelling ducted fans which are mounted along the centerline of the hull rather than beneath it, so that the nose does not lift when more power is applied

  • Surveillance blimps assembled in Duluth

    ISL, a U.S. defense contractor developing dirigibles for military surveillance, has been using the former Northwest Airlines maintenance base in Duluth, Minnesota, since last fall; ISL’s plans to assemble the airship in Duluth hit a rocky patch with its clients, so the dirigible has been stored in the facility since last fall, lying uninflated on the floor

  • Obama permits CIA to broaden UAV war target list in Pakistan

    President Obama gave the CIA secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of UAV strikes in Pakistan’s border region; of more than 500 people who U.S. officials say have been killed since the pace of strikes intensified, the vast majority have been individuals whose names were unknown, or about whom the agency had only fragmentary information. In some cases, the CIA discovered only after an attack that the casualties included a suspected terrorist whom it had been seeking

  • UAVs to be outfitted with holographic adaptive optics-based instruments

    Researchers are looking into the advantages and challenges associated with using holographic adaptive optics-based instruments aboard UAV; such systems would generally improve the quality of observations these aircrafts produce

  • Aeronautics readies Picador UAV for May first flight

    Aeronautics is moving forward — from September to May — the first autonomous flight of its Picador unmanned helicopter; the Picador is being aimed mainly for navies as a means of replacing their current, manned helicopters in delivering “over the horizon” intelligence and deploying long-range weapon systems

  • NORAD general warns wind turbines pose national security threat

    There is a new homeland security issue: wind turbines; turbines create a shadow that makes airplanes disappear from radar screens; the turbines also clutter the screens with the turbines’ “signature,” which changes as blades accelerate and slow with the wind; the U.S. military says that decision on wind farm locations should be carefully vetted to make sure home defense is not compromised