Category Archives: Drones (non-military)

‘Gamechanger’: Uganda launches drone delivering HIV drugs to remote islands

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Technology could ensure critical medicines reach Lake Victoria communities with country’s highest prevalence of HIV/Aids

As the bottles of medication are carefully loaded into the body of the drone, a small crowd gathers to watch on the other side of the yellow tape marking out the grassy landing strip.

With a gentle buzz the drone rises, a little uncertainly, into the sky, on its 1.5-metre wings. The precious cargo leaving Bufumira health centre III, in Uganda’s Kalangala district, is critical drugs for people living in some of the most far-flung communities in the region. Kalangala is made up of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake, which Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya.

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Attack of the drones: the mystery of disappearing swarms in the US midwest

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When groups of sinister drones began hovering over homes in America’s Midwest, the FBI, US Air Force and 16 police forces set up a task force. But the drones vanished. Did they even exist?

At twilight on New Year’s Eve, 2020, Placido Montoya, 35, a plumber from Fort Morgan, Colorado, was driving to work. Ahead of him he noticed blinking lights in the sky. He’d heard rumours of mysterious drones, whispers in his local community, but now he was seeing them with his own eyes. In the early morning gloom, it was hard to make out how big the lights were and how many were hovering above him. But one thing was clear to Montoya: he needed to give chase.

As he approached the drones in his car, they “took off very fast” and Montoya tried to follow. He confesses hitting 120mph before losing track of them. “They were creepy, really creepy,” he says. “I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s almost as if they were watching us.”

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‘They can see us in the dark’: migrants grapple with hi-tech fortress EU

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A powerful battery of drones, thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors are being deployed to exclude asylum seekers

Khaled has been playing “the game” for a year now. A former law student, he left Afghanistan in 2018, driven by precarious economic circumstances and fear for his security, as the Taliban were increasingly targeting Kabul.

But when he reached Europe, he realised the chances at winning the game were stacked against him. Getting to Europe’s borders was easy compared with actually crossing into the EU, he says, and there were more than physical obstacles preventing him from getting to Germany, where his uncle and girlfriend live.

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One-take drone video of Minnesota bowling alley goes viral – video

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A video shot by an FPV drone flying through a Minnesota bowling alley in one take has gone viral. The one-and-a-half-minute-long clip titled Right Up Our Valley was filmed in a single shot, albeit after 10-12 attempts. "I think there's some scepticism there of it being a true one-take. It is a true one-take. There's no CGI," said the video's director, Anthony Jaska. The sound was added in post-production as the buzzing from the drone's four blades make it impractical to use natural audio. The filmmakers said the goal of the video was to remind people of local businesses such as the bowling alley as public health measures from the coronavirus pandemic ease

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MI5 involvement in drone project revealed in paperwork slip-up

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Exclusive: Document produced by university cited agency as secret funder of research

For an agency devoted to secrecy and surveillance, it is an embarrassing slip-up. An inadvertent disclosure on a university document has revealed that MI5 is partly behind what was meant to be a covert bug and drone research project.

Ostensibly, Imperial College’s research was to create a quadcopter system for charging remote agricultural sensors – but MI5’s participation has emerged because somebody involved stated it was the secret second funder of the programme.

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Indonesian fisher finds drone submarine on possible covert mission

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Navy seizes UUV, likely a Chinese Sea Wing, that experts say could be used to plot routes for military subs

An Indonesian fisher has found what experts say is likely to be a Chinese submarine drone in waters on a strategic maritime route from the South China Sea to Australia.

According to Indonesian media the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) was found on 20 December near Selayar Island in South Sulawesi. Six days later it was handed to police and then transferred to the Indonesian military.

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The mystery of the Gatwick drone

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A drone sighting caused the airport to close for two days in 2018, but despite a lengthy police investigation, no culprit was ever found. So what exactly did people see in the Sussex sky?

Soon after 9pm on Wednesday 19 December 2018, an airport security officer who had just finished his shift at Gatwick airport was standing at a bus stop on site, waiting to go home, when he saw something strange. He immediately called the Gatwick control centre and reported what he had seen: two drones. One was hovering above a vehicle inside the airport complex, and the other was flying alongside the nearby perimeter fence. The message was relayed to senior management. Unauthorised drone activity is considered a danger to aircraft and passengers because of the risk of collision. Within minutes, Gatwick’s only runway had been closed and all flights were suspended.

Over the next half hour, 20 police and airport security vehicles drove around the airport, lights flashing and sirens blaring, with the intention of scaring whoever was operating the drones. It didn’t work. By 9.30pm, six more sightings had been logged by the Gatwick control centre, five of them from police officers. Inside the airport, thousands of passengers waited to set off on their Christmas holidays. In the sky above, planes circled, waiting to land. Some were at the end of long journeys, and more than a dozen aircraft were soon dangerously low on fuel.

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Airbus to operate drones searching for migrants crossing the Mediterranean

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European aerospace giant and two Israeli arms firms win EU contracts totalling €100m

Airbus and two Israeli arms companies will be paid €100m (£91m) to operate unmanned drones to spot refugees and migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea to Europe, according to EU contracts.

Drone operations over the Mediterranean will start next year, after testing carried out on the Greek island of Crete.

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Drones, fever goggles, arrests: millions in Asia face ‘extreme’ Covid surveillance

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Coronavirus tracking measures handing ‘unchecked powers’ to authoritarian regimes, experts warn

Draconian surveillance measures introduced during the Covid-19 epidemic are handing “unchecked powers” to authoritarian regimes across Asia, human rights experts are warning.

In a report out today, risk analysts warn that “extreme measures and unchecked powers” brought in to tackle Covid-19 could become permanent features of government across the region, and have an impact on the rights and privacy of millions of people.

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Deserted Sydney: drone footage of Australia’s biggest city empty in coronavirus lockdown – video

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The Opera House, ferry terminals, parks and squares – all  the city's most popular spaces have been nearly cleared of people. Central Sydney experienced a dramatic drop in workers and shoppers as the government ordered pubs and restaurants to close, and businesses asked their staff to work from home as part of efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19

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Sky shepherds: the farmers using drones to watch their flocks by flight

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For some farmers in New Zealand, Britain and Australia, drones are not just a toy – they’re an increasingly vital tool

A shepherd is out tending a flock when a presence appears above. It descends from the sky and communicates vital information. It may sound like a nativity scene, but for an increasing number of farmers it’s a daily occurrence – and that celestial being is a drone.

Corey Lambeth, a New Zealand farmer, originally purchased a drone for photography, but he quickly realised the device had more practical applications. “I thought ‘I’ll just give it a nudge on the sheep and see what that goes like’ and it actually worked out quite well,” he says. Now, Lambeth has been using a drone “pretty much as another dog” to muster sheep for three years.

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Are drone swarms the future of aerial warfare?

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Technology of deploying drones in squadrons is in its infancy, but armed forces are investing millions in its development

As evening fell on Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in western Syria, the first drones appeared. Then more, until 13 were flashing on radars, speeding towards the airbase and a nearby naval facility.

The explosives-armed aircraft were no trouble for Russian air defences, which shot down seven and jammed the remaining six, according to the country’s defence ministry. But the failed attack in January last year was disturbing to close observers of drone warfare.

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Chinese man on the run for 17 years found in cave by police drone

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Song Moujiang, jailed for people trafficking, escaped prison in 2002

Chinese police reportedly used drones to track down a convicted human trafficker who had been on the run for 17 years and was living in a cave.

Song Moujiang, 63, who was jailed for trafficking women and children, had evaded police capture after escaping a prison camp, Yilaochang Farm in Sichuan province, in March 2002, the BBC reported.

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Middle East drones signal end to era of fast jet air supremacy

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Tiny, cheap, unmanned and hard-to-detect aircraft are transforming conflicts across region

In the history of modern warfare, “own the skies, win the war” has been a constant maxim. Countries with the best technology and biggest budgets have devoted tens of billions to building modern air forces, confident they will continue to give their militaries primacy in almost any conflict.

Tiny, cheap, unmanned aircraft have changed that, especially over the battlefields of the Middle East. In the past three months alone, drones have made quite an impact in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and possibly now Saudi Arabia, where half the country’s oil production - and up to 7% of the world’s global supply – has been taken offline by a blitz that caused no air raid sirens and seems to have eluded the region’s most advanced air warning systems.

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Passenger plane in near-miss with drone at Gatwick airport

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Pilot of Airbus A320 aircraft with up to 186 passengers was forced to take avoiding action

An airliner carrying up to 186 passengers was forced to take avoiding action after a drone was spotted, a near-miss report has revealed.

The incident involved an Airbus A320 approaching Gatwick airport and a dark-coloured drone, the UK Airprox Board (UKAB) said.

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Military drone crashes raise fears for civilians

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Safety warning as MoD pushes to fly the aircraft in Britain

Two military drones are crashing every month on average, according to research that raises questions about the safety of the technology, both in conflict zones and civilian environments.

Accidents Will Happen, a report published by the campaign group Drone Wars UK, reveals that there have been more than 250 crashes involving the large unmanned aircraft in the past decade. A Reaper drone has a maximum speed of 480kph, a range of 1,800km and is armed with up to four missiles and two 230kg bombs.

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Drone no-fly zone to be widened at airports after Gatwick chaos

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Police given powers to stop and search and use warrant to access drone electronic data

Flying drones will be illegal within five kilometres (3.1 miles) of airports after ministers decided to widen the no-fly zone to try to prevent a repeat of the chaos at Gatwick.

The enlarged zone will come into force from 19 March ahead of new drone legislation, which will give police new powers to stop and search those they believe are misusing the devices and a power to access electronic data stored on a drone with a warrant.

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Gatwick returns to normality but drone threat remains

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Confusion still hangs over the investigation into airport’s three days of chaos last month

Six days before Christmas, an airport security officer at Gatwick was finishing his shift at about 9pm when he saw something unusual. There were two drones, each in the shape of a cross, flying over the south perimeter road with sharply flashing lights.

The worker reported what he had seen – and chaos ensued. About 1,000 flights affecting 140,000 passengers were cancelled or diverted across three days. Tempers flared, and hearts were broken. Two people were arrested and released without charge. The army was brought in.

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