Air Force
Can Nigeria's drone industry deliver Africa's defence sovereignty
Can Nigeria's drone industry deliver Africa's defence sovereignty Across Africa, the ability to defend borders, monitor territory and protect critical infrastructure remains heavily dependent on foreign suppliers. Turkish drones patrol borders, Chinese surveillance systems monitor cities and Russian fighter jets form the backbone of several air forces. For decades, African militaries have turned abroad for critical defence technologies, leaving the continent largely positioned as a buyer rather than a producer. An Abuja-based start-up is attempting to change that equation. Terra Industries, founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka, both in their early twenties, designs and manufactures drones, autonomous surveillance towers and unmanned ground vehicles from facilities in Abuja and Accra.
NATO states slam Russia after drone crashes in Romania
Romania and its NATO allies have reacted angrily after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in eastern Romania, injuring two people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bucharest on Friday labelled the crash of the drone, part of an overnight attack aimed at Ukraine, a serious violation of international law. The incident is just the latest incursion along the alliance's eastern flank, raising concern that the risk of an open confrontation between Russia and NATO states is rising. Romania said the overnight drone was tracked by radar in its airspace before crashing onto the roof of a residential building in the city of Galati. Two F-16 fighter jets and a helicopter were scrambled, as authorities issued emergency alerts to residents.
The Ukrainian Stunt Pilot Hunting Russian Drones
A Ukrainian flying ace is leveraging his aerobatics skills to protect his countrymen from nightly attacks. The most challenging part of an international aerobatics contest is the Free Unknown. Pilots arrive at a competition after having polished sequences of loops, stall turns, and barrel rolls. But for the Free Unknown section they learn which assortment of tricks they must perform only a day in advance. Contestants plan out how they will string together the stipulated moves in the most pleasing fashion, but they cannot rehearse the routine, except in their minds. It's a test of imagination and airmanship that often decides the competition. In 2019, the World Intermediate Aerobatics Championship, which was held on an airfield in the Czech town of Břeclav, contained three Free Unknowns. The winner of the first was a twenty-five-year-old Ukrainian pilot named Timur Fatkullin. At the controls of his red-and-silver Extra 330LX--a nimble German sports plane--he made the unusual move of starting his sequence upside down. He then executed a complicated routine as if he'd practiced it for months. The Ukrainian team, boosted by Fatkullin's performance, won gold. Trevor Dugan, who served as a navigator with the R.A.F. in Afghanistan and Iraq, was on the British team, which took bronze. Fatkullin, he said, was "absolutely phenomenal." Not long after that championship, Fatkullin stopped entering aerobatics competitions: first came the pandemic, then the war with Russia. He moves through life impatiently. Now thirty-two, he has five children. He is tall, with a tight beard, pale-green eyes, and a square jaw. Even in casual situations, he stands ramrod straight, as though about to give or receive an order. He often wears a shirt with three buttons undone, a beige leather flying jacket with the collar turned up, combat pants, and Nike high-tops. He plays the guitar, a little piano. He often carries a thick fold of high-value bills. He speaks several languages, including English (almost perfectly) and Spanish (conversationally). He once spent thirty days in jail after breaking the ribs of a man who'd threatened his wife. He can dance the tango. When Fatkullin was in his mid-twenties, he started doing stunts with a group of other extreme athletes: parachutists, motorcyclists, a free diver.
British jets to get new anti-drone missile systems
British fighter jets in the Middle East will be equipped with new missile systems to make it cheaper to intercept Iranian drones. Royal Air Force Typhoon jets will be fitted with an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) to destroy targets more precisely and at a fraction of the price of missiles currently in use, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced. Gulf countries and allies in the region have been grappling with how to counter Iran's Shahed drones, which are relatively cheap to make and have been causing considerable damage. During the 2024 conflict between Israel and Iran, the UK was reported to have shot down some drones with missiles worth around £200,000 each. Defence experts have estimated APKWS rockets used by other countries cost around $30,000 (£22,377) each.
On the Powerfulness of Textual Outlier Exposure for Visual OoDDetection (Appendix) AAdditional experimental results
This section presents more comprehensive experimental results. A.1 Comparison with post-hoc methods We also compare the performance of our textual outlier method with post-hoc approaches, which are another prominent approach in OoD detection. We conducted comparisons with six widely used and recently proposed methods known for their detection performance (MSP [4], ODIN [8], Mahalanobis [7], Energy [10], ReAct [14], KNN [15]). All advanced baseline methods follow the original paper's settings. Among these methods, our textual outlier approach demonstrate the best performance, further emphasizing its effectiveness as demonstrated in Table 6.
Wave of US jets spotted nearing Middle East as theories swirl over next stage of Iran war
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