On a bluff south of San Francisco overlooking the Pacific Ocean, an electric motor whips a drone built by startup Zipline off a catapult launch ramp beside me and into the air on a test flight. The aircraft, with a fixed-wing design resembling that of a conventional airplane, pilots itself north, plans its approach based on the wind direction, makes a sweeping turn and drops a box of Band-Aids, Advil and Tums by parachute onto the grass a few yards in front of me. Drone deliveries could be dropping into your life, too, as the technology involved matures and expands beyond isolated test projects. In 2023, drones could replace vans and your own trip to the store when you need medicine, takeout dinners, cordless drill batteries or dishwasher soap. Today, Alphabet Wing drones reach hundreds of thousands of people in Australia, Finland and Texas and will expand its service in 2023, according to Jonathan Bass, who runs marketing for the business.

Ukraine has started the new year with a major attack that killed many Russian soldiers in their barracks, and with a defensive victory – its air force said it managed to shoot down all the Iranian drones Russia launched against Ukrainian infrastructure since the beginning of the year. Ukraine launched six artillery rockets at a barracks in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region, using its US-supplied HIMARS system a couple of minutes into New Year's Day. Four of the rockets got through air defences, the Russian defence ministry admitted, striking their target. Russia acknowledged 63 deaths two days after the strike, later raising that number to 89. But video of the wreckage showed that the temporary barracks, a former vocational school, had been almost completely flattened, suggesting that casualties may be much higher and it may take time to extract bodies.

Manufacturing & Logistics IT spoke with leading analysts and vendors about current developments within the manufacturing technology space and what future innovations might emerge over the next few years. The world of manufacturing technology is changing, and digital is certainly the watchword. As Rowan Litter, research analyst, enterprise mobility, VDC Research, points out, the primary development within the manufacturing technology space is Digital Transformation. This, he explains, can be as simple as upgrading from outdated/legacy systems or pen-and-paper or enabling an entire smart factory with automation, and machine learning/AI capabilities. "As these technologies become tested and proven, manufacturers are realising that correctly incorporating these innovations will lead to increased operational efficiency and greater production to meet rises in consumer demand," he says. Litter believes a very important piece that needs to be talked about is the enabler of these innovations and technology. "That enabler comes from connectivity and networks; what will allow businesses to adopt and connect more technologies, process data faster and provide the best security from a rise in cybersecurity threats, as well as the overall risks with digitalisation," he says. "Private Wireless Networks have emerged as the enabler for manufacturers who are interested in implementing these new technologies. A challenge for many organisations comes from not knowing what to prioritise and where to start. With labour critical to support operations in many of these environments and organisations challenged with optimising workflows, we find that enabling the mobile worker with digital tools is the optimal jumping off point." In terms of drivers for change, Litter maintains that the impacts of COVID-19 highlighted inefficiencies in the manufacturing sector.

IT Reseller spoke with leading analysts and vendors about current developments within the manufacturing technology space and what future innovations might emerge over the next few years. The world of manufacturing technology is changing, and digital is certainly the watchword. As Rowan Litter, research analyst, enterprise mobility, VDC Research, points out, the primary development within the manufacturing technology space is Digital Transformation. This, he explains, can be as simple as upgrading from outdated/legacy systems or pen-and-paper or enabling an entire smart factory with automation, and machine learning/AI capabilities. "As these technologies become tested and proven, manufacturers are realising that correctly incorporating these innovations will lead to increased operational efficiency and greater production to meet rises in consumer demand," he says. Litter believes a very important piece that needs to be talked about is the enabler of these innovations and technology. "That enabler comes from connectivity and networks; what will allow businesses to adopt and connect more technologies, process data faster and provide the best security from a rise in cybersecurity threats, as well as the overall risks with digitalisation," he says. "Private Wireless Networks have emerged as the enabler for manufacturers who are interested in implementing these new technologies. A challenge for many organisations comes from not knowing what to prioritise and where to start. With labour critical to support operations in many of these environments and organisations challenged with optimising workflows, we find that enabling the mobile worker with digital tools is the optimal jumping off point." In terms of drivers for change, Litter maintains that the impacts of COVID-19 highlighted inefficiencies in the manufacturing sector.

A Ukrainian intelligence assessment has found that a single Iranian-made attack drone launched by Russia contained parts made by more than a dozen US companies. The Iranian Shahed-136 drone, downed during an attack last fall, contained 40 components manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to a CNN report citing the assessment. For months, Russia has been hammering Ukraine's civilian infrastructure with waves of drone attacks, which are designed to overwhelm air defenses and demoralize the population. Though the company that built the drones, Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries Corporation (HESA), has been under US sanctions since 2008, Iran appears to be obtaining the sophisticated electronics using intermediaries. To investigate the issue, the White House last month launched an'all hands on deck' task force involving agencies from across Washington - including the departments of Defense, State, Justice, Commerce and Treasury. Part of a downed Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone launched by Russia is seen near Kupiansk, Ukraine.

Heavy fighting around the largely ruined Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut is likely to persist for the foreseeable future, according to a senior US administration official. Putin has sent a warship towards the Atlantic and Indian oceans armed with new hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles, which he said were unique worldwide. The Ukrainian foreign minister says that Patriot air defence systems being sent by the United States are expected to be deployed in Ukraine soon. Russia says that mass production of new electronic warfare and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems will start in the next few months. Ukraine says Russia had launched seven missile strikes, 18 air raids and more than 85 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems in the past 24 hours on three cities – Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

While AI and ML have been weaponized by cybercriminals and nation-states to attack understaffed enterprises, businesses are willing to spend on AI-based solutions to defend themselves. Cybersecurity leaders are particularly concerned about machine-based cyberattacks because such attacks can adapt faster than enterprises' defensive AI can react. In order to defend against these attacks, businesses must implement cyber AI for defense before offensive AI becomes mainstream. What enterprises can do to counter weaponized AI and ML wielded by cybercriminal gangs and nation-state threat actors.

Human intelligence and intuition are vital to training artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models to provide enterprises with hybrid cybersecurity at scale. Combining human intelligence and intuition with AI and ML models helps catch the nuances of attack patterns that elude numerical analysis alone. Experienced threat hunters, security analysts and data scientists help ensure that the data used to train AI and ML models enables a model to accurately identify threats and reduce false positives. Combining human expertise and AI and ML models with a real-time stream of telemetry data from enterprises' many systems and apps defines the future of hybrid cybersecurity. "Based on behaviors and insights, AI and ML allow us to predict [that] something will happen before it does," says Monique Shivanandan, CISO at HSBC, a global bank.

Leveraging indie's global sales channels underpinned by leading tier 1 and vehicle OEMs, this partnership enables indie to deploy Seeing Machines' hardware-optimized, industry-leading Occula Neural Processing Unit (NPU) technology into the Company's first generation of innovative vision sensing system-on-chips (SoCs). Based on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), distracted driving is a factor in nearly 10 percent of fatal motor crashes and in the U.S. alone, driver distraction is responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 people a year and the injury of a further 400,000. To reduce the number of accidents related to driver distraction or drowsiness and occupant fatalities, driver and occupant monitoring systems (DMS, OMS) are now being mandated or strongly recommended by global regulators and standards organizations through initiatives such as Europe's General Safety Regulations (GSR), European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and is currently being reviewed by the U.S. NHTSA rulemaking for inclusion in updated U.S. NCAP guidelines. To operate effectively, camera-based monitoring solutions need to address a number of challenges, including dynamic lighting conditions that range from complete darkness to bright sunlight, and factors such as driver height, position, skin tones and facial obscuration, such as wearing sunglasses. "indie's expansion of intelligent, vision-based sensing solutions is another critical step in our mission to save lives via our diverse ADAS and sensor fusion product portfolio," said Abhay Rai, senior vice president of indie Semiconductor's Vision Business Unit.

A North Korean drone entered the northern end of a 3.7km (2.2 miles) radius no-fly zone around South Korea's presidential office in Seoul when it intruded into the country's airspace last month, South Korean military officials say. "It [the drone] briefly flew into the northern edge of the zone, but it did not come close to key security facilities," a military official told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency on Thursday. The drone was among five North Korean unmanned aerial vehicles that crossed the border and entered South Korean airspace on December 26, prompting South Korea's military to scramble fighter jets and attack helicopters. The military could not bring down the drones, which flew over South Korean territory for hours. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff had denied that one of the drones intruded into the presidential office no-fly zone, however, on Thursday confirmed that a drone had violated the northern end of the secure area but did not fly directly over the Yongsan area, where the office of President Yoon Suk-yeol is located.