Multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle is a prevailing type of aircraft with wide real-world applications. Energy efficiency is a critical aspect of its performance, determining the range and duration of the missions that can be performed. In this study, we show both analytically and numerically that the optimum of a key energy efficiency index in forward flight, namely energy per meter traveled per unit mass, is a constant under different vehicle mass (including payload). Note that this relationship is only true under the optimal forward velocity that minimizes the energy consumption (under different mass), but not under arbitrary velocity. The study is based on a previously developed model capturing the first-principle energy dynamics of the multirotor, and a key step is to prove that the pitch angle under optimal velocity is a constant. By employing both analytical derivation and validation studies, the research provides critical insights into the optimization of multirotor energy efficiency, and facilitate the development of flight control strategies to extend mission duration and range.

"The Ukrainian army launched a drone strike on a civilian car carrying Izvestia's freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov," the news outlet reported on its Telegram channel. "The car was located far from the line of contact." The vehicle was returning from covering shelling in the Russian-held city of Gorlivka when it was hit, Russia's state RIA news agency said. Two RIA journalists were wounded in the attack, the agency added. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the incident "deliberate murder".

The Russian media outlet Izvestia said a Ukrainian drone attack killed its freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov. Data previously provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 15 journalists killed since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This paper introduces a high-performance artificial intelligence operating system tailored for low-altitude aviation, designed to address key challenges such as real-time task execution, computational efficiency, and seamless modular collaboration. Built on a powerful hardware platform and leveraging the UNIX architecture, the system implements a distributed data processing strategy that ensures rapid and efficient synchronization across critical modules, including vision, navigation, and perception. By adopting dynamic resource management, it optimally allocates computational resources, such as CPU and GPU, based on task priority and workload, ensuring high performance for demanding tasks like real-time video processing and AI model inference. Furthermore, the system features an advanced interrupt handling mechanism that allows for quick responses to sudden environmental changes, such as obstacle detection, by prioritizing critical tasks, thus improving safety and mission success rates. Robust security measures, including data encryption, access control, and fault tolerance, ensure the system's resilience against external threats and its ability to recover from potential hardware or software failures. Complementing these core features are modular components for image analysis, multi-sensor fusion, dynamic path planning, multi-drone coordination, and ground station monitoring. Additionally, a low-code development platform simplifies user customization, making the system adaptable to various mission-specific needs. This comprehensive approach ensures the system meets the evolving demands of intelligent aviation, providing a stable, efficient, and secure environment for complex drone operations.

Faced with an increasingly fraught security environment, rapid changes in modern warfare and dwindling troop numbers, the Self-Defense Forces have begun incorporating what they hope will be affordable yet game-changing technologies that could give them an edge in any future conflict: drones. Whether for use in the air, on land or at sea, the SDF is gradually integrating these increasingly capable and often autonomous systems into their units as Japan takes lessons from the war in Ukraine on how the assets can act as force multipliers while minimizing human losses and operate continuously for long periods. "It is safe to say that the unprecedented scale of unmanned aerial vehicle deployments in the Ukraine war, and their effectiveness, has been an important driver behind the interest in UAVs," said Naoko Aoki, a Japan expert and political scientist at the Rand Corp.

Russia's creeping advance in Donetsk has captured 4,168 square kilometres (1,609sq miles) of territory at the cost of 430,000 soldiers, according to a new analysis. Ukraine will reportedly receive its first French Mirage 2000-5F multirole fighters this month, according to French magazine Avions Legendaires. A Russian court has ordered the largest search engine in Russia, Yandex, to hide maps and photos of one of the country's biggest oil refineries after repeated attacks by Ukrainian drones, state news agency TASS reports. Russia's creeping advance in Donetsk has captured 4,168 square kilometres (1,609sq miles) of territory at the cost of 430,000 soldiers, according to a new analysis. Ukraine will reportedly receive its first French Mirage 2000-5F multirole fighters this month, according to French magazine Avions Legendaires.

Low-altitude mobility, exemplified by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has introduced transformative advancements across various domains, like transportation, logistics, and agriculture. Leveraging flexible perspectives and rapid maneuverability, UAVs extend traditional systems' perception and action capabilities, garnering widespread attention from academia and industry. However, current UAV operations primarily depend on human control, with only limited autonomy in simple scenarios, and lack the intelligence and adaptability needed for more complex environments and tasks. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) demonstrates remarkable problem-solving and generalization capabilities, offering a promising pathway for advancing UAV intelligence. This paper explores the integration of LLMs and UAVs, beginning with an overview of UAV systems' fundamental components and functionalities, followed by an overview of the state-of-the-art in LLM technology. Subsequently, it systematically highlights the multimodal data resources available for UAVs, which provide critical support for training and evaluation. Furthermore, it categorizes and analyzes key tasks and application scenarios where UAVs and LLMs converge. Finally, a reference roadmap towards agentic UAVs is proposed, aiming to enable UAVs to achieve agentic intelligence through autonomous perception, memory, reasoning, and tool utilization. Related resources are available at https://github.com/Hub-Tian/UAVs_Meet_LLMs.

Russia's gradual, grinding advance in parts of Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk succeeded in wresting away 4,168 sq km (1,609 square miles) of fields and abandoned villages in 2024 – equivalent to 0.69 percent of the country. That was the assessment of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank, based on satellite imagery and geolocated video footage. "Russian forces have seized four mid-sized settlements – Avdiivka, Selydove, Vuhledar, and Kurakhove – in all of 2024, the largest of which had a pre-war population of just over 31,000 people," said the ISW. Russian forces spent four months taking Avdiivka, and two months each for Selydove and Kurakhove. "Seizing these settlements has not allowed Russian forces to threaten any notable Ukrainian defensive nodes," said the ISW, adding that Moscow's troops failed to conduct the kind of rapid, mechanised manoeuvre necessary to convert these "tactical gains into deep penetrations of Ukraine's rear".

One person has been killed and four others were injured when Russian drones targeted the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, military and civilian officials said, as Russia launched barrages across the country. The Ukrainian Air Force said its air defences shot down 60 out of 93 Russian drones launched at Ukraine since the early hours of Friday. Moscow's forces have escalated aerial attacks across Ukraine in recent days, including a New Year's Day drone attack targeting central Kyiv that killed two people. In the latest barrage, a truck driver was killed by drone debris, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, acting governor for the Kyiv region. He said the debris also damaged several houses, injuring four people, including a 16-year-old boy.

While official reports of eerie drone-like UFOs dropped over the holidays, New Jersey residents are still coming forward with bizarre encounters. Two witnesses in Manalapan Township, for example, videotaped a bus-sized, 25- to 50-foot-long black triangle UFO that they saw'pull off a high g [force] maneuver over a residential area' just days before Christmas. The sighting, which lasted at least one minute, ended with the object zooming'in the general direction of McGuire [Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst]' -- matching a persistent pattern of'drone' UFO incursions over US bases in recent years. Another New Jersey skywatcher recorded what they described as a classic'flying saucer' with an'aura or haze around object' just three miles off the coast of Atlantic City. And still more Garden State witnesses now say they saw as many as 20 to 30 drones just this Wednesday night, which'kind of hovered and all looked like miniature aircraft,' in an account posted to Facebook.