Reports of flocks of drones, flying overhead nightly, are coming in from New Jersey down to Maryland. Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking "Try Free" at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Congressman Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, discusses the future of drone security in the United States during an appearance on'America Reports.' The Federal Aviation Administration issued more restrictions on drone flights across the Northeast on Friday in response to increased sightings in recent weeks. One day after announcing temporary restrictions on most drone flights in New Jersey, the FAA issued 27 No-Fly Zone notices for "special security reasons" in New York on Friday. The restrictions last through Jan. 18, 2025, and apply to some of the most populated areas in the Empire State, including nearly every NYC borough. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary restrictions on drone flights in 27 areas of New York in response to the influx of reported sightings in recent weeks.

We propose a new simulator, training approach, and policy architecture, collectively called SOUS VIDE, for end-to-end visual drone navigation. Our trained policies exhibit zero-shot sim-to-real transfer with robust real-world performance using only on-board perception and computation. Our simulator, called FiGS, couples a computationally simple drone dynamics model with a high visual fidelity Gaussian Splatting scene reconstruction. FiGS can quickly simulate drone flights producing photorealistic images at up to 130 fps. We use FiGS to collect 100k-300k observation-action pairs from an expert MPC with privileged state and dynamics information, randomized over dynamics parameters and spatial disturbances. We then distill this expert MPC into an end-to-end visuomotor policy with a lightweight neural architecture, called SV-Net. SV-Net processes color image, optical flow and IMU data streams into low-level body rate and thrust commands at 20Hz onboard a drone. Crucially, SV-Net includes a Rapid Motor Adaptation (RMA) module that adapts at runtime to variations in drone dynamics. In a campaign of 105 hardware experiments, we show SOUS VIDE policies to be robust to 30% mass variations, 40 m/s wind gusts, 60% changes in ambient brightness, shifting or removing objects from the scene, and people moving aggressively through the drone's visual field. Code, data, and experiment videos can be found on our project page: https://stanfordmsl.github.io/SousVide/.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced a temporary drone ban in New Jersey, citing'special security reasons.' At least 22 towns in central and northern New Jersey fall under the alert, which is in place until at least January 17. The temporary flight restriction (TFR) areas include parts of Camden, Gloucester City, Winslow Township, Evesham, Hancock's Bridge in Lower Alloways Township in Salem County, Westampton, Burlington, and Hamilton in Mercer County. Flying drones is also banned in Bridgewater, Cedar Grove, North Brunswick, Metuchen, South Brunswick, Edison, Branchburg, Sewaren, Jersey City, Harrison, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Clifton, and Kearny. The FAA warned that'deadly force' could be used against drones that present an'imminent security threat.'

'Gutfeld!' guest host Kat Timpf and the panel discuss the ongoing'drone drama.' New York and New Jersey residents are far from the only people having issues with drones. The NFL is in the midst of its own fight against the devices and has called on congressional lawmakers to act. The leagues hope lawmakers will pass a bill to help curb the number of devices that violate airspace on gamedays. A drone flies in the air as it holds an NFL football between the NFC and AFC during the Pro Bowl Skills Showdown at Wide World of Sports on Jan. 25, 2017 in Orlando, Florida.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) spending bill has just been release and it grants DJI a year's grace before it's potentially banned in the US, The Verge reported. It was expected that DJI and rival Autel could be banned by the end of 2024 because of the Countering CCP Drones Act provision. However, the bill gives DJI an extra year to prove to an "appropriate national security agency" that its products don't pose a national security risk in the US. Failing that, the bill authorizes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to place DJI's drones on its covered list for 2026, meaning retailers would no longer be able to import them. It also means that the products (including drones and cameras like the Osmo Pocket 3) would be prohibited from connecting to US networks, and their internal radios would no longer be authorized by the FCC.

It looks like a cross between a toy airplane and a drone, but this British solar-powered aircraft could be the future of aerial surveillance. PHASA-35, built by British company BAE Systems, is a 150kg solar-electric aircraft that can quietly cruise through the stratosphere for months at a time. Named after its 35-metre wingspan, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) travels at a maximum height of 70,000 feet, at a leisurely speed of 55mph. Designed as a cheaper and lighter alternative to satellites, it can be used for Earth observation and surveillance, border control, communications and disaster relief. Now, BAE Systems reveals that PHASA-35 has just completed a second round of test flights into the stratosphere – the second layer of Earth's atmosphere.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drone flights over parts of New Jersey following an influx of sightings in recent weeks. The notice, which expires Jan. 17, 2025, said drone operations in support of national defense, homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, search and rescue or disaster response missions are not included in the restrictions. Commercial drone operations are allowed with a valid statement of work, but there must be an approved special governmental interest airspace waiver and all applicable FAA regulations must be followed. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the White House, and more broadly the U.S. government, does not seem concerned about the increased sightings in New Jersey and other northeastern states. "Look, I'm the speaker of the House. I have the exact same frustrations that you do and all of us do. We don't have the answers. The administration is not providing them," Johnson said in a Fox News appearance.

At least 100 North Korean troops deployed to Russia have been killed, with another 1,000 injured in combat against Ukrainian forces in intense fighting in the Kursk region, a South Korean lawmaker said on Thursday citing the country's spy agency. The heavy losses are attributed to the lack of experience by North Korean troops in drone warfare and unfamiliarity with the open terrain where they are taking part in the battle, a member of parliament Lee Seong-kweun told reporters. Lee was speaking after a closed-door briefing by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to parliament.

Lee Sung-kwon said there were reports of preparations for additional deployment, and that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could oversee training. He quoted intelligence officials as saying the high number of casualties could be attributed to an "unfamiliar battlefield environment, where North Korean forces are being utilised as expendable frontline assault units, and their lack of capability to counter drone attacks". "Within the Russian military, complaints have reportedly surfaced that the North Korean troops, due to their lack of knowledge about drones, are more of a burden than an asset," he added. Neither Russia nor the North have acknowledged the troop deployments, but a North Korean statement on Thursday carried by state news agency KCNA said the country's alliance with Moscow was "deterring the US and the West's ill-intended extension of influence".