Efficient localization plays a vital role in many modern applications of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) and Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which would contribute to improved control, safety, power economy, etc. The ubiquitous 5G NR (New Radio) cellular network will provide new opportunities for enhancing localization of UAVs and UGVs. In this paper, we review the radio frequency (RF) based approaches for localization. We review the RF features that can be utilized for localization and investigate the current methods suitable for Unmanned vehicles under two general categories: range-based and fingerprinting. The existing state-of-the-art literature on RF-based localization for both UAVs and UGVs is examined, and the envisioned 5G NR for localization enhancement, and the future research direction are explored.

Ministers of the European Union of Foreign Affairs have imposed new sanctions on Iranian religious leaders, senior officials and top state media employees over new crackdowns on antigovernment protests and supplying drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. Twenty individuals and one entity were sanctioned on Monday over human rights abuses, while four more people and as many entities were added over the issue of drones. Sanctions include freezing of assets and travel bans to the EU. The state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting had its assets frozen; the EU said the media outlet was a "mouthpiece" for "the violent response to the recent demonstrations in Iran". Iranians have protested against the government's restrictions on their daily lives since late September, following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic's strict dress code.

We present a method for controlling a swarm using its spectral decomposition -- that is, by describing the set of trajectories of a swarm in terms of a spatial distribution throughout the operational domain -- guaranteeing scale invariance with respect to the number of agents both for computation and for the operator tasked with controlling the swarm. We use ergodic control, decentralized across the network, for implementation. In the DARPA OFFSET program field setting, we test this interface design for the operator using the STOMP interface -- the same interface used by Raytheon BBN throughout the duration of the OFFSET program. In these tests, we demonstrate that our approach is scale-invariant -- the user specification does not depend on the number of agents; it is persistent -- the specification remains active until the user specifies a new command; and it is real-time -- the user can interact with and interrupt the swarm at any time. Moreover, we show that the spectral/ergodic specification of swarm behavior degrades gracefully as the number of agents goes down, enabling the operator to maintain the same approach as agents become disabled or are added to the network. We demonstrate the scale-invariance and dynamic response of our system in a field relevant simulator on a variety of tactical scenarios with up to 50 agents. We also demonstrate the dynamic response of our system in the field with a smaller team of agents. Lastly, we make the code for our system available.

Russian attacks have turned the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut into "burnt ruins", President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, while Ukraine's military has reported missile, rocket and drone attacks in multiple parts of the country that have killed civilians and destroyed critical infrastructure. Zelenskyy said on Saturday that the situation "remains very difficult" in several front-line cities in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, naming cities that have again found themselves under sustained Russian barrages. "The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins," he said. Zelenskyy also said that more than 1.5 million people were without power in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa after a night attack by drones.

In 2013, Jeff Bezos announced Amazon was developing a drone delivery service. He estimated at the time that air-dropped packages were "four, five years" away. Nearly a decade later, the service is promised to begin by the end of this year – albeit in only two locations in the US. According to David Carbon, an Australian expat and vice-president of the firm's drone delivery division, Amazon wants to deliver 500m packages annually by drone from 2030. Carbon told AAP earlier this month that the firm was planning a wider rollout for air deliveries in the US and potentially Australia.

Schuyler Moore, Chief Technology Officer at US Central Command (CENTCOM), said Wednesday that such ideas are expected to play a much bigger role in bolstering American troops. CENTCOM is the US combatant command that covers the Middle East and parts of northern Africa and southern Asia. "This tool is intended to do is to provide the opportunity for the boots on the ground that are closest to the threat and closest to their operational environment to mimic that environment as accurately as possible and to, as well, deploy threats against their base and to train against threats on their base that they see and that they interact with sometimes daily," said army Sergent Mickey Reeve, who developed the counter-unmanned aerial system training software. He added that the US will use the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center in Saudi Arabia to "pressure test" the new technology, but it will be moving around the region. Sergeant Reeve noted the technology is not tailored solely towards Iranian-made drones, "but it was built to emulate any sort of Unmanned Aerial Systems."

The United States on Friday expressed alarm over a "full-scale defense partnership" between Russia and Iran, describing it as "harmful" to Ukraine, Iran's neighbors and the world. Iran stands accused by Western powers of supplying drones to Russia for its war against Ukraine, as Moscow batters the country's energy infrastructure in search of an advantage in the bloody conflict. Washington has previously condemned Iran-Russia security cooperation, but on Friday described an extensive relationship involving equipment such as drones, helicopters and fighter jets. "Russia is seeking to collaborate with Iran in areas like weapons development, training," White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. Moscow "is offering Iran an unprecedented level of military and technical support -- that is transforming their relationship into a fully fledged defense partnership," he said.

The Kremlin said Thursday that the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula was vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks after officials said they had shot down a drone near a key naval base. The latest drone attack comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin recently visited the only bridge connecting Crimea with the Russian mainland to survey work to repair the key artery damaged in a blast Moscow blamed on Kiyv. "There are certainly risks because the Ukrainian side continues its policy of organising terrorist attacks. But, on the other hand, information we get indicates that effective countermeasures are being taken," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. The Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov said last month that Russia was strengthening fortifications on the peninsula in the wake of recent attacks.

An Israeli start-up is replacing farmhands with flying robots who do the picking themselves. The robots fly around and pick fruit straight off the trees, depositing them in a bin. That makes life easier for farmers, may cut food prices and the work more cost-effective, according to Israeli start-up Tevel. The robots are already paired with farmers in orchards in Italy and the US. "Artificial Intelligence is definitely the future," says Amir Degani, associate professor, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Kyiv, Ukraine – A mysterious weapon struck a target deep in Russia's heartland. On Monday morning, a deafening roar that sounded like a landing jet plane woke up a town spreadeagled in the flat steppes of the Volga River region. According to surveillance camera footage, a lightning-like flash followed by a thunderous explosion shook Engels, named after the philosopher and home to more than 300,000 people. It hit one of Russia's largest and most important military airfields that hosts strategic Tupolev Tu-160 and Tu-95 bombers. The planes are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Moscow has repeatedly used them to rain non-nuclear missiles on Ukraine.