Hovering in the sky above Ukraine are hundreds of small drones from U.S. startups, searching for survivors in war-pummeled cities and Russian hide-outs in the scarred landscape. Those startups, including Seattle-based BRINC Drones Inc. and Silicon Valley's Skydio Inc., are rushing to fill a gap in Ukraine after government officials called out products supplied by Chinese company SZ DJI Technology Co., the world's largest commercial drone maker, as a security risk for Ukraine's military and civilians.

The United States has disclosed details of its latest military aid package to be used by Ukraine's forces in the country's east after Russian forces this week launched a full-scale offensive in the region. The new $800m assistance package includes a new unmanned aerial weapons system, or drone, dubbed the Phoenix Ghost. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the drones, which are produced by a US company, Aevex Aerospace, are particularly well suited for the fight in Ukraine's east, in the flat and open terrain of the region known as Donbas. "Without getting into the specifications, but the kinds of things this drone can do lend itself well to this particular kind of terrain," Kirby told reporters on Thursday. "I think I'm just going leave it at that. But its purpose is akin to that of the Switchblade … which is basically a one-way drone, an attack drone. And that's essentially what this is designed to do".

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Pentagon announced Thursday that it will deliver over 120 "Phoenix Ghost" drones specifically designed by the U.S. Air Force for Ukrainian "needs" as the war with Russia ramps up. U.S. defense officials have warned that Russia's invasion in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions will be a more brutal fight as Moscow "shapes" its new strategy in the Donbas region to address specific terrain challenges. A senior defense official told reporters Thursday that the "Phoenix Ghost" is a tactical unmanned aerial system that "was rapidly developed by the Air Force in response specifically to Ukrainian requirements."

TOKYO -- Zipline, an American company that specializes in using autonomously flying drones to deliver medical supplies, has taken off in Japan. Other parts of Japan may follow, including urban areas, although the biggest needs tend to be in isolated rural areas. Zipline, founded six years ago, already is in service in the U.S., where it has partnered with Walmart Inc. to deliver other products at the retail chain as well as drugs. It is also delivering medical goods in Ghana and Rwanda. Its takeoff in Japan is in partnership with Toyota Tsusho, a group company of Japan's top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. "You can totally transform the way that you react to pandemics, treat patients and do things like home health care delivery," Zipline Chief Executive Keller Rinaudo told The Associated Press.

A futuristic cargo drone that could be used to deliver packages over distances of up to 25 miles has been unveiled as a design concept. The uncrewed eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft features six battery powered omni-directional CycloRotors that generate thrust. They are designed to allow the drone to land on a 16-foot platform in crosswinds of up to 40mph. This is important, its designers say, because precision landing in confined areas and the ability to handle challenging wind conditions are key for operating in urban areas. The hope is that the drone will be able to travel at speeds of 80mph at almost 5,000ft (1,500 metres).

Six years ago, Rwanda had a blood delivery problem. More than 12 million people live in the small East African country, and like those in other nations, sometimes they get into car accidents. Anemic children need urgent transfusions. You can't predict these emergencies. And when they do, the red stuff stored in Place A has to find its way to a patient in Place B--fast.

Small drones used for surveillance can monitor events for longer by attaching themselves to a wall and powering down their rotors to extend battery life. Jeffrey Mao at New York University and his colleagues came up with the idea and built a prototype from commercially available parts. Mao says the drone typically has a flying time of just 20 minutes before its batteries run out.

Brussels – The race is on. As columns of Russian troops began pouring into Ukraine nearly two months ago, the United States and its allies started supplying Kyiv with weapons and equipment for what many expected to be a short war: sniper rifles, helmets, medical kits, encrypted communications, lots of bullets and the portable, shoulder-held Stinger and Javelin missiles that quickly became icons of the conflict. Defying the odds, Ukraine held on to its capital and pushed Russia from the north. Now, as the Kremlin switches gears and begins a concerted effort to capture eastern Ukraine, Washington and its allies are pivoting as well, scrambling to supply Ukraine with bigger and more advanced weapons to defend itself in a grinding war. The West is focused on sending longer-range weapons like howitzers, anti-aircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armed drones, armored trucks, personnel carriers and even tanks -- the type of arms that President Joe Biden said were tailored to stop "the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine."

When the going gets tough for Kim Jong Un, his regime likes to turn its TV cameras on the military, with glossy productions showcasing the missiles and manpower that North Korea tells the masses are protecting the nation. Since taking power a decade ago, Kim has brought new looks to state television, including drone footage, computer graphics, music video-style cuts and made-for-TV moments. This has helped him rally support for the state as it battles chronic food shortages and an anemic economy made even weaker by international sanctions imposed as punishment for testing nuclear bombs and missiles, some potentially capable of striking the U.S. and its allies. In his most recent state TV spectacle, for a weapons test on March 24, Kim is seen in dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket apparently ordering his army -- in slow motion -- to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile. This was released eight days after a failed ballistic missile launch near Pyongyang's international airport.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are being increasingly deployed throughout the globe as a means to streamline monitoring, inspection, mapping, and logistic routines. When dispatched on autonomous missions, drones require an intelligent decision-making system for trajectory planning and tour optimization. Given the limited capacity of their onboard batteries, a key design challenge is to ensure the underlying algorithms can efficiently optimize the mission objectives along with recharging operations during long-haul flights. With this in view, the present work undertakes a comprehensive study on automated tour management systems for an energy-constrained drone: (1) We construct a machine learning model that estimates the energy expenditure of typical multi-rotor drones while accounting for real-world aspects and extrinsic meteorological factors. (2) Leveraging this model, the joint program of flight mission planning and recharging optimization is formulated as a multi-criteria Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem (ATSP), wherein a drone seeks for the time-optimal energy-feasible tour that visits all the target sites and refuels whenever necessary. (3) We devise an efficient approximation algorithm with provable worst-case performance guarantees and implement it in a drone management system, which supports real-time flight path tracking and re-computation in dynamic environments. (4) The effectiveness and practicality of the proposed approach are validated through extensive numerical simulations as well as real-world experiments.