On January 22nd, two days after President Trump was inaugurated, he received a memo from his new Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, recommending that the United States launch a military strike in Yemen. In a forty-year career, Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general and a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, had cultivated a reputation for being both deeply thoughtful and extremely aggressive. By law and by custom, the position of Defense Secretary is reserved for civilians, but Mattis was still a marine at heart. He had been out of the military for only three years (the rule is seven), and his appointment required Congress to pass a waiver. For the first time in his professional life, he was going to the Pentagon in a suit and tie. Mattis urged Trump to launch the raid swiftly: the operation, which was aimed at one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, required a moonless night, and the window for action was approaching. Under previous Administrations, such attacks entailed ...

Hollywood movies such as'Jurassic World' and'The Wolf of Wall Street' have used aerial track shots provided by drone helicopters with cameras. However, those shots require careful planning to avoid collisions, and separate operators for the drones and cameras. But MIT researchers have developed a camera-equipped, autonomous drone that can maintain a shot's framing - which figures or faces appear where - as people move, all while avoiding collisions. The drone allows, for example, a movie director to specify a shot's framing, and then while flying, it generates control signals for a camera-equipped autonomous drone, which preserve that framing as the actors move The new drone system will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation later this month. With the new drone system, users can specify how much of the screen a face or figure should occupy, what part of the screen it should occupy and what the camera's orientation towards the subject should be - straight on, profile, over the shoulder or other orientations.

Since December of 2015, Americans have been required to register any drone that weighs more than two sticks of butter with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It's a minor hassle and costs a little bit of money and seems like a reasonable idea considering how many people are flying sizeable drones nowadays. However, there was one particular group that really didn't appreciate the new ruling: model aircraft enthusiasts. One of them sued the FAA in February of 2016, and a federal court in Washington, D.C. ruled in favor of hobbyists, meaning that the FAA can no longer require you (or anyone else) to register their personal drones. Here's the important bit of the ruling (you can read the whole thing here): In short, the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act provides that the FAA "may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft," yet the FAA's 2015 Registration Rule is a "rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft."

China's biggest online retailer, JD.com Inc., announced plans Monday to develop drone aircraft capable of carrying a ton or more for long-distance deliveries. The company said it will test the drones on a network it is developing to cover the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. It said they will carry consumer goods to remote areas and farm produce to cities. JD.com, headquartered in Beijing, says it made its first deliveries to customers using smaller drones in November. Other e-commerce brands including Amazon.com Inc. also are experimenting with drones for delivery. "We envision a network that will be able to efficiently transport goods between cities, and even between provinces, in the future," the chief executive of JD's logistics business group, Wang Zhenhui, said in a statement.

US Special Forces battling ISIS have taken delivery of hundreds of'kamikaze drones' that can be launched from bazooka-like launchers. Earlier this year leaders with U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, requested 325 'Miniature Aerial Missile Systems,' or LMAMS. Known as Switchblades, they are'miniature flying lethal missiles' that feature inbuilt GPS and even object recognition cameras to ensure they hit their targets. Known as Switchblades, they are'miniature flying lethal missiles' that feature inbuilt GPS and cameras to ensure they hit their targets, and military bosses have unveiled a new'hacker lab' for weapons designed to blow up even bigger targets The weapons led military bosses to set up a new'hacker lab' for weapons designed to blow up even bigger targets. 'The threat is really changing -- this explosion of commercial technology, of super-empowered commercial technology, of each individual technology path on an accelerated schedule,' James'Hondo' Geurts, who leads SOCOM's acquisitions, technology and logistics efforts, said Tuesday at a National Defense Industry Association event, according to Defense One. AeroVironment's combat proven Switchblade offers special operations forces'a back-packable, rapidly deployable, loitering precision strike munition for use against beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) targets' the firm says.

It is a stunning scene – the sun setting over what Steve Jobs had called'the best office building in the world'. The latest flyover drone video of Apple Park has made its way to the web, which shows just how massive the spaceship has become just days before its first residents are expected to move in. The clip has captured the curved glass panels that are being installed around the 2.8 million-square-foot main building and the large courtyard area that will boast thousands of drought-resistant trees. It is a stunning scene – the sun setting over what Steve Jobs had called'the best office building in the world'. Duncan Sinfield, a YouTuber and independent drone pilot, shared the 4 minute and 41 second video to his channel this week, 9to5Mac reported.

BEIJING – China's biggest online retailer, JD.com Inc., announced plans Monday to develop drone aircraft capable of carrying a ton or more for long-distance deliveries. The company said it will test the drones on a network it is developing to cover the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. It said they will carry consumer goods to remote areas and farm produce to cities. JD.com, headquartered in Beijing, says it made its first deliveries to customers using smaller drones in November. Other e-commerce brands including Amazon.com Inc. also are experimenting with drones for delivery. "We envision a network that will be able to efficiently transport goods between cities, and even between provinces, in the future," the chief executive of JD's logistics business group, Wang Zhenhui, said in a statement.

You might not have to register your drones through the Federal Aviation Administration anymore, but if your flyer of choice is a DJI model, you'll have to activate it online, or take a hit in flight range and functionality. The company is adding a new application activation process, tied to a firmware update for its family of drones. It'll come into effect at the end of this week, and is aimed at ensuring pilots use "the correct set of geospatial information and flight functions for your aircraft", determined by your location and user profile. The activation process will require users to connect to the internet through DJI's app, to verify your account and activate the update. Your drone won't be able to access the geospatial info and flight functions, camera streaming will be disabled and flight range will be curtailed to a 164-foot radius, up to 98 feet high. These rules will apply to all of DJI's "aircraft" running the latest firmware, whether you own a Phantom 4 or one of its cheaper drones.

Drone delivery in China and other countries faces hurdles including airspace restrictions and the need to avoid collisions with birds and other obstacles. In the United States, regulators allow commercial drone flights only on an experimental basis.

China's Shaanxi province is famous for being the start of the Silk Road, an ancient trade network where silk and spices were transported by camel across the Asian continent. Soon, the central Chinese province will be recognized for a different form of transport. Chinese e-commerce provider JD.com said Monday it is developing heavy-duty drones capable of delivering payloads weighing one ton or more, which it plans to deploy in Shaanxi. JD, China's No. 2 e-commerce company after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., in 2016 started delivering small packages via drone as a way to bring online orders to shoppers in remote rural villages. Its fleet of about 30 drones have already been bringing shipments to customers in the remote areas of Beijing, and in Sichuan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi and Guizhou provinces, which are home to more than 230 million people.