The US has confirmed the death of a senior al-Qaeda leader targeted by a US drone strike in north eastern Afghanistan last month. Farouq al-Qahtani, the group's leader in the area, was killed two weeks ago in what the Pentagon described as a precision strike. Saudi-born al-Qahtani was placed on a US list of most wanted terrorists in February. He was said to be one of al-Qaeda's senior plotters against the US. Saudi-born al-Qahtani, a Qatari national, was also accused of involvement in plots targeting Europe.

Back in 2014, a laser gun (the Laser Weapon System, or LaWS), went into service on the warship USS Ponce. Created as a defense system against drones, more laser weapons are making their way to the battlefield. But there's a problem: Their flying targets have begun to defend themselves. It was back in 1973 that an Air Force experimental laser first shot down a drone. Ever since, drone targets have been used to prove that laser weapons can effectively take down airborne objects.

The 8.6 billion mobile devices on the planet have meant that quite often, getting a decent signal can be tough. However, researchers say a new drone could be the key. It can create an incredibly detailed 3D map of a city, allowing researchers to model how radio waves move through it. Researcher have devised a new method that involves taking aerial photographs of an area with a drone, which can be used as models to design radio links. Drones are equipped with a high quality cameras that can capture multiple points of view.

Intel began promoting its first commercial drone in the U.S. this week, as it seeks to carve out a place for itself in the fast-expanding market. The Falcon 8 drone, which was announced two weeks ago, was on show at the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas that opened on Tuesday. Intel has been building its drone expertise throughout the year with a series of acquisitions, and the Falcon 8 has grown out of its January purchase of Germany's Ascend Technologies. The drone has eight rotors arranged in a distinctive V-shape, designed that way so the rotors at the front don't get in the way of a payload, said Natalie Cheung, a drone marketing manager at Intel. "We've really thought about what are some of the issues commercial customers face today and when they want to get that crisp, hi-res image, you don't want any of the rotors in the image," she said. Redundancy is a key feature of the device -- it can continue flying even if up to two rotors on either side stop spinning.

Some say the best way to catch a criminal is to be one-step ahead, but a California-based firm believes it's better to be one-step above. Sunflower Labs has designed a new security system that uses a drone to detect and investigate possible threats around the outside of your home. Combined with smart lights and sensors, the drone analyzes suspicious activity and streams a live video of the disturbance directly to your smartphone. Sunflower Labs designed a new security system that uses a drone to detect and investigate threats around the outside of your home. Smart lights are placed around the home, which use powerful sensors to identify footsteps, loud noises, cars arriving, and cross-property movement.

When Karma was unveiled last month, there were two main takeaways. First was the lack of much-expected "follow me" features; second was the inclusion of a (not-expected) handheld stabilizer, turning Karma into a "kit." GoPro CEO Nick Woodman would declare Karma to be "much more than a drone," pitching it as a complete video stabilization system -- one that can be worn, held and flown. The big question was, would that be enough for buyers to overlook what appeared to be a pared feature set on the drone itself? As a drone on its own, GoPro's Karma lacks a lot of features offered on rival devices, while the battery life is toward the low-end of acceptable. The big appeal here is the ease of use and overall versatility. If you're invested in the GoPro ecosystem, Karma makes a lot of sense. More serious drone enthusiasts will want to look elsewhere. At $799 (if you "bring your own camera"), and $999/$1,099 if you want to include a Hero5 Session or Black, Karma is priced aggressively, undercutting DJI's Phantom 4 if you factor in the cost of the handheld stabilizer (DJI's cheapest equivalent costs an extra $300).

No-fly zones are to be imposed over jails in a drive to prevent drones being used to smuggle drugs and mobile phones into prisons. Figures have revealed increasing numbers of incidents involving the use of remotely-controlled devices for smuggling contraband into jails. Ministers have vowed to crackdown on the problem because prisoners are understood to be ordering illicit cargo using phone smuggled into cells and then a'pilot' controlling the drone from outside the walls lands the device or makes it hover outside a cell window. Ministers have vowed to crackdown on the problem because prisoners are understood to be ordering illicit cargo using phone smuggled into cells and then a'pilot' controlling the drone from outside the walls lands the device or makes it hover outside a cell window In one instance, a drone carrying super-strength skunk cannabis, mobile phones and chargers came down in an exercise yard at Category B HMP Bullingdon in Bicester, Oxon. Shocking footage captured at Wansdworth Prison in London in April, showed a black bag floating through the air via a drone into a window, where two pieces of wood tied together could be seen reaching out from a cell and hooking it in.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon says a U.S. airstrike in Syria last month killed what the Defense Department describes as a senior al-Qaida leader who once had ties to Osama bin Laden. Jeff Davis, identifies the target as Haydar Kirkan. The spokesman says Kirkan oversaw the planning of attacks against Western targets outside of Syria, including in Turkey. Davis says a U.S. drone carried out the airstrike Oct. 17 in the vicinity of Idlib, in western Syria. The U.S. has previously announced that in the week after that airstrike, it hit al-Qaida targets in Yemen and Afghanistan.

Using Azure, gave them an immediate global reach in a way unthinkable just a few years earlier. Their mission is to bring big data analytics to utilities and smart cities, and one of their focus areas is electric utilities and smart grids. It is a story that combines drones with intelligent software to prevent power blackouts, or as eSmart puts it "making Azure intelligence mobile". The economic impact of blackouts is massive, and the scale of power grids is huge. According to Grid Resilience Report, US Department of Energy, 2011, the average annual cost of power outages caused by severe weather in the USA is anywhere between $18-33 billion.

The Marine Corps is in the hunt for a mega-drone that can take off and land vertically and deploy aboard ship -- all while carrying a serious amount of firepower. The service is asking a lot as it develops its MUX platform, short for Marine air-ground task force unmanned expeditionary capabilities, with plans to reach initial operational capability by 2026. The Corps' deputy commandant for aviation, Lt. Gen. Jon "Dog" Davis, said Wednesday at the Unmanned Systems Defense conference in Arlington, Virginia, that this future platform -- a Group 5, the largest class of military drone -- will be equipped to fight from sea as well as land. "I would say we're very aggressive with what we want that Group 5 to be," Davis said. "I want my airplane to go off a seabase and, frankly, I think the Group 5 [unmanned aircraft system] for the Marine Corps will have [AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile] on there, will have AIM-9X [Sidewinder missile], will have all the weapons that an F-35 will carry, maybe even the sensors the F-35 will carry."