During a U.S. naval test off the California coast last month, which was designed to showcase the Pentagon's top autonomous drone boats, one vessel stalled unexpectedly. As officials scrambled to fix a software glitch, another drone vessel smashed into the idling boat's starboard side, vaulted over the deck, and crashed back into the water -- an incident captured in videos. The previously unreported episode, which involved two vessels built by U.S. defense tech rivals Saronic and BlackSea Technologies, is one of a series of recent setbacks in the Pentagon's push to build a fleet of autonomous vessels, according to a dozen people familiar with the program.

A mysterious fleet of drones entered restricted airspace and swarmed a U.S. military base along the Virginia coast for 17 days late last year, stumping the Pentagon, according to a new report. For several nights last December, U.S. military personnel reported witnessing a fleet of unknown unmanned aircraft breach restricted airspace over a stretch of land at Langley Air Force Base along Virginia's shore, the Wall Street Journal first reported. The drones would start to arrive about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset each night, one official reportedly told U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, who joined several other officers responsible for the country's most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors, on a squadron rooftop. Kelly described the first drone he saw as roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. As many as a dozen or more drones followed, flying across Chesapeake Bay, and then traveling toward Norfolk, Virginia, and through a space overlooking the base for the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port, according to the Journal.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Taipei, Taiwan – A United States government agency grounded its drone fleet over concerns China could use the unmanned aircraft for spying despite internal warnings that a ban would in fact increase security risks, documents obtained by Al Jazeera reveal. The US Department of Interior (DOI) also disregarded warnings the ban could hamper efforts to fight wildfires, months before officials reported the restrictions were making fire-fighting more difficult and dangerous, the documents show. The DOI, which manages public lands and resources in the US, ordered the temporary grounding of drones made in China or containing Chinese parts in October 2019 amid deep suspicion of Chinese technology within the administration of former US President Donald Trump. Then-Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt formalised the ban in January 2020 with an open-ended order grounding the DOI's entire 810-strong fleet of unmanned aircraft systems (UAVs) – whose uses include responding to natural disasters, geological surveys and wildlife population monitoring – until "cybersecurity, technology and domestic production concerns are adequately addressed". The order, which followed years of warnings that drones made by firms such as Shenzhen-based DJI could be secretly sending data to Beijing, included exceptions for emergency uses, such as fighting wildfires and search-and-rescue missions.

KYIV – At an unassuming industrial estate in northern Ukraine, two former Microsoft executives and a team of engineers are producing military drones that can travel over long distances and carry large payloads. AeroDrone, which made crop-dusting drones prior to the war and now supplies Ukraine's armed forces, makes unmanned aircraft that can carry up to 300 kilograms or fly up to several thousand kilometers in certain configurations. As Ukraine seeks to narrow the yawning gap between its own military capabilities and Russia's, Kyiv says it is expanding its drone program for both reconnaissance and attacking enemy targets over an increasing range. It is hoping that domestic drone makers like AeroDrone will help it meet its ambitious goals. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.

The edge computing market is expected to grow from $40.84 million in 2022 to $132.11 million by 2028. This is a compound annual growth rate of 21.8% percent. The use cases for the edge are limitless. Use cases can range from remote field offices operating drone fleets for utility and mining operations to employees working from home and automated manufacturing assembly lines. As this movement to edge computing has unfolded, more non-IT professionals are being asked to manage the technology that is located at the edges that they occupy.

Lviv, Ukraine – At a secret location in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, the windows taped up to ward off unwanted attention, underground hobbyists improvise deadly drones bound for the front line of the war against Russia. On a cluttered table the X-shaped frame of one drone stands among bundles of plastic propellers and sachets of minuscule screws. Soon it will take flight with its payload: a wine bottle-sized anti-tank grenade designed to plunge on Russian armor. Two other drones are already affixed with quad propellers, their squat bodies gaping with miniature bomb bays to rain explosives on Russian infantry challenging Ukrainian defenders to the north and east. One more -- the shape of a stealth bomber, the size of a bird of prey -- will conduct reconnaissance missions for artillery squads, spotting targets and marking them for incoming fire.

At a secret location in the Ukraine city of Lviv, the windows taped up to ward off unwanted attention, underground hobbyists improvise deadly drones bound for the front line of the war against Russia. On a cluttered table the x-shaped frame of one drone stands among bundles of plastic propellers and sachets of minuscule screws. Soon it will take flight with its payload: a wine bottle-sized anti-tank grenade designed to plunge on Russian armour. Two other drones are already affixed with quad propellers, their squat bodies gaping with miniature bomb bays to rain explosives on Russian infantry challenging Ukrainian defenders to the north and east. One more -- the shape of a stealth bomber, the size of a bird of prey -- will conduct reconnaissance missions for artillery squads, spotting targets and marking them for incoming fire.

Routine drone deliveries to U.S. consumers are still years away, partly because the FAA needs to complete rules for remote identification of more than 400,000 drones currently registered for commercial operations, and issue separate rules permitting drones to fly regularly over populated areas. Despite the investments and interest in potential drone deliveries by startups as well as deep-pocketed early adapters such as Amazon, package deliveries won't proceed beyond limited trials in the U.S. until new federal regulations go into effect. Amazon has now joined United Parcel Service Inc. UPS 0.78% and Wing, a unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., GOOG -0.62% in gaining approval to operate unmanned air fleets in the U.S. for tests involving customer deliveries. Amazon has sought regulatory approval for a broader range of drones and over a larger geographic area than its competitors. The company said Monday that the approval from the FAA isn't tied to a specific drone model but operations of a fleet.

Drones can already be effective search and rescue tools, but not in densely-packed forests where the tree cover might block GPS signals. Thankfully, MIT has a clever solution: use the same technology that guides self-driving cars. Its researchers have developed drone tech that uses LIDAR to map forests without any use of GPS. Each drone creates a 2D map that also includes the orientations of trees, making it easy to tell where the robotic aircraft has already been as it searches through a specified area. That, in turn, makes it feasible to merge maps from an entire drone fleet and comb large swaths of forest with a minimum of wasted effort.

Manned flight has been a staple of modern transport and logistics for over half a century -- but not without problems. Our current infrastructure for transporting people and goods in the skies has become strained with the rising demands of the globalized economy. DEEP AERO is developing a foundation for a new type of infrastructure: a drone-based ecosystem, complete with an air traffic control platform, a drone marketplace for on-demand logistics and transport, and more -- all securely stored and transacted on DEEP AERO's blockchain. The rising globalized economy can no longer be dependent upon antiquated methods and technology that was designed for the 20th century. The skyrocketing demand for global commerce and travel is limited by our capacity to transport goods and people in a timely, cost-effective way.