To counter the threats posed by small drones, the U.S. military may have to rapidly step up its R&D timeframes, according to a new report commissioned by the U.S. Army. Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) have become increasingly affordable and sophisticated. With millions of these drones now available worldwide, "It's become very easy for an adversary to use them in nefarious ways," says Albert Sciarretta, chair of the committee behind the new study and president of CNS Technologies in Springfield, Virginia. The U.S. Army asked for a detailed report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that analyzes potential risks from these devices, especially to dismounted infantry (that is, foot soldiers) and lightly armored vehicles. For example, hobby drones could be fitted with lethal weapons such as explosive, chemical, biological, or radiological payloads--or modified to jam military radio signals, Sciarretta says.

To counter the threats posed by small drones, the U.S. military may have to rapidly step up its R&D timeframes, according to a new report commissioned by the U.S. Army. Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) have become increasingly affordable and sophisticated. With millions of these drones now available worldwide, "It's become very easy for an adversary to use them in nefarious ways," says Albert Sciarretta, chair of the committee behind the new study and president of CNS Technologies in Springfield, Virginia. The U.S. Army asked for a detailed report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that analyzes potential risks from these devices, especially to dismounted infantry (that is, foot soldiers) and lightly armored vehicles. For example, hobby drones could be fitted with lethal weapons such as explosive, chemical, biological, or radiological payloads--or modified to jam military radio signals, Sciarretta says.

This little drone captures and defeats rogue drones'Spiderman'-style. Just like how Spidey slings a web to capture bad guys, this little drone shoots a net to stop dangerous flying drones. Revealed this week at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) event, the world's largest defense and security show held biennially in London, this smart drone is already drawing a lot of buzz. Made by Dutch company Delft Dynamics, the DroneCatcher project is supported by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (Military Police), the Dutch National Police and the Dutch Ministry of Safety and Justice. The DroneCatcher is a multicopter – it has multiple blades and can shoot up vertically in the air, kind of like a tiny helicopter.

WASHINGTON – Islamic State jihadis are using small commercial drones to attack Iraqi security forces in the battle for Mosul, a U.S. commander said Wednesday. Col. Brett Sylvia, who commands an "advise and assist" U.S. unit in Iraq, said IS fighters are attaching small munitions to quadcopters in an attempt to kill local forces as they retake Mosul, the last major IS bastion in Iraq. "They are small drones with small munitions that they've been dropping," Sylvia said. While the munitions were no larger than "a small little grenade," he said, that was enough to do what "Daesh does, and that's just, you know, indiscriminate killing," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. The group's use of small drones is not new, Sylvia said, though initially they were mainly used for reconnaissance.

On October 2, Peshmerga fighters operating against ISIS near Erbil, Iraq, shot down a small hobby drone, the kind you might buy off of Amazon. But when they investigated the downed device, it exploded, killing them and injuring two French paratroopers, based out of Orleans, according to Le Monde. With that unfortunate blast, it is believed, ISIS claimed its first casualties via a weaponized hobby drone. It was a surprise to some, but not to all. The U.S. military has been pushing anti-drone tech to U.S. forces in the region with "a sense of urgency," Lt. Gen. Michael Shields, the director of Joint Improvised Threat-Defeat Organization, or JIDO, told reporters on Wednesday.

Love them or hate them, drones are increasing in popularity and there have already been incidents of propellers cutting and even blinding people. As a result, we are only just learning the true damage the propellers can cause. To study how the blades can tear through flesh, researchers have attached a drone to a catapult and fired it at a slab of pork in a bizarre slow-motion video. Researchers at a Danish University have rigged a purpose-built catapult to launch a hobby drone into the pork at high speed, recording the impact with a high-speed camera capturing 3,000 frames per second (pictured). Researchers at Aalborg University's Drone Research Lab rigged a purpose-built catapult to launch a hobby drone into the meat at high speed.