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The most expensive cattle in American history are now being counted from the air. HeadCount Inventory, the drone division of Kansas crop consultancy Crop Quest, flies autonomous DJI aircraft over feedyards and delivers head counts the company says hit 99.997% accuracy. “Nothing is impossible, but getting a whole yard count is close to impossible as…
The Department of Homeland Security wants to route its own money into the FBI’s counter-drone training center because demand for seats has outrun capacity in the middle of the FIFA World Cup, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told the House Appropriations Committee on June 26. The admission is the candid part of a hearing that was…
NASA researchers in Hampton, Virginia, put two human kidneys on a heavy-lift drone and flew them in 7.5-mile loops beyond the operator’s line of sight, then biopsied the organs to check for damage. They found none. The June 5 flights at NASA Langley Research Center reached a peak height of 250 feet across two roughly…
The radar that can spot a quadcopter the size of a dinner plate at five kilometers is now wired into a $490 million U.S. Air Force counter-drone program. Echodyne, the Kirkland, Washington company behind the laptop-sized EchoShield radar, confirmed in April that its hardware sits at the center of Trust Automation‘s Small-Unmanned Air Defense System,…
The Pentagon is staking the next generation of American combat airpower on a company that once analyzed grass on golf courses, a firm with roots in aerial light shows, and a startup run by a 23-year-old former drone racing world champion. These are not the defense primes that have built U.S. weapons for decades. They…
Congress wants the Army to put robot boats in the water to protect its manned ones. A new defense bill directs the Army to study using unmanned surface vessels as escorts for its watercraft, the boats that haul troops and cargo into a fight. The timing isn’t subtle. Ukraine has spent two years proving that…
The Trump administration is negotiating funding deals with a group of American drone companies, and at least some of those deals could hand the U.S. government an ownership slice of the firms it backs. According to a Wall Street Journal exclusive, the Pentagon has identified Performance Drone Works, Unusual Machines, and Neros Technologies as candidates…
Independent U.S. cybersecurity firm OnDefend audited DJI's Air 3S and Matrice 4E across five months and found zero critical, high, or medium-risk findings.
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