Walgreens will start drone deliveries in a small Virginia town next month

Drone deliveries are finally coming to the United States in a very limited way.

The drone delivery service from Google’s parent company Alphabet will launch a delivery pilot in a small Virginia town next month.

Wing has partnered with Walgreens to deliver food, beverages and health products within minutes in Christiansburg, Virginia. The pilot will mark the first time a major tech company has made drone deliveries to homes in the US.

Wing CEO James Ryan Burgess told reporters on a conference call Thursday the test will help it improve the service and build relationships with communities. Wing has not said how many deliveries it will make per day, or how many of Christiansburg’s 22,505 residents will be eligible. Interested customers must live in select areas and can sign up on Wing’s website.

The company said it selected the town because it’s worked closely with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation partnership at nearby Virginia Tech, which is part of an FAA program to ease drones into the sk..

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NCSU, partners land $24M grant to develop first platform linking drones, 5G wireless technology

RALEIGH – N.C. State University and several partners have landed a $24 million federal grant to create the first wireless platform to link drones and emerging next-generation technology known as 5G.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. ignite, an organization seeking to drive broadband availability and use across the country, announced the awarding of the grant at an event Wednesday afternoon. Officials said they expect the project will be a magnet in attracting talent.

The grant is the third made to drive 5G utilization, a much-faster form of communication and data delivery than current 4G networks. 5G is seen as being the network with the capacity and speed to link the growing Internet of Things world, from smart cars to sensors on all manner of devices.

Ken Calvert, NSF’s division director, said the project aims to demonstrate “exciting convergence” of emerging 5G and unmanned aerial systems.

“We don’t feel our job [in Raleigh and Durham] is complete until it is in use..

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Attack on Saudi oil facilities highlights danger of ‘kamikaze’ drones

Technology & ScienceAttack on Saudi oil facilities highlights danger of 'kamikaze' dronesThe recent attack on Saudi oil facilities have cast a spotlight on increasingly-used “kamikaze” or “suicide” drones. And the incident has brought into focus what one expert calls the “eminent” possibility of such devices one day being used to sow terror in major cities.'Loitering munitions' devices are relatively cheap and hard to detectMissiles and drone aircraft are seen on display at an exhibition at an unidentified location in Yemen in this undated handout photo released by the Houthi Media Office on Tuesday. (Houthi Media Office/Handout via Reuters)The recent attack on Saudi oil facilities have cast a spotlight on an increasingly-used but often misunderstood piece of combat technology: “kamikaze” or “suicide” drones.
And the incident has brought into focus what one expert calls the “eminent” possibility of such devices one day being used to sow terror in major cities.
The..

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Danger zones: what are the rules on flying drones?

AdvertisementNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeBefore they were jailed in Iran, an intrepid pair of travel vloggers from Cottlesloe wowed social media followers with breathtaking aerial vistas of their overland travels from Australia to the UK: Javanese volcanoes, the lakes of Flores, the jagged mountains of Pakistan.
Their footage was filmed with a camera drone, as are a great deal of travel video these days. It is illegal to fly a drone without a permit in Iran but Jolie King and Mark Firkin were unaware of this when, in July, they launched theirs to film an instalment of their trip from a highway just outside Tehran, near a military facility. Negotiations are ongoing for their release from Evin prison.
For better or worse, drones are increasingly making headlines.
A staple of modern warfare, they played a central role in recent attacks on Saudi Arabia oil-processing facilities with the Saudis claiming that a swarm of 10 drones had hit the plants.
In Australia, they..

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Drone attack on oil field seen as ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment

Washington

For many of the national security teams that monitor threats on the U.S., the apparent drone strike Saturday on the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil production facilities was the realization of their worst fears.

Based on early reports, multiple relatively inexpensive drone devices were able to pierce Saudi defenses in a way that a traditional air force could not: flying long distances to drop potent bombs that apparently set vast portions of the Saudi petroleum infrastructure ablaze.

“This has the potential to be as significant as Pearl Harbor,” said Randy Larsen, a former professor and department head at the U.S. military's National War College.

The attack, for which Houthi rebels battling Saudi Arabia in Yemen took credit, underscored the fears raised by U.S. security officials and experts in terrorism about the rapid evolution of technologies allowing expanded unmanned flight.

“The bottom line is that we are likely to see many more of these sorts of attack..

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Cheap Chinese combat drones to take flight in Europe

Chinese combat drones are expected to arrive in Europe soon as the Serbian military prepares to take delivery of nine Chengdu Pterodactyl-1 (Wing Loong) combat drones, Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday. The outlet characterized the impending delivery as “Beijing's most significant foray into a continent where armed forces have traditionally relied on US and European weapon-makers.” China is a rising star as it builds cheap but effective unmanned combat systems across parts of the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and now Europe. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Chinese combat drones are reportedly headed to Europe for the first time, highlighting China's growing presence in an important part of the international arms market as countries around the world look more closely at unmanned systems for warfighting.
Serbia is expected to take delivery of nine Chengdu Pterodactyl-1 (Wing Loong) drones within the next six months, and there may be a follow-u..

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