aerial

The Pentagon’s new task force for tracking unidentified aerial phenomena (or UAPs) has collected roughly 400 reports, an official told Congress in an open hearing on Tuesday. The comments came from Scott Bray, the deputy director of US naval intelligence, who testified today as an expert witness in a hearing about UAPs hosted by a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee. The hearing marked the first time Congress has held a public hearing on UAPs, also known as UFOs, in more than 50 years. Bray attributed the…

Teledyne FLIR Defense has developed a multi-role laser designator called the StormCaster-DX. The military targeting system can be attached to a quadcopter small and light enough to be carried in a soldier's rucksack.When long-range weapons like artillery and rockets came on the scene, a new role opened up for warfighters. Being able to hurl a projectile over great distances has obvious advantages, but these become moot if the shooter can't see the target. To overcome this, scouts were dispatched to act as forward…

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, the first probe to ever fly on another planet, has captured images of the landing gear that helped it and its companion, the Perseverance rover, land on Mars in February 2021. NASA has shared the images, saying the copter snapped at the wreckage during its 26th flight on the Red Planet. The images showed the dusty parachute that helped Perseverance descend on the Martian surface and the cone-shaped backshell that protected the $2.4 billion robotic mission as it moved with incredible speed in…

Back in January, Elroy Air showed off a pre-production version of an autonomous cargo drone capable of carrying 500-lb (227-kg) loads over 300 miles (482 km), and we've now learned FedEx plans to soon put these capabilities to the test. It has teamed up with the San Francisco-based startup to begin trials designed to demonstrate pilot-free aerial shipments between its sorting centers, with test flights to begin next year.Like other big-name logistics companies such as DHL, FedEx has been exploring the potential of…