MANASSAS, Va.: Defense contractors often grouse when the military hesitates to buy their products, but usually sotto voce. As John Langford sits in his office at Manassas Regional Airport and contemplates his company’s world-record-setting Orion drone, now sitting disassembled in a nearby hangar, the Aurora Flight Sciences chief executive officer can’t help speaking up. “When… Keep reading →

PENTAGON CITY: The dirty secret of so-called “unmanned” systems is they require a whole lot of men — and women — to operate them. They’re just back at base, running things remotely, rather than hands-on in the aircraft. With the Air Force drone community overworked and undermanned, the service’s intelligence chief has suggested a Solomonic… Keep reading →

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.: Manned-Unmanned Teaming, when manned aircraft crews control drones from their cockpit, is a child of the drone revolution still in its infancy. So maybe it’s no surprise that Army Apache helicopter units with new AH-64Es equipped to control MQ-1C Grey Eagle armed drones have gotten off to a crawl rather than a run using… Keep reading →

The drone revolution, it appears, came along just in time for the Army. The service’s leaders have decided they can afford neither a new armed scout helicopter nor even the old ones they already own, but there’s always MUM-T — aka Manned Unmanned Teaming, in which manned aircraft work with unmanned aerial systems (UAS), aka… Keep reading →