auvsi2007conf

More aerial drones coming soon to U.S. borders

WASHINGTON--A handful of new drones is expected to begin patrolling the nation's northern and southern borders within the next few years.

For the moment, we're not talking swarms, here. But U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, backed by the Bush administration and some in Congress, are nevertheless hoping to steadily increase the presence of unmanned aerial vehicles aloft in an effort to nab illegal immigrants and drug traffickers more effectively, said Michael Kostelnik, a retired U.S. Air Force official who now serves as assistant commissioner of the CBP's air and marine unit.

For the … Read more

U.S. military expands robot patrols in combat zones

WASHINGTON--We tend to hear more about the growing number of human bodies being shipped off to combat to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the U.S. Army is also dispatching more and more robots.

Since the conflicts began five years ago, the military branch has been steadily stepping up deployment of both unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, Col. John Burke, the Army's director of unmanned systems integration, said Wednesday.

Burke, who was speaking at the second day of a confab here hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, touted the machines' surveillance capabilities as a proven success, at … Read more

Singapore military officials embrace drone aircraft

WASHINGTON--Singapore may not occupy much more than a tiny dot on the world map, but it's counting on drones and other remote-controlled vehicles to make its military mighty.

As one of the world's busiest sea ports, the Asian city-state's "survival and prosperity depends on national security," Tan Peng Yam, deputy chief executive of the country's Defense Science &Technology Agency, told attendees at the first day of the annual North America symposium put on here by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

Because a third of the world's trade--including 90 percent of … Read more