Tag: drones

Copperhead Torpedo-Like Underwater Kamikaze Drones Rolled Out By Anduril

Anduril has rolled out a new family of modular torpedo-like uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUV) called Copperhead. This includes kamikaze types designed with a particular eye toward arming larger uncrewed undersea platforms like the company’s Ghost Shark. Today’s announcement follows last week’s unveiling of the rapidly deployable Seabed Sentry submarine surveillance system that could also potentially be configured to launch UUVs, which TWZ was first to report on.

The Copperhead family of UUVs, which Anduril also refers to as autonomous undersea vehicles (AUV), currently consists of the 100 and 500-pound-class types, as well as “M” munition subvariants of each. The Copperhead-100 has an overall length of just under nine feet (approximately 2.7 meters) and is 12.75 inches in diameter, while the Copperhead-500 is just over 13 and a half feet (just over four meters) long and 21 inches wide. Exactly what kind of propulsion system either of the UUVs use is also not currently known, but the company says they can both reach top speeds in excess of 30 knots.

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US outpost not given proper air defenses before deadly attack

For three years the United States has been giving Ukraine everything it needs by way of offensive and defensive weapons in its war with Russia. Critically, this has included air defense systems, much of it taken from our own national stockpiles.

Now it turns out that our own troops may have been denied access to anti-drone air defense systems and more sophisticated radar detection months before a lethal attack on a small American outpost in Jordan on Jan. 18, 2024. The drone assault, reportedly launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia group, resulted in the deaths of three American Army soldiers.

According to the Washington Post, which obtained access to the massive Army internal investigation of the incident through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the small outpost was ill-prepared for the attack on a number of levels. But this is key:

The investigation’s findings appear to have some contradictions. For instance, investigators faulted Tower 22’s leaders for failing to “visualize risk” and not appreciating the likelihood of an attack.

Yet commanders above them also failed to envision the base’s vulnerability. Four months before the attack, Army Central, which oversees operations throughout the Middle East, denied a request for an air defense system capable of shooting down drones because, investigators found, only one such system was available and troops in the United States needed it to prepare for deployments. A request for a radar system that could better detect drones also was denied, the report said.

The only counter-drone defenses at Tower 22 were electronic warfare systems designed to disable the aircraft or disrupt their path to a target, according to the investigation and previous reporting by The Post.

A spokesperson for Army Central did not respond to repeated requests for additional information, including regarding who at Army Central denied Tower 22’s appeal for an air defense system.

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Houthis Down Second MQ-9 Reaper Drone In 72 Hours

Yemen’s Houthis have claimed another shootdown of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone. The Thursday announcement, if accurate, would mark the second such Reaper drone downing by the group within 72 hours.

The country’s SABA news agency reported that the US drone was intercepted by an anti-air missile over the Hodeidah province, which has been subject of repeat US bombardment since President Trump ordered a renewed air campaign on March 15. 

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin has offered some confirmation of the latest downing, writing on X “the Houthis shoot down 3rd MQ9 Reaper drone since March 3rd; 2nd since March 15th airstrike campaign began.”

“Another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down by the Houthis in Yemen, sources tell Fox News. This is the third MQ-9 Reaper drone shot down by the Houthis in the last month,” she continued.

“It is the second MQ-9 drone shot down over Yemen since U.S. Central Command began daily airstrikes on the Houthis on March 15th. The U.S. military has carried out 20 straight days of bombing, and yet the Houthis continue to fire missiles.”

The Fox correspondent continued in the Thursday statement:

The first MQ-9 drone was shot down on March 3rd. Days later the White House launched airstrikes against the Houthis. The second MQ-9 was shot down on Monday. And today the 3rd one was shot down. Overnight the Houthis said the U.S. carried out 36 airstrikes on Yemen.

The Pentagon has kept silent, offering no confirmation, however. US officials have in the past acknowledged only some drone downings over Yemen, but don’t announce each one lost as they likely don’t want to give the Houthis any acknowledgement of a successful battlefield action.

If accurate, this would mark the 17th Reaper drone shot down by the Houthis since 2023. Still, President Trump is touting ‘successful’ operations in Yemen, also as a second aircraft carrier is en route from the Pacific to Mideast regional waters.

“Many of their Fighters and Leaders are no longer with us,” Trump said earlier this week on Truth Social. “We hit them every day and night — Harder and harder. Their capabilities that threaten Shipping and the Region are rapidly being destroyed. Our attacks will continue until they are no longer a threat to Freedom of Navigation.”

Trump added: “The choice for the Houthis is clear: Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran.”

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CIA Flying Drones Over Mexico – Where Are The Spies?

Multiple news outlets are reporting that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is flying drones over Mexico to collect intelligence on drug cartels and fentanyl labs. Leaving aside for a moment the question of why the much bigger Department of Defense is not doing this, here are my questions. Where are our spies? Why are we reduced to taking pictures from the air to attempt to acquire intelligence on transnational terrorist organizations operating inside Mexico and, in fact, in our largest cities? Why don’t we have the cartels penetrated at every level by human sources?

It is the job of the CIA to crawl into the belly of the beast and obtain critical intelligence on the most serious threats facing this nation. It does not exist to produce lukewarm assessments saying that we have moderate confidence that North Korea remains to the north of South Korea. It exists to steal the crown jewels, to put on the desk of the President of the United States every day intelligence no one else on the planet has, and which gives the President a decisive advantage over our adversaries.

In its current incarnation, the CIA does not do that. It does not come close. It has superb personnel in most cases. Relative to its competitors it is awash in money and technical gear. It has however calcified over the years into a timid, risk-averse, bureaucracy run by people who rarely leave Northern Virginia and never met a PowerPoint presentation they didn’t like.

We were blindsided on 9/11 by a group that had been telling us about every five minutes for at least a decade they intended to attack us on our own soil. It took us ten years thereafter to track down Bin Laden principally because he had the good sense to stay off the internet and his cellphone, and we didn’t have any sources worthy of the name inside his organization.

In 2020 we were hit by a pandemic that almost certainly originated inside a Chinese bio lab that should have been at the very top of our list of collection requirements. We had no advance warning. Five years later we apparently still don’t have the intel we need to figure out what happened or if it is about to happen again.

Is DEI part of the problem? Yes, but the problem goes much deeper than that. We are attempting to conduct espionage using a bureaucracy that increasingly resembles the Social Security Administration.

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Israel Leveled Gaza — Then Killed the Drone Journalists Who Showed it to the World

Four years ago, Mahmoud Isleem al-Basos began messaging Shadi al-Tabatiby on social media, again and again, asking to join him on shoots. Al-Tabatiby, one of Gaza’s best-known drone journalists, didn’t pay much attention at first.

“But Mahmoud was persistent,” al-Tabatiby said. “So I told him, ‘Fine, I’ll meet you.’”

Twice, al-Tabatiby told al-Basos where he’d be filming; both times, al-Basos showed up and waited.

“There’s an age gap between us, but I love people who work hard and want to learn,” al-Tabatiby said. “I found that in Mahmoud.”

The two grew close, and al-Basos began joining al-Tabatiby on shoots.

Then came Israel’s war on Gaza. Al-Tabatiby, who was freelancing for The Associated Press, relocated to the south. Al-Basos stayed in the north. With movement between the two areas cut off by the Israeli military, they kept in touch.

Al-Tabatiby started assigning al-Basos shoots from afar, and the young journalist picked up work with international outlets, including Reuters and the Turkish news agency Anadolu.

Even after al-Tabatiby evacuated to Egypt a year ago, they stayed in close contact.

Two weeks ago, on March 15, al-Basos was filming preparations for a Ramadan iftar in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahia. The backdrop was a new expansion of a displacement camp opened by the London-based Al-Khair Foundation, which was paying al-Basos to film the event. Then two Israeli airstrikes hit the area. At least seven people were killed, including al-Basos.

“I was in shock,” Al-Tabatiby said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

He added, with incredulity, “We were in a ceasefire.”

Al-Basos became the fifth drone journalist to be killed by Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.

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Micro Missile-Slinging Drone-Killing Drone Concept Revealed By Airbus

Airbus has unveiled LOAD, a new anti-drone drone concept — an adapted target drone that will be armed with small air-to-air missiles, expressly designed to shoot down other uncrewed aerial vehicles. In recent years, we’ve seen a proliferation of single-use drones with explosive warheads that are designed to bring down other uncrewed aerial vehicles. However, a reusable anti-drone drone, armed with its own tiny missiles, appears to be something of a novelty.

Airbus revealed LOAD — which stands for Low-Cost Air Defense — at the DWT Unbemannte Systeme X uncrewed systems trade show in Bonn, Germany, today. The company says it wants to test fly an armed prototype by the end of the year, with a series-production ready by 2027.

LOAD is intended to be cheap and rapid to produce. Its starting point is the Do-DT25, a target drone originally developed by EADS of Germany and now an Airbus product. The company describes it as a medium-speed target able to simulate attack aircraft for short-range infrared missile training. It would also be applicable for simulating cruise missiles.

Using a target drone as the basis for a drone with a combat mission and weapons of their own is not unheard of. Previous other examples include the Kratos Air Wolf, which is based on the MQM-178 Firejet airborne target, and the larger UTAP-22 from the same company, which is based on the BQM-167A Skeeter target drone.

When adapted for LOAD, the drone is armed with miniature air-to-air missiles — two of these are shown under the wings in an Airbus concept artwork. Other reports state that it will carry three and, in the future, potentially more.

LOAD will be launched using a mobile pneumatic catapult — as used for the Do-DT25 — after which it will have an operational range of around 60 miles, providing a valuable increase in the reach of air defense networks. While the drone is intended to be cheap enough to be considered attritable, it will have the option of being recovered by parachute, after which it can be reused.

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Pentagon ‘still mystified’ as drone drama deepens

Objects exhibiting advanced technology continue to fly with complete impunity over sensitive military installations and critical infrastructure. Despite the Pentagon’s advanced imaging and sensor capabilities, the nature, purpose and origin of these enigmatic craft are unknown, raising an array of pressing national security concerns.

In interviews with “60 Minutes” earlier this month, two recently retired four-star Air Force generals and the Air Force commander overseeing North American airspace defense begrudgingly admitted that the “drones” that loitered in dramatic fashion over key military assets in recent years remain a confounding mystery.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told “60 Minutes” that, despite being “privy to classified briefings at the highest level,” the “Pentagon and the national security advisers are still mystified” by the repeated incursions.

Notably, the objects are impervious to electronic jamming efforts, indicating that they are not off-the-shelf hobbyist drones.

On their face, these incidents pose an alarming intelligence and espionage risk. In the most brazen incidents in recent years, the unknown craft displayed bright flashing lights as they hovered over sensitive facilities and assets.

Such conspicuous tactics are the opposite of basic intelligence collection tradecraft, which calls for stealth. Once exposed, any foreign surveillance operation is not only at risk of compromise, but of sparking a major geopolitical crisis.

Despite this, “dozens” of unknown, brightly illuminated objects hovered and flew with complete impunity over a critical Air Force base for 17 nights in 2023. Ditto for a series of audacious incursions over sensitive American military bases in the United Kingdom last year. In those incidents, witnesses reported dozens of brightly-lit craft “hovering” and exhibiting extreme performance characteristics while evading detection and multiple advanced counter-drone systems.

These enigmatic craft also demonstrate baffling flight dynamics that surpass any known technologies. For several months in 2019, for example, objects with bright flashing lights swarmed some of the Navy’s most advanced warships off the coast of southern California, often well over 100 miles offshore.

In the most detailed publicly available footage of one of these craft, the perplexed crew of the USS Omaha watched their infrared video display as a spherical object moved against strong winds before descending slowly into the ocean. The sphere was one of many “drones” tracked on radar swarming their ship that evening. Meanwhile, sailors positioned outside on the ship’s deck recorded multiple objects with bright flashing lights hovering and maneuvering around the Omaha.

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Massive Explosion at Russian Nuclear Bomb Base Following Ukrainian Drone Strike

On Thursday Ukraine carried out a drone-bombing attack against a Russian nuclear weapons base 450-miles outside of Moscow resulting in a massive explosion and numerous fires which spread to neighboring cottages.

The base, Engels airfield, hosts a number of Russia’s nuclear-capable heavy bombers and cruise missiles.

A state of emergency has been declared in the area.

Ukrainian Dictator Vladimir Zelensky carried out the attack as a ceasefire agreement is underway.

Notably Ukraine carried out a drone strike on sleeping Russian civilians in Moscow the last time they came to the ‘peace’ table.

France is preparing for nuclear war, according to statements by French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron.

A hospital in the region was also hit as well.

“A hospital in the central Russian city of Engels has sustained damage in the largest ever Ukrainian drone raid on the area, local officials have reported. The nearby regional capital, Saratov, was also targeted,” RT said Thursday.

On Monday representatives from Moscow and Washington will meet in Saudi Arabia for further peace negotiations.

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France To Expand Its Nuclear Deterrent With New Air Base

France has said it will establish another nuclear-capable air base — its fourth — that will be equipped with two squadrons of the latest version of the homegrown Dassault Rafale multirole fighter. The change in fortunes for the base, Luxeuil Air Base in eastern France — once threatened with closure — comes as European NATO members, including France, look at bolstering their nuclear deterrence capabilities independent of the United States.

The announcements were made today by French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to Luxeuil — locally known as Base Aérienne 116. As a nuclear-capable base, Luxeuil is planned to host the new ASN4G hypersonic missile by 2035. The weapon will arm two squadrons of the most advanced F5-standard Rafales — a total of 40 aircraft. All in all, France will invest around 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) into the installation.

Pointing to the fact that the war in Ukraine “has changed the situation,” Cédric Perrin, the senator for the region in which the air base is located, confirmed that the first Rafale squadron will touch down at Luxeuil in 2032, becoming operational the following year. The second squadron will become operational in 2036.

It appears that these 40 advanced versions of the Rafale will be in addition to the 42 examples ordered earlier this year. As well as being compatible with the ASN4G missile, the F5-standard Rafales will also be able to work in conjunction with ‘loyal wingman’-type drones.

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Erik Prince On AI, Kamikaze Drones, Future Warfare, & DOGE

Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of the military contractor Blackwater, recently spoke at a seminar at Hillsdale College titled “AI and the Future Battlefield.” In his speech, he discussed the evolution of warfare, the impact of drones and AI, the changing dynamics of global power, and the importance of innovation—particularly in the private sector. He also praised Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. 

“We don’t have a monopoly in innovation, but we have a critical mass of it, and a lot of that still resides in the military,” Prince, a 1992 Hillsdale College graduate and founder of Blackwater Worldwide, told students. 

Prince said, “As long as DoD, just a little bit, opens the tap of money, redirecting from the nonsense, hyper-overpriced programs that they like to spend money on, we can certainly not just catch up but surpass any capability that we have to worry about with China.”

So, less DoD funding for the military-industrial complex—such as legacy defense giants like Lockheed and Boeing, often seen as innovation killers—and more support for emerging startups like…

The magic of innovation: more startups = more competition … who would’ve ever thought? 

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