Tag: drones

World’s first drone combat textbook lands in Russian schools to train 1 million kids

Russia has formally introduced drone operations into its national school curriculum as part of a comprehensive initiative to train a new generation of unmanned systems operators. 

On Monday, Russian drone manufacturer Geoscan announced the release of the country’s first state-approved school textbook on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), designed for use in 8th and 9th-grade classrooms.

Titled “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: 8th and 9th Grades,” the publication is now included in the federal list of approved teaching materials, following formal certification by the Russian Ministry of Education. 

The course will be delivered under the “Robotics” module of the subject Labor (Technology), Russia’s equivalent of technical education.

World’s first drone ops textbook

Geoscan said this is “the only school publication on unmanned aircraft systems that has passed state expertise.” 

The textbook was co-developed with Russia’s largest schoolbook publisher, Prosveshcheniye, and reflects 14 years of the company’s drone R&D and eight years of experience in educational robotics.

Head of Geoscan’s educational projects, Mikhail Lutsky, said the material was not abstract theory, but “tested in practice,” forming a “ready-to-use course” to build applied piloting and engineering skills among Russian youth. 

The course spans 34 academic hours and includes chapters on UAV classifications, design, electronics, manual control, autonomous programming, and career trends in drone aviation.

The initiative is part of the Russian government’s “Personnel for Unmanned Aerial Systems” program, which aims to train 1 million drone operators by 2030 across over 500 schools and 30 universities. 

In 2023, approximately 30,000 university students in Moscow and St. Petersburg began similar coursework. In parallel, military training in schools has begun incorporating basic combat drone instruction.

The political backdrop to this education push is significant. In November 2023, a foundation linked to President Vladimir Putin’s youngest daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, acquired a 10% stake in Geoscan. 

The company is currently under US sanctions, reflecting broader Western concerns about the militarization of Russia’s youth education and its use of dual-use technologies.

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Former CIA analyst: ‘100 percent sure’ CIA had some involvement in massive Ukrainian drone strike on Russian airfields

By now you’ve all heard something about Ukraine’s massive assault of killer drones that attacked Russian airfields housing Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet in Siberia and several other locations deep within the country’s heartland.

The mainstream narrative is that the operation took upwards of 18 months to plan and execute and was “personally overseen” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Sorry, folks, but I don’t buy it. This attack was not something a guy like Zelensky, whose skill set includes being a former homo-erotic dancer and actor, was prepared for.

The attack, according to mainstream reports, took out 41 aircraft or roughly 34 percent of Russia’s fleet of strategic bombers.

Yet, other knowledgeable sources, such as former British diplomat Alastair Crook, estimate the number of lost Russian bombers at closer to 7, or roughly 5 percent of the country’s overall fleet. The Western media is always going to take information from Kiev at face value, rather than question it or compare it to what the Russian media is reporting.

Anyway, it’s fair to say that whether it was 5 percent, 10 percent or 34 percent, what happened on Sunday in Russia was a major propaganda victory for Ukraine and an embarrassing intelligence lapse for Russia.

Will it change the trajectory of the war between Russia and Ukraine? Absolutely not. And that trajectory has been going in Russia’s favor for months.

But one big unanswered question is how much, if anything, was known about this attack in the bowels of the Washington deep state in Washington, D.C.

Did the president himself know about it? The official line is that he did not.

However, that doesn’t mean the U.S. government wasn’t involved.

As former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said Monday in an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, the U.S. government would likely strive to give the president plausible deniability for an operation like this, which took place some 2,700 miles inside Russia and away from the frontlines of the ongoing war.

In a NATO proxy war against Russia, with Ukraine serving as the proxy, somebody in Washington and/or London had to of been involved in an operation as sophisticated and strategic as the one that went down in Russia on Sunday, Johnson said.

“I guarantee you,” he said. “At least one, if not more officers, within the Central Intelligence Agency knew about this and may have even been involved with the planning for it and the operation of it.”

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Kiev attacked military airfields in five Russian regions – MOD

Military airfields across Russia have been attacked in a series of kamikaze drone strikes, the country’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday, blaming the incidents on Kiev. Most of the strikes were successfully repelled, with some resulting in material damage, it added.

Airfields were targeted in the Murmansk Region in the country’s north, in Ivanovo and Ryazan regions in central Russia as well as in Irkutsk Region in Siberia and Amur Region in the Far East, the ministry said. All the attacks employed first-person view (PFV) kamikaze drones, with some of them being launched from territories in close proximity to the airfields, it stated.

Some of the culprits behind the attacks have been detained, the ministry said, without revealing the number of those arrested or their identities. The Russian military also said that the “Kiev regime” was ultimately responsible for the strikes, which they described as “terrorist attacks.”

In Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions, the attacks were repelled and resulted in no damage or casualties, according to the ministry. In Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the strikes led to some aircraft catching fire, the military said. No casualties have been reported in any of the incidents, according to the ministry’s data.

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Erik Prince Involved In Deadly Drone Attacks In Haiti

The US-installed government in Haiti has turned to American mercenaries, including Erik Prince, to fight against armed groups that now control nearly all of Port-au-Prince. Drones operated by Prince’s firm have killed hundreds, but no high-value targets. 

According to the New York Times, Prince’s company has been operating drones in Haiti since March in an operation aimed at killing gang members. The Times notes the Haitian government has not announced any successful operations due to the program. 

Pierre Esperance, who leads the National Human Rights Defense Network, told the Wall Street Journal that more than 300 people have been killed in drone strikes over the last three months.

Additionally, Prince is ramping up for a larger operation. He is looking to send 150 mercenaries to Haiti this summer and has already shipped the arms to the nation. 

While now called Constellis Holdings, Prince’s defense contracting firm was initially named Blackwater. The company became infamous in 2007 when some of its mercenaries opened fire on civilians in Iraq, killing 17. 

Prince is a long-time ally of the US President, and the contractors responsible for murdering the Iraqi civilians were pardoned by Trump during his first term. 

Details of the current agreement between Prince and the Haitian government are unknown. The State Department denied that it is currently paying Prince. Although the US is funding Haitian police forces and Kenyan soldiers deployed to Haiti to help transfer power to the government. 

The current government in Port-au-Prince was installed by Washington last year after the collapse of the Ariel Henry administration. Henry was forced from power after he left Port-au-Prince to sign an agreement with the Kenyan government that allowed Nairobi to deploy its troops to Haiti. 

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Israeli Drone Strike Killed South Lebanon Municipal Worker Fixing Water Well

Israel continues to carry out its daily airstrikes against southern Lebanon, and continues to claim they’re killing Hezbollah figures despite evidence to the contrary. Thursday, the deadly drone strike came against the town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa.

The strike hit a forest on the town’s periphery, killing one person who Israel described as a “Hezbollah terrorist” and was working on restoring some sort of Hezbollah site involved in firing on Israeli territory. That’s the official Israeli story at least, and as usual, they provided no evidence to confirm it.

Mayor Zein Ali Ghandour was quick to offer a correction, however. Ghandour reported that the man killed was Mahmoud Hasan Atwi, a municipal employee, and that he was in the forest to work on a water well in the area.

This is just the latest of several thousand Israeli ceasefire violations since the truce went into effect in November. Those strikes have killed over 200 people, most of whom have never been conclusively identified.

The IDF though, when it comments at all on who they killed, virtually always declares the slain to be Hezbollah commander of some sort or another, and declares their very existence to be a violation of the ceasefire.

Since the ceasefire, Hezbollah has not launched a single strike on Israel. The group has handed over functionally all of its sites south of the Litani River to the Lebanese Army, and the Lebanese government reported some 80% of those sites have already been dismantled.

It’s difficult to say Lebanon will ever destroy all those sites to Israeli satisfaction, however, because every time a Lebanese government bulldozer is clearing a farmer’s field, Israel declares it to be the revitalization of a Hezbollah infrastructure and attacks the bulldozer.

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Nations meet at UN for ‘killer robot’ talks as regulation lags

Countries are meeting at the United Nations on Monday to revive efforts to regulate the kinds of AI-controlled autonomous weapons increasingly used in modern warfare, as experts warn time is running out to put guardrails on new lethal technology.

Autonomous and artificial intelligence-assisted weapons systems are already playing a greater role in conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza. And rising defence spending worldwide promises to provide a further boost for burgeoning AI-assisted military technology.

Progress towards establishing global rules governing their development and use, however, has not kept pace. And internationally binding standards remain virtually non-existent.

Since 2014, countries that are part of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) have been meeting in Geneva to discuss a potential ban fully autonomous systems that operate without meaningful human control and regulate others.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has set a 2026 deadline for states to establish clear rules on AI weapon use. But human rights groups warn that consensus among governments is lacking.

Alexander Kmentt, head of arms control at Austria’s foreign ministry, said that must quickly change.

“Time is really running out to put in some guardrails so that the nightmare scenarios that some of the most noted experts are warning of don’t come to pass,” he told Reuters.

Monday’s gathering of the U.N. General Assembly in New York will be the body’s first meeting dedicated to autonomous weapons.

Though not legally binding, diplomatic officials want the consultations to ramp up pressure on military powers that are resisting regulation due to concerns the rules could dull the technology’s battlefield advantages.

Campaign groups hope the meeting, which will also address critical issues not covered by the CCW, including ethical and human rights concerns and the use of autonomous weapons by non-state actors, will push states to agree on a legal instrument.

They view it as a crucial litmus test on whether countries are able to bridge divisions ahead of the next round of CCW talks in September.

“This issue needs clarification through a legally binding treaty. The technology is moving so fast,” said Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Military, Security and Policing.

“The idea that you wouldn’t want to rule out the delegation of life or death decisions … to a machine seems extraordinary.”

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Former Defense Officials Raise Concerns About Unexplained Drone And UAP Threats To U.S. Airspace

Former senior defense officials issued stark warnings to lawmakers Thursday about intensifying threats posed by unattributed drone incursions and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) reported around the U.S. — particularly over military bases, assets, and nuclear facilities.

“I don’t think the public is aware of the extent of our airspace vulnerabilities and failures, and the degree to which they’ve already been exploited and are being exploited today, and the challenge that we face in trying to sort this out,” Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, said during an event hosted on Capitol Hill by the UAP Disclosure Fund and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Across multiple sessions at the hourslong summit, Mellon and other national security and research experts — including Dr. Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor, and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, former oceanographer of the Navy — spotlighted recent incidents involving UAP and drones impacting military and civilian infrastructure. 

They also called on Congress to introduce new investments and proposals to help confront challenges associated with the Pentagon’s detection capabilities and what they view as the over-classification of certain UAP records and data.

The U.S. government has a long, complicated history dealing with technologies observed to perform in ways that seem to transcend what’s possible with contemporary capabilities. But with mounting pressure from the public and high-profile proponents over the past decade, Congress has made a series of recent moves to destigmatize the UAP topic, and more strategically investigate perplexing encounters with unidentifiable craft — including by requiring the Pentagon to launch the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) via the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

At the event Thursday, Mellon and other expert panelists praised that recent progress, but argued that further coordination and accountability measures are needed.

“One of my career frustrations in the intelligence community has been that we have incredible sensors that are far more than $1 billion dollars, and we have a great many of them, and they are collecting information today which is directly pertinent to this topic,” Mellon said. “But that information is not reaching Congress. It’s not reaching the scientific community. In many cases, I don’t think it’s reaching AARO, which is the office that Congress established to study and evaluate this phenomenon.” 

He recommended that the lawmakers in attendance consider mandating a U.S. government- and military-wide assessment of sensor systems collecting data that could support ongoing UAP examinations — as well as an evaluation of classification issues that are preventing the release of unclassified data.

Mellon noted that shortly after he provided three unclassified videos of reported UAP incursions captured by military personnel to the New York Times in 2017, “somebody created the classification guide” inside the government and “we suddenly said, ‘in contradiction to the executive order on classification signed by the president, that essentially, anything having to do with UAP is now suddenly mystically classified because it might damage national security.’”

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Ukrainian Drones Have Been Targeting Historic Orthodox Churches In Russia

Throughout over three years of the Russia-Ukraine war, there has been a sad and tragic trend of churches being struck by missiles, drones, or bombs on both sides of the conflict.

But attacks on religious sites have gone all the way back to 2014, and the start of the conflict in the Donbass, which saw pro-Kiev forces frequently shelling Russia-aligned areas, including attacks on Orthodox churches

And of course, since then the Ukraine government has actively and openly persecuted Ukraine’s largest Orthodox church for simply maintaining spiritual communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

Famous, historic monasteries have been shut down or seized by authorities, monks expelled, and churches have been raided by far-right nationalist militant groups. As for the other side, Russian aerial raids have often devastated whole Ukrainian neighborhoods, including destruction of local churches.

In a fresh incident, Russian government and media sources say a Ukrainian drone was sent across the border and struck an iconic, historic church in Belgorord region, which set the church on fire.

Local Belgorod governor Vyacheslav issued a statement on Telegram Saturday saying “the enemy is striking our holy sites again – an enemy drone has attacked Saint George Church in the village of Tolokonnoye.”

Emergency crews were able to extinguish the blaze, but not before the church’s domes caught on fire…

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Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza

A ship carrying supplies bound for the Gaza Strip was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters on Friday, according to the activist group that organized the flotilla. The vessel reportedly took at least one direct hit to its hull and sustained damage from fire, forcing its crew to issue an urgent call for help.

Organizers with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said one of their vessels was attacked by an unidentified drone in the early hours of Friday morning, noting the ship was not far off the coast of Malta when it was hit.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship, came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a press release. “Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull. [. . .] The drone strike appears to have deliberately targeted the ship’s generator, leaving the crew without power and placing the vessel at great risk of sinking.”

An FFC spokesperson, Caoimhe Butterly, later told Reuters that the ship was struck en route to Malta, where it was scheduled to pick up other activists, among them climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. The group said it had arranged the aid shipment “under a media black out to avoid any potential sabotage.”

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Dutch King Says Country Must Prepare For War, Pushes For Drone Development

As EU leaders rally for a prolonged conflict in Ukraine and push the idea of a European military no longer dependent on America, the Netherlands’ monarch has joined the chorus. 

“We may have taken it a bit too much for granted that we would always have freedom and peace,” King Willem-Alexander said at the Lieutenant General Best Barracks, writes De Telegraaf. 

“Unfortunately, Ukraine and other conflicts prove that this is no longer the case. And that we really have to prepare ourselves to continue living in peace and security. If you are not prepared, then you are not doing well,” he said.

Such a rearmament means the Netherlands must rebuild its defense industry, the monarch continued, adding, “It really needs to be able to start producing for a conflict again.”

The country, he said, must “arm itself to the teeth” to remain safe.

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