Military Battles for Drone Control

Scheduled debriefing not soon enough for jilted company

(NEWSER) - Boeing is calling for an “immediate debriefing” on the Air Force's choice of a foreign company to build its fuel tankers, Bloomberg reports. The selection of Airbus and Northrop Grumman is to be the subject of a scheduled March 12 meeting, but Boeing says that isn’t protocol. “We would expect this briefing to occur within days, not weeks, of the announcement,” said a company rep. More»

(NEWSER) - They’re not science fiction anymore. Researchers have built a real life flying saucer that looks and flies like a B-movie dream. The unmanned craft takes off vertically, maneuvers well, and can land almost anywhere. Cheaper and safer than a helicopter, the Defense Department thinks the saucer could become a staple in urban war zones, Discovery News reports. More»

Some worry short timetable endangers other aircraft, privacy

(NEWSER) - Thousands of small drones could take wing across the US following a Federal Aviation Administration decision next month. Police departments have been snapping up the unmanned aircraft, whose cameras could be used for everything from missing-person searches to catching drug dealers. Now law enforcement is waiting on the FAA to lay out rules for using the drones—guidelines that must be set by May 14 under a February law signed by President Obama. More»

Dover Air Force Base under fire for treatment of cremated remains

(NEWSER) - Small, incinerated portions of the remains of 9/11 victims ended up in a landfill, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time. The remains of victims of the attacks in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, too small to identify, were brought to the Dover Air Force Base mortuary, where they were given to a "biomedical waste disposal contractor," according to a Defense Department review of the mortuary. The cremated remains were incinerated by the contractor; mortuary workers assumed that "after final incineration, nothing remained." More»

Military no longer expected to be able to fight two wars at once

(NEWSER) - The US military is going to end up with a lot fewer boots on the ground as a results of cuts included in the debt ceiling deal. As part of the Obama administration's military overhaul , to be unveiled today, air and sea forces will be boosted, but Army and Marine Corps numbers will be cut by up to 15% over the next decade to a pre-9/11 level, Reuters reports. Officials say no final number has been set, but tens of thousands of troops will certainly go. More»