Business & Military

Defense contractors are investing heavily in politicians as a means of stemming looming cuts to the military. Bloomberg is reporting that political contributions by the top ten contractors went up by 29 percent in advance of the 2014 midterm congressional elections over the same period in 2012. The next crop of politicians will preside over […]

Just as a combination of radar, transponders and active traffic systems improved flight safety for manned aircraft, the UAS industry may benefit from different twists on the same technology. At the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Orlando this week, General Atomics, the maker of the Predator UAS, explained its novel approach to […]

An FAA official has told representatives of the UAV industry that it may be 2020 or later before the agency has a comprehensive set of rules governing small pilotless aircraft. Forbes aviation blogger John Goglia wrote last week that Jim Williams, speaking at the Small Unmanned Systems Business Exposition in San Francisco, said that although […]

A regional airliner on approach to Tallahassee, Fla., in March nearly collided with a drone, an FAA official said on Thursday. Speaking before a drone conference in San Francisco,Jim Williams, head of the FAA’s UAV office, said the near-collision occurred at about 2300 feet nearTallahassee Regional Airport in Florida. The flight was operated by USAirways, […]

A year ago Diamond Aircraft laid off more than 200 employees at its London, Ontario, Canada plant, cutting the staff to 40 and prompting other aircraft manufacturers, notably Bombardier, to hire skilled Diamond workers. Now, according to the London Free Press, staffing has reached 130, thanks to diversification that includes manufacturing aviation parts. Its a […]

Sikorsky Aircraft has been awarded an initial $1.24 billion contract to develop and build six new U.S. presidential helicopters based on the model S-92, the first step toward a fleet of 21 new aircraft by 2023, the Pentagon announced on Wednesday. The award capped years of efforts by the U.S. Navy to replace the current […]

AVwebs weekly news roundup uncovered reports about the tight competition in the Red Bull Air Race series as it touches down in Asia, the success of the Pilatus PC-7 trainer in service with the Indian air force, Embry-Riddle Universitys new Masters degree program in Unmanned Systems and an upcoming NTSB meeting on ag aircraft safety. […]

I was looking through the archives the other day to see when we did our first serious coverage of electric aircraft. It was 2009; five years ago this summer. We imagined then that production versions would be trickling to market in a few years. They arent. But thats not to say theres not interesting progress […]

Sixteen media organizations filed a brief (PDF) with the National Transportation Safety Board in support of aerial photographer Raphael Pirker. Pirker was fined $10,000 by the FAA for flying a drone near the University of Virginia to make a commercial video in October 2011. An administrative law judge ruled in March that the FAA can’t […]

The Black Knight Transformer is not a pretty aircraft — it looks like a mashup of a trailer truck, four rubber tires off a go-kart, and a swarm of quadcopters — but it flies and drives, as Advanced Tactics proved with a video posted online this week. The optionally-piloted vehicle aims to combine the capabilities […]