Drone | featured news

Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas than U.S. counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged, a new study by human rights researchers at Stanford University and New York University contends.

Some moral philosophers, political scientists and weapons specialists believe armed, unmanned aircraft offer marked moral advantages over almost any other tool of warfare.

President Obama's use of drones to attack suspected terrorists is drawing intense criticism in the latest issue of "Esquire" magazine.

The prospect that thousands of drones could be patrolling U.S. skies by the end of this decade is raising the specter of a Big Brother government that peers into backyards and bedrooms....

Beltway traffic in Washington, D.C., is bad enough without adding extraterrestrial vehicles into the mix. On Wednesday night, Facebook and Twitter users went wild over sightings of a saucer-shaped vessel being towed on local highways. The buzz called to mind the frenzy in 1947 Roswell, albeit in a much more modern way.

Iran claimed Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy drone that went down in Iran last year including that it was used to spy on Osama bin Laden's house weeks before he was killed by U.S. forces. Iran also said it was building a copy of the surveillance aircraft.

The new radar-evading aircraft, which cost the Air Force $15 million, has a maximum takeoff weight of 15,800 pounds and can fly at 460 mph. The drone, built near San Diego, is for testing purposes. The Air Force has bought a new hunter-killer aircraft that is the fastest and largest armed drone in its fleet.

New helicopter-style drones with 1.8 gigapixel colour cameras, capable of following 65 separate targets, are being developed by the US Army.

The United States is assembling a series of secret drone bases for an aggressive campaign against al-Qaida-linked groups in Somalia and Yemen, the Washingon Post reports.

For months officials in Pakistan have been demanding an end to CIA drone strikes in the country, and the brokering of a new relationship that would make them equal partners in the pursuit of terrorist groups. Now they have an unlikely ally in their demands: the former director of U.S. intelligence agencies, Dennis C. Blair.