European medium altitude long endurance unmanned vehicles on display

Flightglobal takes a look at the potential and problems facing the various European Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV project

Beast of Kandahar Is Back; Israel using Heron UAV to monitor arms smuggling

Ares has a blog on the RQ-170 UAV (i.e Beast of Kandahar) back in Afghanistan, and how Israel is using their long endurance Heron UAVs to monitor arms smuggling to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Wikileaks Afghan documents provide drone operations insight; suggests Tabliban has MANPADs

The recent documents released by Wikileaks about the Afghan war provide a look at UAV operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as suggesting that the Taliban has man-portable Surface to Air missiles in its arsenal

To be honest, I'd have been more surprised if they had said the Taliban didn't have MANPADS.

China tests satellite killer; modifying old jets into drones

2 pieces of news about China today:

First off the People's Daily reports that China might have successfully tested their satellite destroying capabilities again and eTaiwanNews reports that China is modifying older fighter jets into drones and has up to 2000 missiles pointed at Taiwan.

War zone drone crashes add up

The LA Times looks at the cost of UAV accidents in the war zone