Topic: Drone - on January 30, 2012 at 12:22:00 PM CET
U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq
A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty..
The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.
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Topic: Drone - on January 30, 2012 at 12:20:00 PM CET
Israeli Superdrone Crashes And Explodes
The Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle Heron TP, also known as the IAI Eitan, has crashed during a test flight near the Tel Nof airbase, south of Tel Aviv.
Israeli radio reported that the Heron TP exploded after the crash. Nobody on the ground has been injured.
The Israeli Air Force says technical failure or human factor could have caused the incident.
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