Tag Archives: Drone

Chinese national flew Drone for 59 minutes and took photos of Space X during launch

Vandenberg Space Force Base

Important Takeaways:

  • A Chinese national has been arrested on suspicion of flying a drone to take photographs over a US Space Force base.
  • Federal police arrested Yinpiao Zhou on Monday after he was allegedly caught flying a drone over the Vandenberg Space Force Base, in California.
  • In a criminal complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Mr. Zhou flew a drone over the base and took photographs on Nov 30 – the same day it launched a rocket on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office.
  • He has been accused of violating national defense aerospace, and of failing to register an aircraft as required under US law.
  • The incident was the latest in a series of unauthorized drone sightings above US air bases, including two in the UK last month.
  • The complaint against Mr. Zhou, filed in California, says he admitted to installing software on his drone to evade both limits on the height the device could fly at and a virtual fence around the Vandenberg base.
  • The drone was allegedly in the air for 59 minutes and took photographs of SpaceX rocket pads and other sensitive areas.

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Drone supply chain targeted by China after US sells drones to Taiwan

2024-10-31_11-27-34-US-Drone

Important Takeaways:

  • China Weaponizes Supply Chain, Sends America’s Largest Drone Maker Into Crisis
  • America’s largest drone company and supplier of unmanned aircraft to the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been thrown into a supply chain crisis after Beijing imposed sanctions, barring it from sourcing drone parts from Chinese suppliers, according to a new Financial Times report. This is another wake-up call for American companies heavily reliant on China, highlighting the urgent need to ‘friend-shore’ or ‘reshore’ critical supply chains away from the world’s second-largest economy.
  • Sources familiar with the situation told FT that Beijing imposed sanctions on Skydio to prevent it from sourcing battery components from Chinese firms.
  • On Wednesday, Skydio said the sanctions by China were “for selling drones to Taiwan, where our only customer today is the National Fire Agency.”
  • Skydio CEO Adam Bry met with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and senior White House officials last week to discuss the dire situation as the Chinese paralyzed part of the drone company’s supply chain.
  • Bry continued, “This is an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone company and deepen the world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers.”
  • China initially unveiled the sanctions on October 11 as retaliation for Washington’s move to sell attack drones to Taiwan. The FT noted that the company recently secured a contract with Taiwan’s fire agency.
  • FT sources did not mention which of Skydio’s Chinese suppliers were affected by the sanctions.
  • Using public trade data compiled by counterparty and supply chain risk intelligence firm Sayari, about 94.44% of Skydio’s drone component shipments came from Vietnam, 4.9% from Hong Kong, and .65% from China.
  • One official told FT, “We suspect Skydio was targeted by Beijing because it is likely seen as a competitor to DJI,” adding, “If there is a silver lining, we can use this episode to accelerate our work to diversify drone supply chains away from . . . China.”
  • It seems like a tit-for-tat-sanction war between America and the Chinese to weaken each other drone-manufacturing capabilities.

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Hezbollah has stepped up its attacks on Israel in recent weeks striking deeper inside Israel with new and more advanced weaponry

Hezbollah-training-exercise

Important Takeaways:

  • The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah this week struck a military post in northern Israel using a drone that fired two missiles. The attack wounded three soldiers, one of them seriously, according to the Israeli military.
  • Hezbollah has regularly fired missiles across the border with Israel over the past seven months, but the one on Thursday appears to have been the first successful missile airstrike it has launched from within Israeli airspace.
  • “Hezbollah has been escalating the situation in the north,” said military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. “They’ve been firing more and more.”

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British Foreign Secretary David Cameron cautioning Israel not to escalate tensions with Iran

david-cameron-hamas-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • Israel has been told not to retaliate after Iran’s drone and missile attack, with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron cautioning Monday it should “think with head as well as heart” because Tehran’s strike had been a near total failure.
  • His words of warning came 48-hours after President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the U.S. will not back Israel in a counterattack on Iran.
  • “I think they’re perfectly justified to think they should respond because they have been attacked, but we are urging them as friends to think with head as well as heart, to be smart as well as tough,” Cameron told BBC TV.
  • “In many ways this has been a double defeat for Iran. The attack was an almost total failure, and they revealed to the world that they are the malign influence in the region prepared to do this. So our hope is that there won’t be a retaliatory response,” he told Sky News.
  • Reuters reports Cameron said Britain would also work with allies to look at imposing more sanctions on Iran, and it urged Israel to return its focus on agreeing a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza war.

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Ukraine Drones sink Russian ship and target Crimean Bridge

Crimea-Ship-under-fire

Important Takeaways:

  • Moment Ukrainian drones hit $65million Putin warship, causing ‘significant damage’ in fireball explosion as bridge linking Crimea to mainland ‘also comes under attack’
  • This is the astonishing moment one of Putin’s most modern warships was ‘hit and sunk’ by a devastating Ukrainian drone strike overnight.
  • The $65mn Sergey Kotov, which only came into service in 2022, was reportedly struck by an exploding kamikaze sea drone attack near Feodosia, in occupied Crimea.
  • Footage purports to show the moment of the major explosion in darkness close to the coast.
  • The vessel normally has a crew of 80 – and the fate of those on board remains unclear.
  • Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said on Telegram on Tuesday that ‘The Russian Black Sea Fleet is a symbol of occupation. It cannot be in the Ukrainian Crimea,’ in an apparent reference to the attack.
  • It came as the £3mn Crimean Bridge – the main connecting link between Russia and the annexed territory – also fell under sustained attack, causing at least nine hours of traffic disruption.
  • There was no official response from the Russian defense ministry.

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China’s largest drone appears near Taiwan with 38 other aircraft

Chinese Warship

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Chinese ‘scorpion’ combat drone circles Taiwan
  • Taiwan’s defense ministry said it detected 38 Chinese aircraft, including a TB-001 drone nicknamed the “twin-tailed scorpion”, around the island between 6am Thursday and 6am Friday.
  • The drone’s circling flight path took it across the median line — an unofficial boundary dividing the Taiwan Strait — to the island’s south before flying around its east coast and returning to China, a map released by the ministry
  • Local media said it was the first time Taiwan’s defense ministry had reported a Chinese military aircraft circling the island from one end of the median line to the other.
  • The TB-001 is one of the largest drones in China’s arsenal and boasts a flight range of 6,000 kilometers.

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Russian Spy plane destroyed by Drone attack

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Russia’s £274m spy plane ‘destroyed by drone attack near Minsk’ in disaster for Putin
  • Russia’s A-50 aircraft is a surveillance and command-and-control aircraft that is designed to monitor enemy airspace and detect incoming aircraft, as well as coordinate and direct combat operations.
  • The Belarusian anti-government organization, BYPOL, has claimed that two explosions have damaged the front and central parts of the AWACS Beriev A-50U aircraft, as well as the radar antenna at the Machulishchy air base near Minsk
  • BYPOL has accused the Belarusian government of attempting to cover up the incident and has called for an international investigation.
  • Franak Viacorka, a close adviser of Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya tweeted: “Partisans… confirmed a successful special operation to blow up a rare Russian plane at the airfield in Machulishchy near Minsk,’
  • “This is the most successful diversion since the beginning of 2022.”

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Taipei shoots down Chinese drone; Beijing sends 14 fighter jets across Taiwan

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Beijing sends 14 fighter jets across Taiwan Strait after Taipei’s military shot down a drone in its airspace off the Chinese coast
  • The Chinese fighter jets crossed the unofficial territorial barrier with Taiwan
  • Earlier, Taiwan’s military shot down a civilian drone for the first time
  • The government vowed to be tougher on airspace intrusions from China

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Iran releases mock video of Donald Trump being assassinated in revenge for Soleimani

Matthew 24:6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.

Important Takeaways:

  • REVENGE SERVED COLD Iran releases mock video of Donald Trump being assassinated by drone on golf course in revenge for Soleimani killing
  • Khamenei as saying in a recent meeting with Soleimani’s family: “Martyr Soleimani is permanent, he is alive forever.
  • “Those who martyred him – Trump and his ilk – are in the dustbin of history and will be forgotten in the dustbin of history, but he is alive forever.
  • “The martyr is like this and his enemies will be lost and buried. Of course, God willing, they will be lost and buried after they pay the price for their worldliness.”

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Some ultra-Orthodox Israelis chafe at coronavirus restrictions

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli police have used a drone, helicopter and stun grenades in recent days to prevent people gathering in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem in defiance of Health Ministry measures aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

On Monday, police, some in riot gear and surgical masks, encountered occasional resistance and verbal abuse while enforcing the measures in a part of the city whose residents have long chafed against the state.

“Nazis!” shouted a group of boys, as police pulled men off the narrow streets of Mea Shearim.

As well as broadcasting the message “Stay Home” from the helicopter and drone, police have issued offenders with fines.

Israeli officials describe the ultra-Orthodox as especially prone to contagion because their districts tend to be poor and congested, and in normal times they are accustomed to holding thrice-daily prayers with often large congregations.

Some of their rabbis have also cast doubt on the degree of coronavirus risk.

Many ultra-Orthodox reject the authority of the Israeli state, whose Jewish majority is mostly secular.

Israel’s 21 percent Arab minority are another sensitive community, where officials say testing for the virus has been lagging.

“There are three ‘Corona Countries’ – the ultra-Orthodox sector, the Arab sector and the rest of the State of Israel,” Defense Minister Naftali Bennett told reporters on Sunday.

The Mea Shearim patrols represented an escalation in security enforcement. On Saturday, a funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners in Bnai Brak, an ultra-Orthodox town.

Reprimanded by Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan for allowing what he deemed a “threat to life” at the funeral, police issued a statement vowing to “draw lessons to prevent similar situations recurring”.

Public gatherings are currently limited to up to 10 people, people must keep two meters apart and the public has been urged to stay at home unless they need to buy food, get medical attention, or go to work deemed crucial by the state.

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, ultra-Orthodox head of ZAKA, a volunteer emergency-medicine group, told Israel’s Army Radio that most ultra-Orthodox Jews did follow Health Ministry directives and only a small group defied them, possibly for political reasons.

“Everything they are doing has no value when they constitute a ‘ticking bomb’ because of whom people will get infected,” he said of those not following the government’s guidelines.

Israel has reported 4,347 coronavirus cases and 15 fatalities.

With the Health Ministry warning that the dead could eventually number in the thousands, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due on Monday to convene officials to discuss a proposed lockdown of some of the country.

Bennett has proposed setting up a coronavirus surveillance system that would allow authorities to focus lockdowns on areas most prone to contagion.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Mike Collett-White)