Tech & Builds
Drone technology from UASFeed — autonomy, swarming, sensors, counter-jamming, FPV builds, and the engineering underneath uncrewed flight.
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Tech & Builds
Indra Floats Electronic Warfare 100 Meters Up: A Tethered-Drone EW Node for the Eastern-Front Era
Spain's Indra Group debuted a tethered quadcopter at Eurosatory that lifts electronic-warfare sensors more than 100 meters off a 4x4, extending detection of enemy comms and drone links by tens of kilometers — a design shaped by Ukraine-war lessons.
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Tech & Builds
Hoverfly's New 'Elements' Division Bets That the Pentagon's War on Chinese Drone Parts Is Just Getting Started
At XPONENTIAL 2026, Hoverfly launched Elements, an NDAA-compliant drone components line — motors, ESCs and anti-jam GPS modules — built to meet the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program deadlines for purging Chinese parts from $6.6B in sUAS buys.
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Tech & Builds
Drone Flight Controllers Explained: The Open-Source Autopilot Brain Running Combat UAVs
The flight controller — the embedded autopilot at the heart of every drone — is the same open-source technology that guided Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web strikes on Russian strategic air bases. Here’s how it works and why it matters.
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Tech & Builds
Three Axes, One Problem: How Drone Gimbals Keep Cameras Locked On Target
Brushless gimbals isolate a drone camera from every pitch, roll, and yaw disturbance the airframe throws at it — using MEMS IMUs, real-time sensor fusion, and closed-loop motor control. The same physics that gives consumer aerial footage its glassy stability scales, with added axes and sensor channels, to military EO/IR targeting turrets.
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Tech & Builds
Drone Ground Control Stations Explained: MAVLink, Datalinks, and the MQ-9 Flight Deck
Ground control stations span from a $50 telemetry radio running open-source Mission Planner to hardened USAF shelters managing satellite-linked MQ-9s worldwide. Here's how MAVLink, mission-planning software, datalinks, and military GCS tiers actually work.
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Tech & Builds
Dead Zone Autonomy: How Edge AI Keeps Drones Flying When GPS and Comms Disappear
Russian electronic warfare can blank GPS within 5 kilometers of deployment. Shield AI’s president says 99% of military autonomous systems fail under jamming. The solution — running perception, navigation, and targeting entirely on the drone — is now combat-proven.
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Tech & Builds
Glass-to-Glass: The Physics of FPV Video Links Driving Ukraine’s Drone War
Analog FPV, a video technology whose roots trace to the 1970s, dominates Ukraine’s frontline drone strikes over HD digital systems. The reason comes down to milliseconds, spectrum physics, and how a signal degrades under jamming.
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Tech & Builds
Optionally Piloted Aircraft: The Platform That Bridges Crewed and Autonomous Flight
Optionally piloted aircraft hold manned airworthiness certificates while enabling fully autonomous operations—closing the regulatory gap that stalls pure UAVs. From proven Afghan cargo resupply missions to DARPA’s autonomous Black Hawk delivered to the Army in 2026, the concept reshapes military logistics and aviation.
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Tech & Builds
Pseudo-Satellites at 20 km: The Physics, Programs, and Promise of Solar HAPS
High-Altitude Platform Stations operate in the stratosphere at 20 km — above weather, below orbital mechanics — using solar power and ultra-dense batteries to loiter for months. Here's how they work, which programs are viable, and why the sector is drawing serious capital.
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Tech & Builds
Swarm Mesh Networking: The Hidden Architecture Behind Autonomous Drone Coordination
Drone light shows and true autonomous swarms share an airspace but almost nothing else. The decentralized MANET/FANET mesh—multi-hop routing, anti-jamming MARL, GPS-denied positioning—is what separates choreography from genuine collective autonomy, and what DARPA OFFSET and Replicator's $1B are chasing.
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Tech & Builds
Tilt-Rotor, Tailsitter, and Ducted-Fan Drones: The VTOL Hover-Cruise Trade-Off
Every VTOL aircraft must reconcile two contradictory physics demands: hover requires high blade area and tip speed, while forward flight requires the opposite. Tilt-rotor, tailsitter, and ducted-fan architectures each place their bets differently — with lasting consequences for military range and noise compliance.
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Tech & Builds
Zephyr S: Inside the Solar Stratospheric Drone That Stayed Aloft for 64 Days
Airbus's Zephyr S occupies the stratosphere at 70,000 feet, loitering for months with ISR and 5G connectivity payloads on power equivalent to a single light bulb. Here's how the platform works, what the 2022 Army record flight proved, and where the newly spun-out AALTO HAPS company is taking it.
