04 Dec 11. Iran’s armed forces have shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane
that violated Iranian airspace along the country’s eastern border, the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday. An unidentified military official quoted in the report warned of a strong and crushing response to any violations of the country’s airspace by American drone aircraft. “An advanced RQ170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran’s armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran’s armed forces,” IRNA quoted the official as saying. No further details were published. (Source: AP)

24 Nov 11. Trials success puts STM on course for live drops. Raytheon has completed captive-carriage tests of its Phase II configuration Small Tactical Munition (STM) aboard a company unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) testbed. Cody Tretschok, Raytheon’s STM capture manager, told Jane’s that the 16 September flight-tests at the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona have paved the way for weapon deployment trials. (Source: Jane’s, IDR)

24 Nov 11. TiaLinx launches latest penetrative motion-detecting SUAS. US-based TiaLinx has developed a small unmanned aircraft system (SUAS) equipped with the company’s motion detection technologies. The system, known as the Phoenix50-A, builds on TiaLinx’s Phoenix40-A UAS, utilising the same fine beam ultra-wideband (UWB), multi-gigahertz radio frequency (RF) sensor array technology. This is used to track the movement of an individual and even the breathing of a stationary person. (Source: Jane’s, IDR)

30 Nov 11. NovelSat launched its groundbreaking third generation satellite modulation technology, NS3™ to the military market place. NS3™ technology addresses the chronic shortage of satellite bandwidth that is restricting the deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) around the globe today. Time and again, NS3™ technology has been shown to boost satellite capacity by 28-70% over the previous highest performance alternatives offered by the second generation Digital Video Broadcasting Standard (DVB-S2). UAVs such as Predators, Global Hawks, Reapers and the French Harfang generate huge amounts of data, including full motion video and complex sensors such as high definition video, laser designators, imaging radar, ground moving target indicators and multispectral imagers, demanding high bandwidth for transmission. One Global Hawk (UAV) requires around 500 Megabits/second of bandwidth, which is five times the entire bandwidth required by all of the US military during Desert Storm. Earlier this month French Air Chief of Staff General Jean-Paul Palomeros highlighted the problem at the opening of the Dubai Air show by saying that “A move to a new standard communications band is needed because of a saturation of current bandwidth… Some 20 gigabits per second is needed to cope with the growing number of UAVs, which are swamping the current Ku bandwidth available on satellite communications links.” The NS3™ technology from NovelSat uses existing spectral bandwidth more efficiently to reduce satellite leasing costs by 20-37% over DVB-S2 (on 36MHz and smaller transponder segments), reduce antenna size by 33%, increase geographical coverage and/or increase capacity by up to 70% on wide transponders such as the 72 MHz transponders and offer unparalleled data speeds of up to 358Mbps today – growing to 1Gbps on a 250MHz transponder by Q4/ 2012. For UAVs, NS3™ can contribute to a 33% reduction in the onboard pedestal and antenna’s size giving, an identical throughput. Such a reduction may contribute to improved UAV’s aerodynamics, fuel consumption, and flight range as well as reducing its Radar Cross Section (RCS). Similarly, for Special Forces as well as Ground Forces, Communications on the Move (COTM) the reduction in weight and size of the antenna carried on the back of a fighting soldier and the improved signal quality can prove to be a critical advantage in a military theatre. NovelSat’s modulators, demodulat