Two Yemeni men have appealed their case to a German court after they alleged their relatives were killed in US drone strikes that took off from the US-operated Ramstein Air Base in Ramstein-Miesenbach, Germany.
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Germany’s Euro Hawk drone is set to be delivered to the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Berlin after a rocky lifetime. While the airframe heads to the museum, the rest of the parts are being transferred to NATO for use as spare parts.
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Earlier this week, the top German court said U.S. drone operations based in Germany aren’t required to comply with international law. The decision falls back onto a 2015 decision that found Germany to have satisfied its legal duties and ensure it fulfills “foreign and defense policy interests.”
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Passenger drone manufacturer Lilium has partnered with German airports Dusseldorf and Cologne/Bonn to build VTOL passenger drone infrastructure. Lilium plans to bring its fully electric, five-seater aircraft to market by 2025.
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Quantum-Systems took to the sky in Munich with its medical delivery drone to test transporting vials of blood. The test drone was able to complete the delivery in just under seven minutes.
Delivery drone company Wingcopter, in partnership with Merck and Frankfurt University, has completed its first drone delivery trial showcasing the benefits of drones as a delivery method. The delivery test spanned over 25 km from a Merck lab in Gernsheim, Germany, to the Merck headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany.
German drone manufacturer Wingcopter scores new funding. The startup company has been involved in testing the delivery of medical supplies to remote areas by drone.
A drone photo shows a massive crater resulting from a bomb explosion in Germany. The crater is in a barley field near Ahlbach, Germany and according to experts is the result of a WWII bomb explosion that occurred on June 24 of this year. Officials say that the inexplicable explosion that shook residents of a central German town during the early morning hours last Sunday was “with almost absolute certainty” a World War II bomb. Drone photos later captured the crater that resulted from the nighttime explosion.
Last month, German researchers successfully tested an Unmanned Air Traffic Management system that coordinated two drone flights in the area of Köhlbrand Bridge in Hamburg Germany. The City Air Traffic Management (City-ATM) project successfully demonstrated two drones cooperating with each other while executing a bridge inspection, amid active shipping and roads traffic. The Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt or German Aerospace Center in partnership with various industrial and academic parties performed the test as part of a study for the future use of drones in urban environments.
Last Friday flights to and from Frankfurt Airport in Germany were briefly interrupted after a drone was spotted in the area. According to the Associated Press, operator FraPort halted takeoffs and landings at Germany’s busiest airport for 29 minutes as a precautionary measure late Friday afternoon. As with the recent drone scares at Gatwick, Heathrow, and Newark Airport, no evidence of any drones was provided by the Frankfurt Airport officials. It will be interesting to see if any proof will surface in the coming days.
Earlier today DJI posted a video on YouTube that shows you the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of the Amazon Prime Original series “You Are Wanted” and how DJI’s technology is used. The crew uses the DJI Inspire 2 drone with a Zenmuse X7 camera and the DJI Ronin 2 camera gimbal to achieve creative and surprising shots that otherwise would have been much more difficult to capture. The video is in German but if you activate the English subtitles it will be quite easy to follow.
The Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) air traffic authority in Germany said that incidents between drones and commercial jets in 2017 rose less than expected considering how popular the unmanned aerial devices have become. However, airlines around the world did express their concerns about drone incidents, which resulted in the International Air Transport Association backing efforts by the United Nations’ aviation agency, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to develop a global drone registry as we reported earlier today.
Lawmakers in Berlin could soon approve the deployment of armed drone for the Bundeswehr. German defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen is to forward a €25 million EUR ($30.7 million USD) placeholder petition to the defense committees for a program to lease a number of Heron-TP drones from Israel. The entire contract is valued at around €1 billion EUR.
Festo’s Bionic Flying Fox has a wingspan of more than 7 feet and is almost 3 feet long, but weighs only a little more than 1 pound (580 grams). This semi-autonomously flying fruit bat is a bio-inspired drone that has been developed by the engineers of the German automation company.
It seems that all of a sudden car manufacturers are becoming interested in drones. Mercedes-Benz is testing with drone deliveries in Zurich. Porsche has a drone in their latest EV commercial. Ford participates at the FAA UAS Symposium and would like to sell you a drone with your next F150 pickup truck. And now BMW is involved in developing the fastest racing drone in a partnership with Drone Racing League (DRL). It makes you wonder who will be next?
Check out these Germans, the Real Life Guys. They have made a manned bathtub drone. The project started out a few months ago when they ended a video with the question whether their next project should be a flying bicycle or a human drone. In the end, they did both.