Completely autonomous drones that can decide who or what to strike are still many years away from becoming a reality, but the military has already developed various unmanned aircraft that it's been using primarily for gathering intelligence (rather than for attacking targets). Here are a few more examples of some of the high-tech flying weapons that exist today.

• The $1.8 billion prototype Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator was recently launched into the air from a catapult. This marked the first-ever catapult launch of a drone from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. [url]
• The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, the most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, seems to have a problem with suffocating its pilots during normal flight. Since 2008, pilots would frequently and inexplicably suffer from what appeared to hypoxia -- in one case, a pilot hit a tree while landing and didn't even realize it. The cause of the problem was only recently identified as being due to a faulty valve on the pilots' life-support vest. You'd think that after spending almost $80 billion on these planes, it wouldn't have taken them almost five years to figure this out. [url]
• After 16 years and billions of dollars, the "Airborne Laser" project -- a 747 jumbo-jet equipped with a powerful laser that can shoot missiles out of the sky -- has finally been scrapped. Cost prohibitive and impractical, the Airborne Laser would likely have cost $92,000/hour to fly if it had worked. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Futuristic-looking jet planes used to inspire all kinds of technology geeks, back when commercial flying was a relatively new venture. Over the years, though, the airline industry has matured quite a bit, and commercial plane designs don't really look that unique anymore. But that doesn't mean engineers aren't coming up with novel plane designs. Here are a few cool new planes that could take to the skies in the not too distant future.

• Supersonic planes have a problem of creating a "sonic boom" when they travel faster than the speed of sound, causing all kinds of headaches for commercial and military operations. A new biplane design with twin wings would have a much reduced sonic boom, as each wing could cancel out the effects of the other (at least in theory & simulations). [url]
• NASA is interested in liquified natural gas (LNG) propulsion for creating super fuel efficient airplanes. Planes fueled by LNG won't be ready for at least three generations of airplane technologies (aka N+3 airliners), so don't expect to see any before 2030. [url]
• The first production aircraft to completely satisfy FAA spin resistance standards will likely improve the safety of non-commercial general aviation. Icon Aircraft's A5 amphibious light sport aircraft is a two-seater plane design that greatly reduces the plane's potential to stall out or go into an uncontrollable spin. [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what's currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Some methods of flying are better than others. Passenger comfort isn't always the top priority for some aircraft, and that's especially true when engineers are trying out really novel designs and propulsion ideas. Here are just a few examples of some new planes that aren't quite ready for commercial flight, but that look really cool on the drawing board.

• A solar-powered plane prototype was demonstrated at the Paris Airshow. Unfortunately, the plane requires almost windless conditions to fly, and it's not too fast. But it *can* stay aloft almost indefinitely (greater than 24 hours so far). [url]
• The VoltAir is an all-electric plane concept with superconducting (!) electric motors... "VoltAir is an upstream research concept, not a near-term commercial approach." Duh. [url]
• If superconducting electric motors seem plausible, then using a low-energy nuclear reactor (LENR) to power a plane is just around the corner. I'd like a Mr. Fusion generator for my DeLorean, too. [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what's currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Human pilots get tired and need sleep -- and some airline pilots get some rest at "crash pads" when they're off duty. Knowing that might not be too comforting to many passengers, but who's willing to let a robot fly a few hundred people around? Autonomous planes are getting more advanced all the time, though mostly for unmanned missions with aircraft that couldn't possibly carry people on board. Maybe someday we'll have autonomous Jetson-cars... in the meantime, here are a few links to some interesting UAVs and flight automation.

• Northrop Grumman's X-47B is an autonomous combat aircraft that aims to be launching from and landing on aircraft carriers in a few years. Another trick will be aerial refueling, eliminating the limitation of onboard fuel capacity. [url]
• Would you believe the CIA developed a dragonfly robot in the 1970s as a super-secret intelligence gathering tool? Would you believe they also developed mobile phones hidden in shoes? Robotic fish? Cone of silence? [url]
• Last year, a solar-powered plane broke all the non-stop endurance records by flying for a week -- and it could have stayed up indefinitely. Cheap solar planes to replace telecommunication satellites would be a nice next step. [url]
• The safety of flight automation is being studied -- finding out that both human error and automation errors can cause serious problems. Nobody's perfect. [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what's currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Another day, another series of bizarre TSA-related stories. While the TSA still won't provide any evidence that its efforts have actually made air travel any safer and continues to defend its security efforts as necessary, CNN is reporting that a child on a Southwest flight found a loaded gun magazine in a seatback pocket, which was kicked to the floor as the child climbed over the seats. Apparently, a law enforcement official (not an air marshal) who was allowed to take the clip on the plane, left it in the seat. Obviously, this is not a failure of the TSA, in that the mistake was by the law enforcement agent who left the clip, but the point is that it's impossible to protect against all threats on a plane, and many of the TSA's actions seem to be based on the fiction that it is possible. I have nothing against legitimate security that makes us safer, but there's little indication that that's what we're getting from the TSA.

Slashdot points us to the news that security experts and the US Dept. of Homeland Security are apparently worried about an application called Plane Finder, which is available on the iPhone and Android phones. Among other things, it lets you point your phone at an airplane in the sky, and it will provide info on that plane, including the height and speed, as well as its destination, and a "likely course." The fear, of course, is that terrorists could potentially use this to shoot down a plane.

Of course, in blaming this app, everyone seems to be missing the real target. This app is using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B), which is transmitted by many aircraft these days, and can apparently be read with a $200 receiver. In other words, if terrorists wanted that data, they'd go out and get that $200 receiver. The "problem" (if there really is one) isn't the Plane Finder app (which actually sounds kind of cool), but the fact that all that data is being made available publicly. Blaming the app sort of misses the point, because if the data is available so easily, you can bet those who wish to do harm with it, have already figured that out. In the meantime, the Plane Finder app itself doesn't appear to actually have that many downloads. The report claims 2,000 sales on iTunes, and in the Android store, it looks like less than 500 have been purchased. Of course, now that it's in the news...

We've already explained why it's rather silly for Congress to pass an outright ban of talking on mobile phones in-flight, but that probably won't stop the effort from going forward. However, new research is showing how this may be even less necessary than many assume. First, contrary to the idea that most people are worried about in-flight phone use, most younger users seem to actually support it.

As for the concern that it would just be really "annoying"? It turns out that when you look at actual tests (what a concept), this turns out not to be a problem. Passengers develop their own etiquette for keeping quiet and not pissing off other passengers. In other words, social pressures can handle most of the worst scenarios without the need for any sort of law that bans it in all situations. But, of course, this is Congress we're talking about. They're not huge fans of basing laws on what actually happens, but on what will generate the best headlines.

Also, just to respond to some of the misconception in the comments to the previous post: the potential ban has absolutely nothing to do with the technology issues related to using mobiles on airplanes. It's entirely about the etiquette/annoyance issue. Most of those technical issues have been worked out by putting a "picocell" on the airplane itself to redirect the voice traffic in a more efficient manner, rather than having the phones try to connect directly to towers on the ground.