General Atomics dedicates a company-owned Avenger, the jet-powered version of the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft, to be available on-call to drop ration packs for humanitarian relief internationally.

When the need for accurate positioning is highest, close to the ground, GPS can be at its most unreliable, creating the need for alternative sensors to ensure safe takeoffs and landings by drones.

Airships to transport rare earths; Mil’s PSV beats helo speed record; Facebook demos comms for Aquila drone; SpectroDrone detects explosives on the fly; Flirtey delivers Domino’s pizza.

Four unmanned and optionally piloted aircraft from Lockheed Martin and subsidiary Sikorsky flew together for the first time in public in a staged firefighting and search-and-rescue demo at Griffiss, New York

NASA is looking for a few good anomalies to help researchers develop an unmanned aircraft traffic management system that will work any time and all the time.

Aurora Flight Sciences and Sikorsky complete autonomy demonstrations under Phase 2 of DARPA’s ALIAS cockpit-automation program. Both are now bidding for Phase 3, to mature selected technologies for transition to potential customers—military and commercial.

After massively simplifying rules, the FAA is seeing strong growth in remote pilot applications and UAV registrations for commercial uses.

In this week’s Washington Outlook: Heritage Foundation on military options for new administration; Trump may back bilateral space ties with China; and the flood of new UAV pilots.