A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other war zones. The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say.

A drone sneaked contraband into a Michigan prison in May, but the breach went undetected for nearly two months, according to State Police documents The Detroit News obtained through an open records request. Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said Friday that an after-the-fact review of video surveillance discovered that prisoners at Ionia’s Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility recovered two packages dropped by a drone. It is the first time that law enforcement and state prison officials have confirmed a successful drone delivery of contraband to Michigan inmates.

California Bureau of Cannabis Control just says “no” to autonomous delivery of marijuana.

Drone delivery has taken another small step toward becoming a reality, thanks to a new trial taking place in Iceland. Israeli drone logistics company Flytrex has partnered with Icelandic on-demand goods service AHA to set up a small drone delivery route in Reykjavík.

A 25-year-old U.S. citizen has been charged with using a drone to smuggle more than 13 pounds of methamphetamine from Mexico by drone, an unusually large seizure for what is still a novel technique to bring illegal drugs into the United States, authorities said Friday.

Billions of trees are felled each year, according to the Rainforest Action Network, and planting a tree requires more time and effort than cutting one down. That makes keeping up with deforestation rates challenging for conservationists. The minds behind one tech startup think they can speed up global tree-planting efforts by taking the burden off humans and placing it on drones.

The Pentagon has given US military bases permission to shoot down or otherwise destroy consumer drones flying overhead and nearby. A spokesman revealed that guidance was issued on 4 August. He said the exact terms of the policy were classified. The move comes days after the US Army ordered its own troops to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI because of alleged "cyber-vulnerabilities".

There are a lot of different startups trying to turn drone racing into a serious, professional sport and moneymaking league. So far, the folks at the Drone Racing League, or DRL for short, have gotten the most traction. The league has scored a lot of venture capital and big TV deals. We caught a race in London recently and came away impressed.

These stunning aerials are the winners of Dronestagram's 2017 International Drone Photography Contest.

As a former intelligence soldier who now sells drones for a living, I can tell you that this problem is bigger than almost anyone realizes. By Brett Velicovich.

Last month, a team of MIT engineers launched Jungle Hawk Owl from the back of a compact car.

An Australian engineer is hoping to use drones to plant 1 billion trees every year to fight an unfolding global catastrophe. Burned or cleared forests release their stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and land restoration experts say technology must play a big part in addressing the problem.

DRL's second season airs next month.

A new system by University of California, Santa Barbara researchers Yasamin Mostofi and Chitra R. Karanam uses two drones, a massive Wi-Fi antenna, and a little interpolation to literally see through solid walls.

The long range of airborne drones helps them perform critical tasks in the skies. Now MIT spinout Open Water Power (OWP) aims to greatly improve the range of unpiloted underwater vehicles (UUVs), helping them better perform in a range of applications under the sea. By Rob Matheson.

They reduced response times by over 75% during trials.

It's a major win for drone hobbyists, who say the FAA doesn’t have the power to make them register their model aircraft.

CMU researchers are letting this drone crash into objects so it can learn to fly autonomously using deep convolutional neural networks. “Learning to Fly by Crashing,” a paper from CMU roboticists Dhiraj Gandhi, Lerrel Pinto, and Abhinav Gupta, has such a nice abstract that I’ll just let them explain what this research is all about...