Sophisticated unmanned aircraft get big military bucks

The Army has awarded General Atomics an $18.6 million contract to continue developing an extended range/multi-purpose unmanned aerial vehicle.  The contract is but one of the extended range unmanned aircraft military planners are looking at for the next few years.  In addition, there is more than $500 million for unmanned aircraft systems in the fiscal 2008 war supplemental, which Congress has yet to act on, according to Aviation Week. 

First, the General Atomics contract is for the aircraft called the Sky Warrior.  The Sky Warrior is built upon the company’s highly successful Predator and I-GNAT ER airplanes. The aircraft, the first of which flew last year,  will perform long-endurance – over 40 hours aloft, surveillance, communications relay, and weapons delivery missions with double the weapons capacity of the Predator.

Via NetworkWorld.

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Via Yahoo.

China says military spending will go up 17.6 percent in 2008

Most of the increase will go to boosting salaries and to pay for higher oil prices, with moderate increased spending for armaments, said Jiang Enzhu, spokesman for the National People’s Congress.

He said spending would total $59 billion in 2008. Other countries say China vastly underestimates how much it spends on its military and the real figure could be three times as much as the publicly released figure.

China has said spending grew 17.8 percent during 2007, to nearly $45 billion. It was the largest annual increase in more than a decade.

Source: AP via IHT.