Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news, designed to capture the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

Before the Predator attached the name "drone" to an anti-terror war machine, many militaries flew unmanned planes as targets, so that pilots and anti-aircraft gunners could practice shooting moving objects. Target drones are still flown today, both specific target models and ones converted from old jets specifically for this purpose. In the past, targets were generally plane-sized, and militaries used anti-aircraft weapons to shoot them down.

Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news, designed to capture the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

There are generally threeways to improve an explosive weapon: make the explosion bigger so it's guaranteed to hit the target;improve its precision so that it doesn't hit anything but the target;or shapethe explosion so that when it goes off,it travels in a specificdirection. Over the past12 years, as the major war effortof both the United States and the United Kingdom has been fighting small groups of insurgents that operate in civilian areas, weapons engineers placed aheavy emphasison the latter two strategies.

Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news, designed to capture the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

According to a Voice of Russia report thathas now mysteriously vanished,two American drones were shot down over Crimea this morning, including a"heavier, two-engine drone." The story popped up on Reddit's world news front page, and has been floating around Twitter, too. But lest we think World War III broke out over the Black Sea this morning, there are plenty of reasons to think the report, which cites info from Novosti Kryma (News of Crimea), is totally false.