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News18
5 hours ago
- Business
- News18
MALE Drones: How India's New Combat UAVs Stack Up Against The US Predator
Last Updated: Unlike the Predator drones ordered from the United States, which are expected only by 2029, the new MALE drones will be built in India with 60 per cent indigenous content India is ramping up its drone power, and this time, it's going local. The Defence Ministry has cleared a major proposal to acquire 87 armed Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones, as part of a wider Rs 67,000 crore defence package approved by the Defence Acquisition Council. A senior official told The Times of India that the need for these drones was felt during Operation Sindoor, India's retaliatory cross-border strikes in May following the Pahalgam terror attack. Unlike the Predator drones ordered from the United States, which are expected only by 2029, the new MALE drones will be built in India with 60 per cent indigenous content and deployed much sooner. The Rs 20,000 crore drone deal signals more than just another big-ticket defence buy; it reflects a strategic shift. India is not just procuring combat drones; it is building future warfighting capabilities tailored to its evolving security challenges. Their primary utility lies in their ability to provide long-duration intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), while also carrying out precision strikes using guided weapons. India's interest in acquiring such drones stems from their growing role in modern conflicts, from Ukraine to Gaza, where air superiority and real-time data have become critical. MALE drones are now seen as indispensable tools in border surveillance, counter-terrorism, and conventional warfare alike. What Has The Defence Ministry Approved? On August 5, 2025, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, approved a Rs 67,000 crore modernisation package. Of this, around Rs 20,000 crore has been earmarked for the procurement of 87 armed MALE drones. According to a senior official quoted by TOI, 'All three armed forces need these drones, which are equipped with intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance and weapon-carrying capability." The official also revealed that an additional Rs 11,000 crore would be allocated for logistical and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) support for the next 10 years. The drones will be produced under a joint venture between Indian and foreign firms, with a minimum of 60 per cent indigenous content, in line with the government's Make in India initiative. Once inducted, they are expected to carry multiple payloads, operate across varying terrains, conduct real-time ISR missions, and deliver precision strikes, all while flying at altitudes above 35,000 feet for extended durations. Why The Urgency? Lessons From Operation Sindoor India's renewed urgency around drone procurement is directly tied to Operation Sindoor, the retaliatory cross-border strikes carried out in May against terror camps in Pakistan and PoK, following the Pahalgam terror attack. During the operation, India deployed loitering munitions and kamikaze drones to target terror infrastructure. While effective, these were single-use systems. MALE drones, unlike kamikaze drones, can return after striking, making them more cost-effective over time. The ability to loiter, gather intelligence, strike, and then reposition — all within a single mission — makes them an invaluable strategic asset. How Do These Drones Compare With Predator MQ-9Bs? India had earlier signed a deal to procure 31 MQ-9B Predator drones from the United States in a deal worth over Rs 32,000 crore. These are classified as High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drones and are widely used by the US military. However, delivery timelines remain long, with the first units expected no earlier than 2029 or 2030. In contrast, the indigenous MALE drones approved this month are expected to be delivered much sooner. Defence officials quoted in The Economic Times said these drones are intended to match key capabilities of the Predator while being far more cost-effective and tailored to India's unique requirements. While the Predators may offer advantages in range and satellite interoperability, India's drones will be optimised for faster integration and quicker deployment, especially along the eastern and western borders. Is India Ready To Build Armed Drones? India has already tested the waters. In January 2024, the Indian Navy and Army inducted the Drishti 10 StarLiner, a MALE drone developed through a collaboration between Adani Defence and Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems. Based on Elbit's Hermes 900 platform, the Drishti 10 can remain airborne for 36 hours, has satellite connectivity, and can carry a 450 kg payload. At the time of induction, it was reported to have 70 per cent indigenous content. The new batch of 87 drones is expected to follow a similar path, with Indian companies like HAL, Bharat Forge, L&T, Tata Advanced Systems, and Adani among the likely contenders. These projects will not only improve India's air capabilities but also help build a domestic ecosystem for high-tech military UAVs. What Else Was Cleared Under The Rs 67,000 Crore Package? The drone deal is just one part of a sweeping defence upgrade. According to ET, the DAC also cleared over 110 BrahMos air-launched missiles for the IAF's Sukhoi-30 fighters, worth around Rs 10,800 crore. The Indian Navy will receive upgraded BrahMos fire control systems and launchers for older warships, while the Barak-1 missile system will also be upgraded. The Army is set to procure thermal imager-based night sights for BMP infantry vehicles, while the Navy will acquire compact autonomous surface craft designed for anti-submarine warfare. The Air Force will benefit from specialised mountain radars and upgrades to the Israeli Spyder air defence system (called 'Saksham' in India). The package also includes long-term maintenance contracts for key platforms such as the S-400 missile system and the C-17 and C-130J aircraft fleets. Final Word top videos View all India's decision to fast-track its MALE drone programme signals a strategic pivot — from reactive acquisitions to proactive capability-building. The lessons from Operation Sindoor have underscored the need for platforms that offer persistent surveillance, precision strikes, and cross-service interoperability. With the Predator MQ-9Bs still years away, these home-built drones could become the backbone of India's ISR and strike missions in the near term. More importantly, the deal strengthens India's push for defence self-reliance not just in drones, but across a range of modern battlefield technologies. About the Author News Desk The News Desk is a team of passionate editors and writers who break and analyse the most important events unfolding in India and abroad. From live updates to exclusive reports to in-depth explainers, the Desk More Get Latest Updates on Movies, Breaking News On India, World, Live Cricket Scores, And Stock Market Updates. Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : drones india Operation Sindoor US drones view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: August 07, 2025, 10:55 IST News explainers MALE Drones: How India's New Combat UAVs Stack Up Against The US Predator Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. 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20 hours ago
- Politics
The Canadian drone industry is spinning up — with lessons from Ukraine
It's been 24 years since what is widely considered the first lethal drone strike: a Predator UAV attack on an al-Qaeda vehicle convoy in Afghanistan just nine weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The strike killed Mohammed Atef, son-in-law of Osama bin Laden and head of the group's military operations, and made clear to all that 21st century warfare was going to see a large role for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Large, expensive fixed-wing drones such as the Predator and Reaper still have their place. Canada has ordered a fleet of similar drones (new window) expected to be up and running in 2033. But the war in Ukraine has shifted the focus away from multimillion-dollar UAVs to much cheaper, smaller and sometimes disposable drones. Enlarge image (new window) Bill Blair, at the time the minister of defence, announced last year that Canada would be providing more drones to Ukraine. While those drones were built by a Dutch company, Canadian firms are developing their own products — and taking lessons from the rapidly advancing technology. Photo: The Canadian Press / Nathan Denette Like militaries around the world, the Canadian Armed Forces saw the Ukraine conflict transform from what was largely an artillery war just 18 months ago into a nightmarish contest between buzzing machines and the operators who guide them. It's revolutionizing a part of the battle space, says Royal Canadian Air Force Lt.-Col. Chris Labbé, who heads the forces' Joint Counter Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Office. You'll see different scholars or analysts talk now about the 'air littoral' — really the space between the ground and 1,000 metres in the air, maybe above that. That space used to be dominated by helicopters, said Labbé. But the Nagorno-Karabakh war (new window) , and then the war in Ukraine, have accelerated advances in drone warfare. The Canadian military is determined to keep pace with that change, he said. A cottage arms industry Nearly everything about smaller drones represents a change in direction in military thinking and industrial production. For decades, procurement has trended toward ever higher prices and longer timelines. The F-35, for example, is a weapons system so complicated and expensive that multiple countries had to buy in and invest in advance. Drones don't need giant factories with sophisticated production lines. Instead, said Tom Barton of Janes Defence in London, Ukraine has decentralized production into small workshops. Some of the ways that guys in their garages are actually streamlining 3D printing and turning out quantities of these UAVs, you wouldn't have thought was imaginable up to now, Barton said. WATCH | Drone capable of carrying an injured soldier: Début du widget . Passer le widget? Fin du widget . Retour au début du widget? He says the Russians have also farmed out 3D printing and fabricating to an army of home-based engineers. Their wide distribution makes it impossible to shut production down through bombing or missile strikes. Labbé says the Ukrainian drone-builders also experiment and share results, driving rapid improvements in surveillance and strike capabilities. The speed at which that innovation happens is absolutely blistering, he said. Labbé said that to further spur innovation, Ukraine has instituted a rewards system for front-line units whereby those who have more success receive points that they can use to buy new drone-related kit online. Throwing down a challenge The Canadian Forces would like to capture some of that same innovative energy, and to that end have issued a series of challenges to Canadian drone makers through the program Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC). The industry has noticed the change, says Philip Reece, CEO of InDro Robotics — in both the amount of money up for grabs and how quickly the government reviews submissions. They come back with some pretty well thought out questions, and then it moves through to testing first and then procurement, he said. WATCH | More about the Canadian drone industry: A challenge currently posted (new window) by ISC invites makers to submit an attritable interceptor drone, capable of attacking enemy drones from several hundred grams to several hundred kilograms that can operate from just above ground level to altitudes over 3,000 metres and reaching speeds in excess of 200 km/h. The language of the challenge invites designers to seek creative and innovative solutions for drone interception beyond contacting their target with an explosion. The Sandbox Examples of that new approach have already been tested at a site called the Sandbox in Suffield, Alta., including a successful test of a directed energy weapon that caused a target drone to burst into bright green flames in mid-air and crash to the ground. Another interceptor drone tested at the Sandbox hovered above its target and dropped a net, ensnaring the propellers of the target drone. Another area of furious research and development inspired by the Ukraine war is the command and control of UAVs in a battlespace where radio and even GPS signals are easily jammed. Enlarge image (new window) A Ukrainian interceptor FPV drone is seen in July. Photo: Reuters / Valentyn Ogirenko The Russians were the first to realize that they could defeat jamming by attaching spools of fibre optic cable to their drones. Command signals travel along that hair-thin filament, rather than through the air where they can be jammed. Ukraine recently flew a drone with a 50-kilometre-long fibre optic spool. Those innovations in turn drove innovation in the counter-drone world, said Reece. Now they're doing more kinetic response, he said. Radio and GPS jamming just doesn't cut it anymore when you've got a drone that's got fibre optics. So that's definitely been moving forward very fast. Air, land and sea Canadian drone development is not confined to the air. The navy adapted its Hammerhead naval gunnery targets to create an explosive-laden marine attack drone (new window) . It was tested successfully (and explosively) last month. Labbé says Ukrainian drone and anti-ship missile operations in the Black Sea are an incredible achievement that speaks highly of the potential of uncrewed systems. WATCH | Navy tests marine attack drone: Début du widget . Passer le widget? Fin du widget . Retour au début du widget? He says a current interest is in the area of mid-sized aerial drones, weighing hundreds of kilograms, that can evacuate a casualty on a stretcher or supply forward troops from rear areas. And Reece said his company is experimenting with land-based drones that can move faster than a car and work with air-based drones for reconnaissance. They can also go ahead and set up mesh networks, so secure communications that can't be hacked can be moved forward, he said. One of the advantages of drones is that they often cost a lot less than their targets — acting as a battlefield equalizer against opponents with greater strength in vehicles, aircraft and vessels. Barton said drones in Ukraine have been used to knock out elements of expensive Russian air defence systems, and that a well-equipped drone force with sufficient skilled operators would make even the strongest opponent hesitate to launch an armoured attack. He said that for a country like Canada with vast borders to defend, drones are potentially a great solution. Canadian drones for Europe? Drones could also offer a way into European defence procurement agreements that Canada would like to access, if Canada can develop an industry that produces drones desirable for European militaries. Now is the inflection point between drones and robots and AI, said Reece. Canada knows we are. You can see by all of the responses, commercial and government, that now is the time to move forward. Reece says Canada is in a strong position partly because Transport Canada has been ahead of most national regulators in recognizing the potential of the industry and creating conditions permissive enough to allow drone use to flourish. We've got the skills here, we've got the know-how and we've certainly got the need, he said. So if we're already ahead in drones and robots and we can keep pace with AI, putting those together definitely makes us an international powerhouse. Evan Dyer (new window) · CBC News · Senior Reporter Evan Dyer has been a journalist with CBC for 25 years, after an early career as a freelancer in Argentina. He works in the Parliamentary Bureau and can be reached at
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
MoD clears big arms deals, including BrahMos, armed drones, worth Rs 67,000cr
NEW DELHI: The defence ministry on Tuesday gave the initial nod for the procurement of 87 new heavy-duty armed drones and over 110 more air-launched BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, which IAF used as the primary weapon to strike Pakistani airbases and radar sites in May, among several modernisation proposals collectively worth Rs 67,000 crore. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The acceptance of necessity (AoN) granted by the Rajnath Singh-led Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) for the 87 armed medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) remotely-piloted aircraft will see an Indian company tying up with a foreign one to produce the drones with "an indigenous content of 60%". "The need for such MALE drones, armed with air-to-ground missiles and laser-guided bombs as well as capable of operating at long ranges, was acutely felt for the three services during Operation Sindoor," a senior official told TOI. Armed forces hope to induct 87 new MALE drones, which are faster than 'Predator' HALE The 87 drones, with ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and weapon-carrying capability, will cost around Rs 20,000 crore. Another Rs 11,000 crore will be for logistical and other support by the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) for 10 years," the senior official added. India, of course, had used Israeli-origin Harop and Harpy kamikaze drones, which act as cruise missiles by exploding into enemy assets and radars, to hit targets deep inside Pakistan during the May 7-10 hostilities. The armed forces hope to induct the 87 new MALE drones, which return to their bases after strike missions, faster than the 31-armed MQ-9B 'Predator' HALE (high-altitude, long endurance) drones ordered from the US for Rs 32,350 crore in Oct last year, which will be delivered only in the 2029-30 timeframe. The over 110 air-launched BrahMos missiles, which are jointly manufactured by India and Russia, in turn, will cost around Rs 10,800 crore. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now These 450-km range missiles, which fly almost three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8, combined with Sukhoi-30MKI fighters, with a combat radius of about 1,500-km, constitute a deadly weapons package, as was witnessed during Operation Sindoor. The DAC also accorded AoN for eight BrahMos fire control systems and vertical launchers for older Indian warships for Rs 650 crore. Around 20 frontline warships, including the latest destroyers and frigates, are already armed with the BrahMos missiles. In March last year, the defence ministry had inked a Rs 19,519 crore deal for procurement of over 220 BrahMos missiles for frontline warships with the Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace. The total value of deals inked for BrahMos has crossed Rs 58,000 crore over the years, with the missiles becoming the "prime conventional (non-nuclear) precision strike weapons" for the armed forces. For the Army, the DAC gave the nod for new thermal imager-based driver night-sights for infantry combat vehicles (BMPs). "This would provide higher mobility and operational advantage," another official said.
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
'Alien: Earth' Reinvigorates a Flagging Franchise
A spacecraft hurtling through the cosmos. An indomitable female lead. Armed crew members creeping through dim, claustrophobic hallways where death could be lurking around any corner. A hostile alien that looks like a giant, bullet-headed scorpion in fetish gear and bleeds acid the color and consistency of infected snot. That ominous drip of extraterrestrial drool. These are the hallmarks of the Alien franchise, which have remained mostly consistent across the seven movies (plus two vacuous Alien vs. Predator crossovers) that have kept those terrifying Xenomorphs coming back to our screens every decade since the original premiered in 1979. Yet Alien has always been an elastic property. In 1986, James Cameron followed up Ridley Scott's minimal work of cosmic horror with Aliens, an action spectacle for a maximalist era. Hero Ellen Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) lonely fight for survival gave way to a military mission to vanquish aliens ravaging a human colony; Cameron filled the frame with cocky Marines, boxy space tanks, and an adorable orphan who finds in Ripley a surrogate mother. Both films rank among the best in their respective genres. Subsequent features haven't been nearly as successful. In the '90s, David Fincher (Alien 3) and Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Alien Resurrection), working from a script by Joss Whedon, mishandled the intellectual property. Even Scott's intriguing but convoluted 2010s origin stories and 2024's adequate Alien: Romulus (soon to be followed by a sequel of its own) do little to dispel the impression that the franchise's heyday ended 39 years ago. Especially in light of this history, FX's fantastic Alien: Earth—a prequel to Scott's movie that is also the first live-action Alien series—is a remarkable achievement. But I wouldn't call it a surprise. With ambitious small-screen takes on the Coen brothers masterpiece Fargo and the Marvel superhero Legion under his belt, the show's creator, Noah Hawley, has built a reputation on reinvigorating hard-to-adapt IP in series fueled by profound insight into what makes a decades-old story relevant now. In the case of Earth, premiering Aug. 12, the subjects of artificial intelligence and corporate overreach provide more than enough fodder for cerebral sci-fi horror grounded in the anxieties of 2025. Set in 2120, two years before Scott's Alien, Earth opens with parallel storylines. In space, the crew of the Maginot (whose name forebodingly references France's expensive but futile World War II Nazi defense) awakens from years of cryogenic slumber in preparation for a return to Earth. Their precious cargo, to be delivered to the franchise's canonical evil megacorp, Weyland-Yutani, is a menagerie of novel life forms, including some familiar-looking eggs. Of course, things go sideways. The creatures kill everyone except cutthroat security officer Morrow (Babou Ceesay), a cyborg. Meanwhile, on a terrestrial island called Neverland, trillionaire wunderkind Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) is using a secret technology he developed to transfer the consciousnesses of terminally ill children into synthetic, superhuman, theoretically immortal humanoid bodies. The first of these hybrids, our Ripley surrogate, christens herself Wendy (Sydney Chandler); in keeping with the Peter Pan theme, the kids she shepherds through the process will be named for Lost Boys. These plots literally collide when the Maginot falls to Earth, crash-landing in a city controlled by Kavalier's upstart company, Prodigy. (Viewers who remember the '90s may have intrusive thoughts of an AOL alternative with the same name.) Along with the many casualties, the accident has geopolitical as well as business implications. In the show's timeline, the world is ruled by a tenuous alliance of five massive companies, of which Yutani and Prodigy are two. Their rivalry in the race to immortality will ultimately decide the fate of the universe. A 22nd century disrupter in the mold of Uber or Airbnb, Prodigy is all-in on hybrids. Yutani may be plundering the wildlife of far-off planets in hopes they possess the secret to eternal life. Hawley uses this setup to reestablish the atmosphere Alien fans have come to expect: the tight corridors, the jump-scare attacks, the gross creatures, even the alien drool. Aesthetics have always been paramount to the franchise, particularly in Scott's movies; cybergoth artist H.R. Giger was famously instrumental in designing the look of the original, including the Xenomorph itself. Earth features similarly murky visuals and fearsome monsters, many original to the show. Just as eerie is its sound design, which evocatively captures, for instance, the squish of a scalpel slicing through alien flesh. Yet after a riveting first half of the premiere, too many slow-burn action and horror sequences all but arrest the development of the plot and characters until Episode 3. But the fourth episode is a revelation. Enthralling in its setup of a war between two psychopathic corporations that doubles as a battle for control of Earth, it's also rich with insight into the peculiar interiority of Wendy and the Lost Boys—who look like adults but see the world as kids, express emotions but reside in robotic bodies physically and mentally enhanced beyond the capacity of any mortal. ('What makes them geniuses is the fact that they're children,' Kavalier, now a young adult, theorizes. 'Because children have access to a world of infinite imagination.') Are they humans, robots, or both? 'We took the minds of children and put them in synthetic bodies,' a scientist overseeing the project, Arthur (David Rhysdahl), frets to his wife and colleague, Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis). 'If we did this wrong, we got a bunch of AIs running around thinking they're human. Worst case? We killed six kids.' From there, like a spaceship fleeing to the safety of its home solar system, Earth is firing on all cylinders: narrative, stylistic, psychological, philosophical. 'Science fiction has one main question,' Hawley argued in a recent interview, 'And that question is whether humanity deserves to survive—in all these stories of the first contact or going out into the universe and meeting species that are either smarter than us or more deadly than us.' This dilemma consumes what might be the most internationally influential sci-fi work of the current century, Chinese author Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, which Netflix adapted last year as an English-language series. Even the new Superman movie flirts with the idea that our fractious species might be improved by an infusion of alien seed into the gene pool. As the climate crisis escalates, as deaths keep mounting in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, as authoritarianism trends, it's not hard to see why storytellers are framing the prospect of extraterrestrials annihilating—or fundamentally altering—humanity as a potentially positive outcome for the planet, if not the universe. In Earth, that questioning takes the form of Hawley's critique of hypercapitalism and ambivalence toward AI. The Five, as the ruling syndicate is called, exerts unchecked financial and legal power over Earth's population. When Wendy's human brother Hermit (Alex Lawther), a Prodigy technical officer and medic, appeals to the company to release him from his contract so he can fulfill his dream of attending medical school, a synthetic arbitrator coldly rejects his request. Conceived before Donald Trump's return to Washington but rife with resonance about Elon Musk's stint there, the scene illustrates the dehumanizing potential of AI-abetted corporate supremacy. What, you may ask, does this all have to do with aliens? Well, you can't spell alien without AI; androids have always been part of the franchise, though the timely anxiety about human-synthetic hybrids is new. In Earth, the two are more thematically linked than ever. Both are superintelligent, lethal, existential threats to humanity—for which humanity has no one to blame but itself. Though one is a human innovation and the other hails from a distant world, neither would've posed a danger had greedy tech barons not released them from the Pandora's box of scientific progress. Some of the series' most subtly chilling scenes show aliens manipulating their captors with the ease of a person commanding a well-trained dog. So it makes sense that Wendy, who is at first fixated on reuniting with Hermit, comes to wonder whether she might feel more of an affinity with the specimens in the lab. By reframing aliens as a mirror of and metaphor for AI, while calling back to Aliens' villain, a murderously self-interested Weyland-Yutani employee (played by Paul Reiser as the archetypal '80s yuppie), Earth preserves the franchise's best tropes but also expands and updates its palette of ideas. Hawley has described his exploration of 'humanity and the terrible things that we do to each other' as a form of 'moral horror' layered beneath the 'body horror or creature horror.' The latter are still very much present, in new iterations of the movies' perennial pregnancy ick; one of the best episodes of the season could stand alone as a mini Alien feature. But it's the moral horror that makes Earth more than another goopy interplanetary melee. Hawley worked from a similar playbook with Legion, whose apparently schizophrenic superhero filtered a fast-evolving cultural conversation around mental illness through a psychedelic kaleidoscope, and especially Fargo. A quirky, darkly comedic crime anthology set, like the film, in a snowy Midwest, Fargo has cannily applied the Coens' good-vs.-evil framework to discourse around such fraught topics as gender and race. Hawley places infinite trust in his audience's intelligence and patience. Occasionally, as in the obscurity of Legion's later episodes or the plodding pace of some Fargo plots, this approach can verge on self-indulgence. But mostly, at a time when some streamers tailor their programs to avoid confusing viewers glued to their phones, it's refreshing to watch TV that treats you like an adult. Fargo's most haunting image comes at the very end of Season 3, written around the time of the 2016 election. An avatar for good and an embodiment of evil sit face-to-face, locked in an eternal clash of wills. 'There is a sense to which this year's Fargo is really a mirror reflecting our reality back to us at this moment in time, but we don't know how it's gonna end,' Hawley said when it aired. If that show suggests he's a moralist—one caught between optimism and pessimism about not just whether humanity will prevail, but about whether we should—Alien: Earth confirms it. And in this four-way staring contest that pits people against corporations, AI, and aliens, the permeable mammalian eye faces stiff competition indeed.
Epoch Times
7 days ago
- Politics
- Epoch Times
California Representatives Seek to Curb Federal Surveillance Drone Powers
U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill to restrict federal law enforcement's deployment of military drones for the purpose of recording public demonstrations. The bill, HR 4759, comes after reports that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used reconnaissance drones similar to the Predator drones used in the military to monitor recent protests against immigration enforcement operations in downtown Los Angeles.
