Author: FlyMarshall Newsroom

 LODD Autonomous has completed the first flight of Hili, a new hybrid vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) cargo aircraft designed, built, and tested in Abu Dhabi. The milestone, announced on November 13, 2025, took place at the company’s flight-test facility at Emirates Falcon Aviation in Al Ain as part of Abu Dhabi Autonomous Week.  The flight is being described by LODD as a major step forward for the UAE’s ambitions in autonomous aviation and advanced logistics. Hili is the country’s first hybrid heavy-cargo UAV and represents the most significant demonstration to date of the UAE’s efforts to develop homegrown aerospace systems, the company said.  The aircraft was developed through what LODD says was…

Joby Aviation and L3Harris Technologies said Wednesday they have conducted their first test flight of an autonomous hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, which they hope to sell to the Defense Department to use operationally.The electrically powered VTOL builds on Joby’s previous experiments with a fully electric “air taxi” aircraft, which it delivered to the Air Force for testing in September 2023, the company said in a statement. The flight, which took place Friday at Joby’s facility in Marina, California, comes three months after Joby announced it was teaming up with L3Harris to develop the aircraft. Joby said that L3Harris…

In police departments across the United States, shelves are filling with recovered drones — seized near airports, prisons, power stations, and border crossings. Many hold encrypted logs or damaged memory cards, leaving investigators facing a familiar dead end: a drone in evidence, but no way to prove who flew it or what it was doing. Now, SkySafe, a San Diego-based developer of drone-detection and airspace-intelligence technologies, is launching a new investigative capability designed to help law enforcement agencies and security organizations determine who operated a drone during an incident and build cases that hold up in court. The cloud-based forensics…

In the world of commercial aviation, the terms narrowbody and widebody describe more than just the shape of an aircraft; they define its mission, its power needs, and even the engines that make it fly. From the more compact Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families to the larger Boeing 777 and Airbus A350, the contrast between narrow and wide fuselages has profound implications for engine design, fuel efficiency, and operational economics. At the heart of this distinction are the engines themselves. Widebody aircraft rely on some of the most powerful turbofan engines ever built, each one capable of producing anywhere…

The Super Tucano, using laser-guided rockets and guns, would add a cheaper counter-drone capability to counter asymmetric threats. Brazil’s Embraer has pitched a counter-UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) mission capability for its famous A-29 Super Tucano single-engine turboprop aircraft. Reflecting the current trend of proliferating cheap drones becoming disruptive asymmetric weapons, used by both conventional militaries and non-state actors alike, Embraer said on Nov. 11, 2025, that it is expanding the A-29’s “mission portfolio to counter modern unmanned threats effectively and affordably.” Both commercial and battlespace developments world over, including the South American continent, are motivating the effort. August saw narcotics…

IAE International Aero Engines (IAE) has reaffirmed the partnership between JAEC, MTU Aero Engines and Pratt & Whitney in what amounts to an early public bid to keep the geared turbofan (GTF) architecture at the center of the next-generation single-aisle market.  The announcement comes as Pratt & Whitney continues to work through reliability issues affecting the in-service GTF fleet, while airframers, including Airbus, study propulsion options for the successor to the A320 family.  Positioning ahead of long-term decisions  Although the joint statement does not mention Airbus, the timing is deliberate. Engine makers are already maneuvering for future narrowbody programs, where…

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian President Gustavo Petro ordered his nation’s security forces Tuesday to stop sharing intelligence with the United States, until the Trump administration stops its strikes on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean, as relations deteriorate between the nations that were once close partners in the fight against drug trafficking.In a message on X, Petro wrote that Colombia’s military must immediately end “communications and other agreements with U.S. security agencies” until the U.S. ceases its attacks on speedboats suspected of carrying drugs, that critics have likened to extrajudicial executions.Petro wrote that “the fight against drugs must be subordinated…

Vietnam Airlines has adopted Lido Flight 4D, the next-generation flight planning system developed by Lufthansa Systems. Lido Flight 4D helps airlines improve their operational efficiency and safety, integrating various modes of data to calculate optimal routes. The Vietnamese carrier is a loyal user of other Lufthansa Systems products, including its Lido mPilot, Lido FMS, and Lido AMDB solutions. With its optimized flight planning solution, Vietnam Airlines anticipates strengthening its operational performance in several key areas, such as fuel efficiency, emission reductions and on-time performance (OTP). Vietnam Airlines Integrates Lido Flight 4D Flight Planner Credit: Wikimedia Commons The airline becomes the latest…

Over time, we’ve increasingly seen Apple roll out the concept of Digital ID, whereby you can create an ID in your Apple Wallet. Up until now, that was limited to driver’s licenses from a limited number of states, but this has now been expanded in a significant way. You can now add your US passport to Apple’s Digital ID It’s now possible to load information from your United States passport into Apple’s Digital ID, and then present that via your iPhone or Apple Watch to clear security at US airports. At launch, Digital ID is accepted at TSA checkpoints at…

Defense companies EDGE Group and Anduril Industries plan to combine their knowledge and expertise to build a series of next generation autonomous systems, including Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV). On November 13, 2025, Abu Dhabi-based EDGE and US-owned Anduril unveiled the EDGE-Anduril Production Alliance to accelerate the design, development, and production of autonomous systems to support civil and defense mission sets in the Middle East and surrounding regions. The parties are in the process of finalizing the detailed arrangements but have confirmed that the organization will be based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two firms will first collaborate on…