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Estonian Startup Frankenburg Technologies Unveils Revolutionary Mini-Missile to Combat Drone Threats in Ukraine
5 Jan, 2025 - 10:48
Estonian defense startup Frankenburg Technologies is making significant strides in addressing one of the most pressing challenges in modern warfare: the growing threat of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Their innovative Mini Missile, with the Mark 1 version expected to undergo testing in Ukraine in 2025, provides a cost-effective and scalable solution to neutralize drone threats, particularly those posed by Iranian-made Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 drones, which Russian forces have extensively used.
The Frankenburg Technologies Mini Missile is a cutting-edge air defense missile that features an advanced artificial intelligence-driven targeting system.
This system enables the missile to offer real-time situational awareness, allowing it to precisely detect, track, and neutralize UAV threats.
The missile is designed to engage drones operating at altitudes of up to 2 kilometers, which is well within the flight range of Shahed drones that have been deployed by Russian forces under the names Geran-1 and Geran-2.
The AI-powered technology behind the Mini Missile makes it a highly effective solution for Ukraine's ongoing struggle to defend against drone strikes, providing a significant advantage over more traditional countermeasures.
A key selling point of the Frankenburg Mini Missile is its affordability. Traditional air defense systems often come with prohibitively high costs, but Frankenburg has set out to make its missile ten times more affordable than conventional alternatives.
In addition to cost-efficiency, the missile is designed to be produced at a rapid pace, with initial production planned to yield several dozen units per week. This capacity is expected to scale up to hundreds of missiles per week by the third quarter of 2024.
The company’s focus on speed and affordability aims to ensure that Ukraine, along with other nations, has access to a reliable and cost-effective air defense solution in the face of modern drone warfare.
Frankenburg Technologies has already secured agreements with Ukrainian authorities to begin testing the Mark 1 version of the Mini Missile in 2025.
The Mark 1 version is expected to provide a cost-effective and scalable solution to neutralize drone threats, particularly those posed by Russian-deployed Shahed drones.
If the tests prove successful, production of the missile could be established in Ukraine, creating a sustainable supply chain for the country's defense forces.
This partnership not only addresses Ukraine’s immediate defense needs but also holds the potential to strengthen its defense industry infrastructure over the long term.
As Frankenburg ramps up production, their focus will not only be on meeting Ukraine’s needs but also on positioning the missile as a strategic asset in the global defense market.
The leadership of Frankenburg Technologies, which includes several prominent figures from the Estonian defense and technology sectors, further bolsters the credibility of the company's efforts.
The firm’s founders and advisors include former military officials and experts with significant experience in defense innovation.
This robust leadership is one of the key factors that has attracted attention to the company, positioning Frankenburg as one of the most talked-about defense startups in Europe.
Their focus on producing low-cost, rapid-response anti-drone missiles using precision targeting software aligns with broader trends in the defense industry, where smaller nations and startups are increasingly filling gaps left by larger, slower-moving defense contractors.
The Mini Missile is not just a tactical development for Ukraine; it represents a broader shift in the way defense technology is being approached.
By focusing on affordability, speed, and technological innovation, Frankenburg Technologies is helping to shape the future of air defense systems.
As the need for efficient and scalable counter-drone solutions continues to grow globally, the Mini Missile could become a key asset for countries looking to bolster their defenses against the evolving threats posed by UAVs.
If the Mini Missile lives up to its promise during testing, it could revolutionize the way nations approach air defense and counter-drone strategies.
With its AI-driven targeting, affordability, and rapid production capabilities, the Mini Missile has the potential to reshape the air defense landscape.
https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/exclusive-estonian-startup-frankenburg-technologies-unveils-revolutionary-mini-missile-to-combat-drone-threats-in-ukraine
UFO-like electric flying vehicle could be the next Uber
January 5, 2025
Shaped like a flying saucer, it looks more like a UFO than your next Uber.
But this sci-fi style vehicle is in fact the latest in line of electric aircraft set to take to the skies over the next decade.
The fully autonomous ‘Invo Moon’ offers up to three passengers a 360-degree panorama above and below as it travels at speeds of up to 250mph.
Crucially, it has been designed to be near silent, using a flight system hidden inside its shell rather than relying on noisy exposed propellers like many of its competitors.
The £280,000 aircraft - which is the same size and weight of a small family car - will be able to move in any direction, similar to a handheld drone.
Inventor Leo Kayali, a former Tesla engineer, told the Daily Mail the design was inspired by the drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci over five centuries ago.
The aim is to have it certified by the US aviation authority by 2027 and to launch in ‘all major cities including London’ by the end of the decade.
He said future owners could even have it running as an Uber while they weren’t using it and ‘make money while sitting at home’.
The government last year announced it expected flying taxis to be ‘routinely’ whizzing around British skies by 2028 - and potentially operating without a pilot by 2030.
Ministers set out ambitious plans to overhaul current regulations and infrastructure, with the technology expected to boost the UK by £45bn by the end of the decade.
The Invo Moon - which is 16ft in diameter and weighs 2,500lb and - can be pre-ordered for £2,000 and will ultimately cost around £280,000 on delivery.
However Mr Kayali believes the vehicles - which he said should be cheap to build when mass produced - could be sold for under £50,000 in the future.
While most electric flying vehicles rely on exposed propellors, the Invo Moon keeps everything within the aluminium frame.
The vehicle uses a complex new aerodynamic design in which a dozen motors, all containing spinning spheres, are positioned in a circle around the side of the vehicle.
Using these motors in groups of four at a time, it can move in any direction 360 degrees, meaning it has no front or back. To land, it extends three retractable legs.
Mr Kayali said this means there is very little vibration, so the machine will emit no more than 45 decibels as it travels - about as noisy as the patter of light rain.
Most other eVTOLs run at about 85 decibels, equivalent to the sound of a blender, and also create a lot of unnecessary excess wind, he said.
Inside the cabin, there are three rotating and fully reclinable heated seats which offer views out the top and the bottom through the plexiglass windows.
The “luxury” vehicle will also feature mood lighting, an ice machine, and smart TVs.
It has a range up to 300 miles, and takes no more than 30 minutes to charge from 20 per cent to 80 per cent, Mr Kayali claims.
While the design might seem futuristic, it is in fact based on concepts first invented by Da Vinci in the 1480s.
The exterior is inspired by the Italian artist’s ‘Armoured Car’ drawings, while the internal flying mechanism is a new interpretation of his ‘aerial screw’ design, considered a precursor of the helicopter.
The driving itself is autonomous and has been designed to follow a three-lane system similar to a motorway - but rising vertically.
The speed limit increases as each level goes up - from 100mph to 250mph - and it can only land once it is back in the slowest lane.
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/ufo-like-electric-flying-vehicle-could-be-the-next-uber/ar-AA1x0FhA
https://invostation.com/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32247016/inside-abandoned-ufo-capital-of-australia/
OUT OF THIS WORLD Inside abandoned ‘UFO capital of Australia’ with crumbling ‘galaxy theatre’ and decapitated alien statues
Updated: 7:57, 5 Jan 2025
ON a remote desert highway in Australia, visitors have reported years of bizarre sightings and experiences.
The Wycliffe Well Roadhouse sits between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek - and it is here where drivers claim to have been chased off the road by an unknown force.
The roadhouse on the Stuart Highway was built in 1872 and has been plagued by unusual goings-on for decades - with visitors reporting bizarre sightings since World War Two.
Now, it is said to be the fifth best place in the world to see UFOs.
Even the Royal Australian Air Force has launched investigations into incidents reported there.
Wycliffe' Well's brochure tells visitors: "UFO sightings are so common, that if you stayed up all night looking, you would be considered unlucky not to see anything, rather than lucky to see something."
In 2021, one witness recalled her experience within hours of arriving at the roadhouse's caravan park.
Tamzen Hayes and her friend Lucy were busy playing cards when they "saw something unexplainable."
Writing for travel site Escape she said: "That's when we saw it. A strange oval-shaped ship gliding away into the sunset like the cowboy at the end of a western.
"We could only stare, frozen and slack-jawed as it disappeared. "I swear we saw something unexplainable in the sky that night."
In 1985 the rest stop was transformed by Australian sailor and UFO fanatic Lew Farkas who wanted to do more with the area's alien history.
Farkas, who owned Wycliffe for 25 years before retiring spoke to Vice about his out-of-this-world creation, where he explained that he arrived at the site in 1985 to conduct a "five-year experiment."
The entrepreneur hoped to make Wycliffe a true tourist destination and a mecca for UFO lovers.
In the 1860s, Wycliffe Well was a popular rest stop for the Overland Telegraph Line and later provided soldiers in the Second World War a place to rest and refuel.
During this time, people reported seeing a lot of unusual activity in the sky, with soldiers making note of almost constant UFO sightings.
When the war was over, people continued to visit the area and report unusual activity which eventually saw Farkas invest over AUS 4 million (£1.9 million) into the site before he retired in 2010.
It started with a mural based on a UFO sighting in the area that saw tourists come to take pictures as a "memento" of the spot, he told Vice.
"We started converting everything—every wall, every bit of space in the area—to do with space, to do with aliens, to do with UFOs. It got famous very quickly and it put Wycliffe Well on the world map."
Farkas installed a gas station, a bar, lodging, a store, a camping ground and even a fishing lake to get alien hunters and others visiting the site.
He constructed a Galaxy Auditorium which was a 300-seat restaurant with a stage for shows, got a tourist train that went around a Barramundi-filled lake, and conducted at-night alien and UFO tours.
For those desperate to catch a glimpse of the extraterrestrial, he installed a viewing platform called Mount Wycliffe where people could stand to get a better view of UFOs.
"Every aspect of Wycliffe Well had to become alien-orientated or space-orientated," he told ABC.
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UNEXPLAINABLE
From the minute he arrived at the site, Farkas knew there was something special about it.
Talking to Vice he recalled that "there were lights flashing around the sky doing crazy manoeuvres that you just couldn't explain."
Farkas said that during his ownership of the site, there were hundreds of reported sightings which had varying impacts on customers.
"On a lot of occasions people were getting chased down the highway by lights," he explained.
"They would pull up and be panicking so much that they would say, 'Quick give us a room, we can’t stay out there.'
"So that was good for business… It chased people away at times, but it brought customers in too."
Some of the tales were so terrifying that guests at Wycliffe would want to "release their burdens" which saw Farkas install diaries at the counter to let visitors recount their alien experiences.
Farkas recalled that some guests claimed they saw aliens in the desert.
Anthony Vanderzalm who took over the site from Farkas in 2010 has said that groups of visitors have claimed to have been lured outside to witness odd activity which left him stunned.
He told Journal News: "I don’t know what I was thinking when I arrived. My mind was boggling.
"There’s been four of five occasions when all the people out of the restaurant have gone out and observed something very unusual.
"It’s never the same twice. All types of different lights, changing direction, and colourful."
If you drive to Wycliffe Well today, you will be met with a sign reading "Caution proceed with care UFO landing site ahead."
But, it is then abundantly clear that the rest stop has been abandoned though perhaps not by all forms of life.
Now, it has decapitated alien statues, an abandoned train, and a crumbling galaxy theatre.
Vanderszalm ended up selling the business to a petrol company which has seen the site fall to the hands of vandals.
Now, the abandoned site looks like a bizarre, derelict theme park with faded murals, broken flying saucers and masses of forgotten alien memorabilia.
Devastating flooding in 2022 forced the business to move out and no one has been back since other than those who wish to destroy what is left.
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Documentary brings UFOs to a CLOSE ENCOUNTER Part 1
Jan 4, 2025
Former Minot AFB officer remembers UFO sighting in ‘66
A former Minot Air Force Base Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch officer will never forget an incident in 1966 when military personnel in the Minot missile field reported a large object hovering near a launch control center.
All 10 of the nuclear-tipped missiles controlled at the launch control center went off alert, causing them to be unlaunchable.
David Schindele, a retired Air Force captain from Mukiliteo, Washington, is included in the new documentary, “UFOs Are Monitoring Nuclear Weapons GLOBALLY.”
The documentary, narrated by Jesse Michels, was released on YouTube several days ago.
It reports on the recent drones and mysterious flying objects being sighted over New Jersey and other areas in the country and some of the past sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs)/unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) by military members.
In an interview in the documentary, Schindele said when he arrived at the Minot missile field launch control center near Mohall the next morning for duty he was met at the door by the site manager who indicated with his hands how big the object was they had seen during the night and that it had flashing lights.
Schindele said based on the site manager’s gesture of its size with his outstretched arms, he (Schindele) estimated it might have been 80-100 feet wide according to the site manager’s description and it was probably about 100 feet away from the facility.
Another interview by Robert Hastings, a ufologist, author and filmmaker, with the late David Schuur, a missile officer on duty in the underground capsule at the Minot launch control center the night the incident occurred, is included in the documentary.
Eight military members topside at the launch control facility observed the mysterious flying object with bright flashing lights hovering near the perimeter fence, according to earlier stories about Schindele published in The Minot Daily News.
Schindele and others who were at the launch control center the night of the incident or knew about the 1966 incident were told by the Air Force to never talk about it and that it never happened, according to Schindele.
The Minot Daily News wrote a story about an incident in the Minot missile field that ran on the front page on Dec. 6, 1966, with the headline, “Minot Launch Control Center ‘Saucer’ Cited As One Indication Of Outer Space Visitors.”
“You (Minot Daily News) actually wrote it up but the other media had no interest in it. They were not going to touch it. The rest of the entire world media did nothing.
So The Minot Daily News has a historical place in this,” Steve Bassett, UFO lobbyist and executive director of Paradigm Research Center, said in an interview with The Minot Daily News on Dec. 26, 2024.
Schindele also said he remembers The Minot Daily News story about another 1966 incident. For 40 or more years, Schindele never spoke about the 1966 incident he was involved with in the Minot missile field.
Searching online, he came across Robert Salas, another former Air Force missile officer who was involved in a similar incident at Malmstrom AFB, Montana, missile field in March 1967. Schindele was relieved to find someone talking about the incidents.
Schindele wrote a book, “It Never Happened, Volume 1: U.S. Air Force UFO Cover-up Revealed,” a six-and-a-half-year project published in 2017. He is working on a second volume and hopes to have it published in 2026.
In May 2013, Schindele was among military veterans involved in UFO incidents who spoke at a mock congressional hearing, “Citizens Hearing on UFO Disclosure,” presented by Bassett at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
David C. Scott, a retired Air Force sergeant who witnessed an incident believed to be a UFO in November 1974 in the Minot missile field, also testified at that hearing.
The hearing, “UFOs-Nuclear Tampering,” can be viewed on YouTube.
Bassett and the Paradigm Research Group are working to bring about a congressional hearing or hearings to include UFO/UAP witnesses.
Because of the recent interest in drones/mysterious flying objects across the country, Bassett believes a hearing may come about within a relatively short time.
https://www.minotdailynews.com/news/local-news/2025/01/dolphins-tagovailoa-unlikely-to-play-sunday-against-jets-huntley-in-line-for-2nd-straight-start/
UFOs-Nuclear Tampering parts 1 and 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu3FlK-mI0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atgBfT5-vg0
https://www.minotdailynews.com/news/local-news/2025/01/ufo-lobbyist-urges-government-to-explain-recent-drone-sightings/
https://paradigmresearchgroup.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzvwBBSmWYA
https://x.com/alchemyamerican
Part 2
UFO lobbyist urges government to explain recent drone sightings
Jan 6, 2025
Drones have been swarming military facilities and around U.S. ships for a year or two and in all cases they were never shot down, Steve Bassett, a UFO lobbyist and executive director of the Paradigm Research Group, told The Minot Daily News in a Dec. 26, 2024, interview.
Because of all the recent sightings of mysterious drones in the U.S. and also in the United Kingdom, Bassett said, “People are filming them with their cameras and these films are turning up online.
The government is getting hard questions and the best that the U.S. government has been able to do in several interviews with the press is that it’s not ours, it’s not a foreign adversary or another nation and we don’t know what it is.
“Now this is ridiculous,” Bassett said. He said any swarms of objects like that around U.S. warships would be shot down and every effort would be made to bring them down if any of these objects were over military bases.
“But it would be a huge, huge national security matter. We know that they’re not shooting them down; they’re not capturing them,” he said.
He said people are seeing what obviously are drones.
“But there’s a huge amount of other stuff up there which are not drones,” he said.
“The only conclusion that makes sense is that this is a UFO (unidentified flying object) flap. There have been a number of these (flaps) over the last 70 years.
There’s a lot of sightings, a lot of stuff in the area even nationally and then it goes away,” he said. “This is the biggest one ever. It’s been going on for at least two years.”
He continued, “I believe what is going on is that the nonhumans – or whatever you want to call them. I call them extraterrestrials – are putting on a helluva display.
They are swarming around sensitive facilities and the reason they are doing that is not to attack those facilities but to get the maximum attention. They are doing this for a reason and the government is helpless.
There’s nothing it can do about it.”
Bassett maintains the government knows that they’re nonhuman.
“They absolutely know that these are not human craft, human-made craft, whatever,” he said.
“But what do you do? They can’t ignore it. They have to answer the questions and the best they’ve been able to do is they’re not ours, they’re not another counties, they’re not a threat and they’re not shooting them down,” he said.
Bassett said he believes the military is launching its own drones up into these events so people do see drones.
“They’re masking the nonhuman part of this by at least adding the human part so people will see that and then they can just call it a drone swarm and not have to face the ultimate question is what are those things up there that aren’t drones?” he said.
“This is the only thing that explains what is happening within the standard logic that one can imply and the government is in an impossible position and if the nonhuman craft up there continue and continue to do this activity, the government is going to have to finally acknowledge that we are not alone.
That’s what I think is going on,” Bassett said.
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Nuclear weapons shutdown witnesses
He went on, “Now the reason I think this is interesting for Minot is that, of course, this has made it much easier to get the nuclear weapons shutdown witnesses and other related witnesses to the attention of Congress.”
Bassett said it’s very likely the next hearing will include the nuclear weapons shutdown witnesses. He said the witnesses to nuclear ICBM shutdown events have been trying to get in front of a hearing in Congress for many years but have been ignored.
“That’s really going to bring those cases really back into the world and people will learn about what happened 60 years ago,” Bassett said.
He said some of the witnesses have been reluctant to speak about the incidents because it wasn’t a good situation.
“But the situation is obviously changing so I think that we may see several more be willing to come forward once we have the formal hearing process,” he said.
Bassett said he has said in hundreds of interviews that the shutdown of ICBMs by these entities is the single most important thing known about them.
“This is a big, big deal,” he said.
“We were hoping that mock hearing in 2013 would help lead to real hearings” He said it provided some help but it took several more years before a hearing finally took place.
When another congressional hearing is held, David Schindele, a former Minot Air Force Base missile officer who was involved in a UFO incident that occurred in the Minot missile field in 1966, said he would “definitely testify before Congress when I’m called to do so.”
“As far as Trump, there’s a very good possibility that he’s going to seize this, based upon what I’ve been reading in the news and other statements.
He may jump on this early. We could see this break in the first 30 to 60 days of the Trump administration.
We could have hearings that may come forward or he may just come forward on his own because he’s Donald Trump,” Bassett said.
“So this embargo on the truth of this matter may be about to end in the next couple months and it can’t happen too soon,” Bassett said.
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