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Legal Resident Tries
To Sell Unmanned Aerial Vehicle On EBay By Mike Mitchell |
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March 29, 2011 - A federal grand jury in
If
convicted on all counts, Chua faces a maximum penalty of
20 years in federal prison. Chua was arrested on a
criminal complaint on the evening of February 10 in
According to the indictment, Chua knowingly and
willfully caused the temporary import into the United
States of an item designated as a defense article on the
U.S. Munitions List, namely an RQ-11B "Raven" Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and aided and abetted the
attempted export from the United States of the same
item, without having first obtained from the U.S.
Department of State a license or written authorization.
The AeroVironment RQ-11 Raven is a small hand-launched
remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicle (or SUAV)
developed for the |
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The RQ-11
Raven was originally introduced as the FQM-151 in 1999, but in
2002 developed into its current form. The craft is launched by
hand and powered by an electric motor. The plane can fly up to
6.2 miles at up to altitudes of 10,000 feet above ground level
(AGL), and 15,000 feet mean sea level (MSL), at flying speeds of
28-60 mph with an effective operational radius of approximately
6.2 miles.
The Raven
RQ-11B UAV system is manufactured by AeroVironment. It was the
winner of the US Army's SUAV program in 2005, and went into
Full-Rate Production (FRP) in 2006. Shortly afterwards, it was
also adopted by USSOCOM, the US Marines, and the US Air Force
for their ongoing FPASS Program. It has also been adopted by the
military forces of many other countries. More than 13,000 Raven
airframes have been delivered to customers worldwide to date. The Raven can be either remotely controlled from the ground station or fly completely autonomous missions using GPS waypoint navigation. The UAV can be ordered to immediately return to its launch point simply by pressing a single command button. Standard mission payloads include CCD color video cameras and an infrared night vision camera. A single Raven costs about $35,000 and the total system costs $250,000. The RQ-11B Raven UAV weighs about 4.2 lb. |
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