New images of testing materials have emerged of China's largest ever UAV, the secretive Divine Eagle. Compared to other Chinese aviation projects like the J-20 stealth fighter and Y-20 heavy transport aircraft, the lack of publicly available photos of the Divine Eagle suggests that like the American RQ-180, this giant drone is a strategic and sensitive asset.

In late January 2015 new images appeared online of a snow covered airfield in northern China, where a heavy Z-18A utility helicopter took a test flight, while the elusive medium Z-20 utility helicopter lurked in the background.

Winning Mosul back from ISIS will be much more likely if the there are American air controllers calling in close air support strikes against ISIS positions and U.S. Special Forces working side by side with Iraqi units.

"We know there have been other hostages who have paid ransom and have been evacuated from the country, but it seems like once you come to this level of being in a video, we’ve not seen very many happy endings" said Douglas Ollivant.

In this half-hour CUNY TV special, we explore the ramifications of the digital world. When almost all of our correspondence, communication and personal information is dependent on digital devices….what are the pros and cons for us as consumers and users in the new wild world of digital shopping, identity, and sharing? Carol Anne Riddell hosts this special half hour all about life in the digital age

The administration has consistently maintained that the Bergdahl swap was not a deal worked out with terrorists and doesn’t affect its policy against ransoms and concessions. “The review does not include reconsideration of our no-concession policy,” Baskey said, though it will “examine and seek to define best practices based on instances when working through intermediaries has proven successful.”

On the tropical island Hainan, Wenchang Satellite Launch Center got its very first heavy rocket. The Long March 7 (LM-7), built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), will likely not launch until 2016, but Chinese engineers have assembled it on the launch pad's mobile service structure in order to test its systems for preflight and integration quality assurance.

I'll be speaking next week in Phoenix. Come on down. Here are the details: Tuesday, February 3, 2015 at 7 p.m. The location is First Amendment Forum, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The address is 555 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ 8500. Best Defense readers are invited. If you wear the Best Defense t-shirt, you can sit in the front row.

Not since World War II has a single shipyard launched multiple large warships in a single day. But Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard in Shanghai, one of China's best naval and civilian shipyards, just did that.

Flying cars and hovercrafts are possible, though concept cars designed in recent years for limited flight are “not that economical or realistic in the world we've created so far,” says Peter Singer, a futurist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank.

A new FC-1 light fighter, numbered "0213", rolls out of the Chengdu Aviation Corporation factory in January 2015. The "Fierce Dragon" FC-1 multirole fighter is a joint Sino-Pakistan project, and has a maximum takeoff weight of 12.7 tons, a payload of 4.5 tons, a combat radius of over 800 miles and a Mach 1.8 top speed.

While U.S. government computer systems are generally well-protected, the same cannot be said of many private and corporate networks, said Daily Beast senior correspondent Shane Harris. This puts at risk all kinds of data, from banking and credit records to email communications to control of the nation’s electric grid.

Before they died, one of the brothers spoke on the phone to a journalist from the French news network BFM saying, "We are just telling you that we are the defenders of Prophet Mohammed. I was sent, me, Cherif Kouachi, by al Qaeda in Yemen. I went there and Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki financed my trip... before he was killed."

Shane Harris’ @War is a book that shows us the difference between the internet as we know it and the internet the way it is. As our access to the online world gets mediated entirely by aestheticised, heavily designed, customised platforms that emphasise that the internet was made for cats, porn, and dolphins, we get more and more alienated from the actual logics, logistics and operations of this massive infrastructure of the internet.

If you want to be mourned by millions of marchers and eulogized by dozens of reverential world leaders, apparently you need to be Charlie Hebdo — and no one in Nigeria makes the cut.

Whether it is the advancement of and availability of cheap drones to the ease of carrying out a cyberattack, future terrorists will find it easier to gain ever more dangerous tools for their attacks," said Security analyst Peter Singer.

Peter Singer from the New America Foundation agrees with the White House that it wasn't a serious breach, but he says it was a minor propaganda victory for Islamic state.

Another indicator was the account cover image being changed to the text “i love you isis.” ISIS is group that tends not to call itself by that acronym (a Western construct that limits it’s scope to two state borders “islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” rather than a wider, borderless caliphate they vision aims for). Nor is ISIS a group that tends to use the verb “love” all that much.

If oil prices stay at their current level, the Defense Department stands to save about $2 billion this year. Defense News reports the Pentagon has already saved about $500 million. Sharon Burke is senior advisor of the New America Foundation, and former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs. On In Depth with Francis Rose, she explained how today's oil prices will affect future defense policy

“They seized control of the equivalent of the social media loudspeaker for Centcom,” said Peter Singer of the New America Foundation’s Future of War project.

“There is no concept of deterrence today in cyber,” a former hacker turned security executive tells Harris. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”