[Motorman]

Was watching the news this morning(FOX) and a story of the U.S. drone planes was being discussed and as I was looking at the coverage I noticed in one of the shots of the drone/plane that a Pentax lens was clearly visible.The lens was clearly labeled Pentax,no doubt or mistake here.

Did anyone else see this?Do they also use Pentax camera systems?Maybe one of those 2 Gig sensor cameras mentioned in another thread(haha)....
Well it is nice to know Pentax is involved keeping the world safer from terrorists!

Well I found it interesting and thought I would share.......

Have a good day!

[davebris33]

I think the last thing that America and Britain has done is kept the world safe from terrorists. We jointly have a history of behaving exactly how we please, and have now felt the backlash. Simple

[ytterbium]

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-slr-lens-discussion/61380-i-no-lon...entax-but.html

Yes. It is DA 15mm ltd.

[stanleyk]

I think the last thing that America and Britain has done is kept the world safe from terrorists. We jointly have a history of behaving exactly how we please, and have now felt the backlash. Simple

Thanks! I'm not sure people here in the US get it quite yet though. We're still thinking it's ok for 47 million of our citizens to not have any health care as we slowly slide into Third World status. But hey, according to a significant segment of the population here, it's all the illegal immigrants fault. It's their fault US car companies can't make decent cars, it's their fault that white middle class people borrowed immense amounts of money they had no idea how to repay on their homes and credit cards, it's their fault that we spend $650 billion dollars a year on National Defense yet for some reason can't seem to beat people armed with Vietnam era AK 47's (and that alone should give people pause for thought), it their fault that US banks/insurance companies needed billions of dollars to bail themselves out after just plain stupid business decisions (banks that are run by white men), it's their fault that George Bush inherited a surplus budget then ran up over $9 trillion dollars worth of debt in 8 years, well you get the idea.

Starting to sound like Weimar Germany over here (of course most Americans will have no idea what that is because our education system is so good). If I were a European, I would really think twice about having the US as an ally.

[deadwolfbones]

We've got plenty of threads about these topics in the Off Topic section. Let's keep the discussion here on the bulk of the OP's post and not the little political bit, eh?

[davebris33]

The original post prompted my response, sorry!

[Parallax]

I think the last thing that America and Britain has done is kept the world safe from terrorists. We jointly have a history of behaving exactly how we please, and have now felt the backlash. Simple

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else." ~Winston Churchill

[Nass]

Maybe it's related to this, which I found whilst googling for UAV & pentax

CropCam

MicroPilot, an autopilot manufacturer located in Manitoba branched out into turn-key UAV systems and currently produces a system called CropCam. As the name suggests, CropCam was designed to give farmers an alternative to collecting imagery from satellite or manned aircraft. The system uses a model glider airframe with electric motor and Pentax digital frame-camera. CropCam UAS is intended to support the decision- making activities of farmers by providing them with additional information about crop health.

[Nass]

Just a follow up. I couldn't find anything about Pentax being used on US drones, but Controp, a company providing imaging options for Israeli drones, uses Pentax. Israel has close links to the US military so it's not a stretch to guess it's the same stuff used in the US. This is it:



The MGF1 is based upon a Pentax 645 body and lens with a purpose-built large-capacity 56 × 41.5 mm (2.2 × 1.6 in) film magazine, including an Eastman Kodak S-149 supply spool containing 76.2 m (250 ft) (which will provide 1,600 exposures) or 45.7 m (150 ft), which will provide 1,000 exposures. Each exposure has six digits of annotated data per frame providing information upon the date, time and frame count. Lens options range from 35 mm f/3.5 to 600 mm f/5.6. The sensor provides manual or automatic exposure control, exposure modes being aperture or shutter priority, programmed AE or manual. The cycle interval is a maximum of 2 seconds per exposure cycle and the film resolution is better than 70 lp/mm. The camera is powered by six 1.5 or 9 V AA batteries.

For what it's worth, whilst poking around Jane's, I also found mention of Pentax being used on AUVs - underwater drones.