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Wing Wants Seven St. Louis Drone Hubs Live at Once. Manchester Is Next

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 16:49:00 GMT

Wing wants to open about seven Walmart drone delivery hubs across the St. Louis area together instead of testing a single store first. Wing spokeswoman Jessie Poole-Strang told the St. Louis Business Journal, in a report published Tuesday, that the approach would bring the service to tens of thousands of households at once.

The next city to hear the pitch is Manchester, Missouri. Wing presents to the Board of Aldermen on Monday, November 2, and holds a public open house at City Hall on Wednesday, November 4. Kirkwood, the first St. Louis-area city to take up a filed Wing permit, let it die without a motion on October 15, after its own planners had recommended approval.

Kirkwood’s own planning report puts Wing’s target at 12 Walmart stores in the metro, and Wing’s St. Louis web page lists none of them.

Wing Plans a Seven-Nest Launch With 12 St. Louis Walmarts in Play

Wing plans to open about seven St. Louis nests together, and its applicant told Kirkwood planners it is pursuing 12 Walmart stores in the metro. Kirkwood’s proposed nest held up to 18 drones behind a fence in a corner of the store parking lot.

Poole-Strang described the same strategy in August, when she told Spectrum News that “when we enter a new market, we really want to target multiple sites.” She said then that Wing was still finalizing its initial sites with Walmart, the step that starts permitting. The Business Journal reported that Walmart and Wing have approached six cities so far, according to meeting minutes: St. Charles, Wentzville, Kirkwood, Maplewood, Manchester and Glen Carbon, Illinois. Kirkwood’s September 2 Planning and Zoning subcommittee report names a seventh store, in High Ridge.

If each named city has one store in play, that leaves at least five of the 12 unaccounted for. DroneXL searched the meeting agendas of about 20 other St. Louis-area cities, on both sides of the river, and found no Wing or Walmart drone item. Arnold, Chesterfield, O’Fallon, Missouri, St. Peters and the St. Louis County Planning Commission could not be searched.

High Ridge Is the Only Approval Reported, and No County Agenda Shows It

Kirkwood’s September 2 report is the only source for Wing’s one St. Louis approval, saying “the only approval so far is at the High Ridge store,” and no 2026 Jefferson County agenda that DroneXL found mentions drones in unincorporated High Ridge.

A site approval handled by county staff would not reach an agenda, so a permit may exist that has not been published.

The other six named cities are at every stage short of a yes. Wentzville gave Bill 4914, its drone delivery zoning ordinance, a first reading on October 21, and its Board of Aldermen meets next on November 4. Maplewood’s Plan and Zoning Commission recorded on September 2 that a formal Wing application “has not yet been received but is expected,” and its October 5 agenda carried no drone item.

St. Charles heard a presentation from Wing and Walmart at its August 18 City Council meeting, referred by Mayor Dan Borgmeyer, and no permit or ordinance has appeared on a council or zoning agenda since. In Glen Carbon, the Building and Development Committee’s July 28 agenda listed a “review and recommendation on use of drones at Walmart.” Nothing on drones has reached the Village Board.

Manchester Hears Wing Twice in Three Days With No Vote Scheduled

Wing presents to Manchester’s Board of Aldermen at 7 p.m. on November 2 at the Manchester Justice Center, then hosts an open house at 6 p.m. on November 4 at City Hall. The city’s October 24 notice says the service would operate “out of the Manchester Walmart store.”

The city says no formal board action or vote will take place on November 2, and its officials have already seen the drones work. Mayor Ben Toben told aldermen on August 17 that he had attended a meeting that day with city staff, Walmart and Alphabet “where they demonstrated drone deliveries,” according to the meeting minutes.

The notice’s figures do not all match Wing’s own. Manchester describes drones that reach up to 65 mph and operate within a 6- to 7-mile radius of the store. Wing’s St. Louis page says its aircraft fly at up to 60 mph and travel up to 12 miles (19 kilometers) round trip, which works out to the six-mile radius in Kirkwood’s report.

A Wing drone leaves a fenced nest in a Walmart parking lot in the Charlotte area. Manchester residents are being asked about one nest like this in a planned network of about seven. Photo credit: Wing

No FAA Comment Period Is Required for St. Louis Under the National Finding

The FAA’s public list of drone delivery environmental reviews has no Wing document for Missouri or Illinois. The FAA signed a national environmental finding on July 28, 2026. Under it, a Wing site that fits its limits can be cleared through an internal checklist, with no public comment period.

Wing’s Atlanta and Houston decisions, both signed in August, went through metro-specific assessments with public drafts. St. Louis will not get one unless Wing or the FAA chooses that route, and the national finding itself is under challenge: Illinois is one of 15 states suing the FAA to throw it out. Missouri is not.

A city cannot regulate the flights, only the nest on the ground, as DroneXL’s guide to how drone delivery approval works explains. That leaves aldermen and zoning commissions as the only public venue for Wing’s St. Louis plan.

DroneXL’s Take

Wing is planning St. Louis as one network and asking for it one parking lot at a time. It says it is still finalizing sites with Walmart, and a company aiming to open seven nests at once should show cities the list before asking any of them to vote.

I support the national finding. A full environmental study for every identical parking lot was never going to tell anyone much. But those metro studies had one side effect worth keeping. They put hub addresses on paper, which is why DroneXL’s tracker can list Amazon’s hubs by street address. St. Louis gets no such document. The public record holds a count of 12 stores in a Kirkwood staff report and the names of seven communities.

A Manchester resident at the November 4 open house will be asked about one nest at one Walmart. The aircraft over that resident’s yard could come from any nest within six miles, and the resident will not see that map unless Wing brings it. Manchester’s aldermen should ask Wing for the full list of 12 on November 2, and Wing should hand it over.

Sources: St. Louis Business Journal via MSN, City of Manchester, October 24 notice, Manchester Board of Aldermen minutes, August 17, City of Kirkwood, October 15 council packet (September 2 subcommittee report), Maplewood Plan and Zoning Commission, October 5 packet (September 2 minutes), City of St. Charles council minutes, August 18, Village of Glen Carbon, July 28 committee agenda, Spectrum News, Wing St. Louis page, FAA Public Involvement and Environmental Review for Drone Operations

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Alibaba Says a Pentagon Law Cost It Every Lobbyist. DJI Kept Two Firms

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 16:29:00 GMT

A federal judge in San Jose on Monday blocked the Pentagon from enforcing a lobbying restriction against Alibaba, finding the law likely violates the company’s First Amendment rights. The law took effect June 30. It bars the Defense Department from contracting with any company that hires a lobbying firm that also lobbies for a company on the Pentagon’s Section 1260H list of “Chinese military companies.” By that date, Alibaba says, it had no registered lobbyists left.

DJI has been on the same list since October 2022. Lobbying reports for July through September, filed with Congress this month, show two outside firms lobbying for its U.S. arm, DJI Technology, Inc., after the law took effect: CLS Strategies, which reported $170,000 in DJI income for the quarter, and Liberty Government Affairs, which reported $27,500.

Section 4663 Binds The Pentagon And Reaches Lobbyists Through Their Clients

Section 851 of the 2025 defense act, now 10 U.S.C. § 4663, does not bar a firm from lobbying for a listed company. Absent a Secretary of Defense waiver, it bars the Pentagon from contracting with that firm’s clients. The firm breaks no rule by keeping a listed client.

The cost lands on its other clients that want Pentagon work, and Judge Eumi K. Lee’s 26-page order spells out how that plays out. Defense contractors will not risk Pentagon work when plenty of capable firms are available, she wrote, so the firm has to choose, and “The only rational choice for a lobbying firm is to stop representing Alibaba.” Alibaba told the court it had retained more than two dozen lobbyists and multiple firms before the designation, some of them for almost a decade, and that several firms named the law as the reason they withdrew.

DJI’s filings describe a much smaller operation, with three named lobbyists across its third-quarter reports. DJI is the only client CLS Strategies lists in its 2026 lobbying filings, and its third-quarter report covers “issues and policies pertaining to Unmanned Aircraft Systems” under the aviation, defense and natural resources issue codes. Liberty’s filing covers the FY2027 defense authorization act and the FCC’s authority. DJI’s own report, which counts its in-house team and its spending on outside firms, came to $240,000 for the quarter and lists the FCC Covered List and H.R. 9430, the American Drone Manufacturing Dominance Act of 2026. That total had already dropped from $640,000 in the last quarter of 2025 to $200,000 in the first quarter of 2026. Lobbying reports show a firm’s lobbying clients only, not its other contracts, which the law also reaches.

Two other firms ended their DJI registrations earlier this year: Porter Wright Morris & Arthur effective January 31, and MO Strategies, whose filings covered border-security work with the Department of Homeland Security, on May 24. Neither termination filing gives a reason, and the form does not ask for one.

The Judge Found The Pentagon Brought One Exhibit

Judge Lee applied strict scrutiny because the rule restricts political speech based on who the speaker is. The government’s only exhibit was a joint explanatory statement from the 2024 Congressional Record, and the order says that statement contains no finding that lobbyists for listed companies pose a security risk.

The statement told the Comptroller General to report by December 23, 2025, on consulting firms that contract with both the Pentagon and the Chinese government or its affiliates. At the August 27 hearing, government lawyers could not confirm whether that report reached Congress by the deadline, and they did not provide a copy. Judge Lee also pointed to Nebraska, which makes lobbyists for 1260H-listed companies file an extra acknowledgment, as a less restrictive option. The government’s answer, that disclosure would still leave “access and the potential for influence,” was speculation, she wrote, and the Pentagon failed even the easier intermediate-scrutiny test.

The injunction applies to Section 4663 only as it relates to Alibaba: the Pentagon may not refuse a contract to any company because it shares a lobbying firm with Alibaba. The judge rejected Alibaba’s facial challenge at this stage, citing too little information about the statute’s full scope. She declined to remove the company from the 1260H list because that question belongs to its separate administrative-law claims, and set a $100 bond.

Courts Keep Questioning The Pentagon’s China List

Three 2026 rulings went against 1260H designations before this one: lidar maker Hesai at the D.C. Circuit, WuXi AppTec in federal court in Washington on August 7, and DJI’s partial reversal on August 14. None vacated a designation, though the WuXi court blocked enforcement of WuXi’s.

DJI’s win turned on a Pentagon justification that is fully redacted in the public record, and its case is back before District Judge Paul Friedman, who upheld the designation in September 2025.

Two U.S. subsidiaries of EV maker BYD filed a similar First Amendment challenge to Section 4663 in Los Angeles on September 25, Courthouse News reported. A CourtListener search of federal dockets on October 27 found no DJI challenge to the law. The list matters beyond lobbying: Section 805 of the 2024 defense act already bars the Pentagon from buying from listed companies directly, and its ban on indirect purchases through suppliers starts June 30, 2027.

DroneXL’s Take

Section 4663 is the clearest example yet of the 1260H list doing work Congress never had to justify. A company lands on the list, sometimes for reasons nobody outside the Pentagon gets to read, and that status now decides which lobbyists will take its calls. Required to show the danger, the government brought one exhibit with no findings about lobbyists.

DJI’s filings are the better test of the law’s logic. I see no national security difference between DJI’s lobbyists and Alibaba’s. As I read the statute, what decides a firm’s exposure is who else it works for, not anything it knows or carries, so the rule polices client lists and does nothing about what anyone hears in a meeting. If Congress thinks a lobbyist for a listed company is a channel for military information, a federal version of Nebraska’s acknowledgment rule would flag every one of them without cutting anyone off.

Alibaba’s relief is its own, so any company that hires a firm lobbying for DJI’s U.S. arm gets no such shield if it wants Pentagon work. Watch whether DJI files its own as-applied challenge in Judge Lee’s footsteps, and whether the government finally produces evidence when Alibaba’s summary judgment briefing starts.

Sources: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. v. U.S. Department of Defense, No. 5:26-cv-06227, order of October 26, 2026; Lobbying Disclosure Act filings for DJI Technology, Inc. by CLS Strategies, Liberty Government Affairs and DJI; BYD Motors LLC v. U.S. Department of Defense, No. 2:26-cv-11173 (C.D. Cal.); Courthouse News.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

SFPD's Proposed Drone Rules Stop Short of Sonoma's Court Settlement

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 16:05:00 GMT

San Francisco’s Police Commission voted 5-1 on October 14 to advance the rules for the San Francisco Police Department’s 98 drones, without the broader warrant requirement public speakers asked for. Six weeks earlier, Sonoma County settled an ACLU lawsuit over drones its code inspectors had flown over private homes. DroneXL covered that lawsuit when it was filed in June 2025.

CalMatters reported this week that fights like these are now playing out across California, where police departments are pushing to expand drone use from emergency calls to everyday patrols.

Under the Sonoma settlement, county code inspectors need a warrant or a resident’s consent before a drone watches or records a home or its yard. San Francisco’s proposed order requires a warrant, or a recognized warrant exception, only when an operator intentionally focuses on the inside of a home or on an enclosed yard not visible from a public spot at ground level.

Sonoma’s settlement also makes the county tell residents when a drone watched them

The ACLU of Northern California announced the Sonoma settlement on September 2. Beyond the warrant-or-consent rule, which has an emergency exception, Permit Sonoma must tell residents when a drone has surveilled their home, delete footage after 30 days and keep images of homes away from third parties.

That 30-day clock runs from collection, or from the close of the investigation the footage belongs to, and images of homes can still go to third parties where the law requires it, according to the ACLU’s announcement. The county hands its flight logs to the ACLU for two years, and a revised drone policy goes to the Board of Supervisors for public comment. Each of the three residents who sued gets $50,000, KQED reported.

The program started in 2019 to target illegal cannabis grows and, the ACLU says, spread to routine code cases. A Permit Sonoma spokesperson told KQED the agency disagrees with the ACLU’s characterization, has defended its drone use successfully before, and is settling to avoid an expensive legal process, with no admission of fact. ACLU senior attorney Nick Hidalgo said the deal will “protect everyone’s right to privacy in and around their homes.”

San Francisco’s order bans general surveillance but has no notice rule

General Order 10.12 passed the commission 5-1 with Commissioner Kevin Benedicto voting no, and it still needs the Board of Supervisors. The four-page amended proposal contains no resident notification provision, though it bans general surveillance and caps retention of public footage at 30 days, the same clock Sonoma agreed to.

A captain or higher can extend that limit for an open criminal investigation. Benedicto, Mission Local reported, wrote that “the public has expressed serious concerns about surveillance.” About 50 people showed up, where the commission usually draws a handful, and after the vote most of those still in the room chanted against Skydio on their way out. A member of the privacy group DeFlock SF had asked commissioners to cancel the Skydio contract and write in a warrant requirement, CalMatters reported, and the commission sent the policy to labor negotiations instead.

The order DroneXL read the day before the vote still leaves “public safety response,” which I read as the broadest reason to launch a drone, undefined. Police policy director Asja Steeves told Mission Local the language is written so officers can understand it, and that public safety uses won’t differ from current practice. She said a data protection policy covering drones and license plate readers will reach the commission in several months.

That policy would arrive for a fleet of 98 drones, 14 of which launch remotely from the department’s Real Time Investigation Center, according to SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky. The department’s Skydio drone feeds sat on the open internet for about six months, DroneXL reported in July.

California has no comprehensive police drone law, so each city sets its own limits

California has no comprehensive state law on police drones, Holland & Knight attorney Katie Inman told CalMatters. The 2021 law AB 481 requires a city or county governing body to approve a police “military equipment” policy at a public meeting. Drones count, and agencies must file annual reports.

That leaves departments to apply Fourth Amendment case law built on manned aircraft. Inman, who previously worked at the FAA, said the Supreme Court has allowed aerial observation of what’s visible from lawful altitudes, but drones are different: “With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes.”

Nearly 60 California law enforcement agencies run drone programs, CalMatters reports, citing the Los Angeles Police Department. Santa Ana’s council approved a $682,900 Drone as First Responder program on a 4-3 vote on February 3. Stockton’s council voted 7-0 on March 31 to add $3.15 million to its Flock Safety contract for a drone program tied to about 120 Flock license plate cameras, Stocktonia reported. CalMatters puts the fleet at six drones. Police Lt. David Padula projected response times of 30 seconds to about four minutes. Outside California, a 6-6 Minneapolis council vote in July killed a free 75-day Skydio trial after members cited the company’s ICE and Israeli military ties.

Berkeley’s drone review is a slide deck that found no proof of a safety payoff

The UC Berkeley Criminal Law & Justice Center review CalMatters links to is a February 2026 presentation to Berkeley’s Police Accountability Board. It found no empirical basis for drone claims on staffing, de-escalation or safety, and urged the City Council to reject the police department’s proposal as written.

The presentation leans on SFPD clearance rates from 2023 to 2025. Crime types with heavy drone use improved 0.6 percentage points more after drones arrived than before, while low-drone categories improved 5.9 points more, a gap its authors attribute largely to swings in arson numbers. They call their own comparison descriptive, not causal. The fleet Berkeley police proposed was DJI hardware, including the Avata 2 and Matrice 4T, and the deck warns that three of the four proposed models were caught by the FCC’s December 2025 Covered List action. Berkeley has since put its public safety technology package out to competitive bids.

DroneXL’s Take

I back Drone as First Responder, and California police departments should copy Sonoma’s terms before a lawsuit forces the same ones on them. Sonoma had not published its drone policy, and a settlement now makes it publish and revise one, pay $150,000 and hand two years of flight logs to the ACLU. San Francisco flies 98 drones over a far denser place, and its proposed order would hold its police to looser warrant and notice rules than Sonoma’s code inspectors now face.

My read is that resident notification is the cheapest fix on that list. It costs a department a letter. If DFR works as well as its backers say, nothing about the program breaks when residents find out a drone was over their house.

Sources: CalMatters, ACLU of Northern California, KQED, Mission Local, San Francisco Police Department General Order 10.12 (amended proposal), Stocktonia, UC Berkeley Criminal Law & Justice Center

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Percepto Opens Its Inspection AI to Rival Drones Under a New CEO

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:09:00 GMT

Percepto, the Austin-based maker of the autonomous drone-in-a-box systems Florida Power & Light signed up for in 2022, launched Axion on Tuesday, a subscription platform that analyzes inspection data from other companies’ drones, fixed sensors and old inspection archives.

Percepto’s previous launch, on June 22, packaged its AI with next-generation Percepto Air drones, and co-founder Dor Abuhasira was quoted as CEO. Tuesday’s announcement names Julien Bellanger as chief executive and does not mention Abuhasira.

Axion Runs 160-Plus AI Models on Data Percepto’s Drones Never Collected

Axion applies more than 160 AI models to RGB photos, radiometric thermal data, gas-imaging video and orthomosaic maps from any supported source. Percepto says it trained those models on more than 100,000 hours of autonomous inspection data. It sells Axion as software-as-a-service and has not published pricing.

The platform sorts every image and finding by asset, so a tower’s history sits in one place. In Percepto’s launch announcement, the company says the models judge condition in context: a downed wire is identified by where it sits relative to the hardware around it, and a hot spot is scored against how that asset normally runs and the weather at the time.

Axion's transmission view lists each tower's open findings next to the flagged insulator discs. Image credit: Percepto

Operators can also type questions about an asset in plain English. In Percepto’s own demo, a utility worker sending a lineman to a pole asks what else is wrong with it, and Axion answers that a deteriorated crossarm was detected on June 3 and a vegetation crew trimmed a nearby tree two months ago.

The plain-language assistant pulls crew history and earlier findings for a single pole. Image credit: Percepto

Percepto Keeps Its Drones and Moves Their Production to the US

Percepto still sells hardware under the Ranger drone and Harbor station names, for operators who need more frequent coverage. The company says it is consolidating engineering, manufacturing and assembly in the United States, alongside its existing US remote operations, tying the move to “American Drone Dominance.”

The phrase is the administration’s: its first White House Drone Dominance event hosted roughly 40 drone makers in August, about two weeks before Section 232 tariffs on drones took effect on September 3. Percepto’s website lists the Ranger with 61-megapixel full-frame RGB and radiometric thermal cameras and says the Harbor is tested for Category 5 hurricane winds.

The same asset view applied to an oil and gas tank site, with a tank's corrosion, valve and thermal findings listed by date. Image credit: Percepto

Flights still run under the nationwide BVLOS waiver the FAA granted in 2023, alongside a $67 million funding round. Percepto also says a “leading U.S. energy company” has signed a multi-year contract for aerial data collection and AI analytics across its transmission network, extending a long relationship. It did not name the utility or the contract’s value.

Percepto’s AI Read DJI Footage in 2021, and Now the Software Leads the Sale

Axion’s hardware-agnostic design is not new. Percepto’s AIM software accepted footage from DJI drones and from fixed cameras as of its November 2021 release. For most of Percepto’s history, though, that AI reached customers through Percepto’s own drones and stations, and Axion is built to be sold without them.

Percepto also partnered with Boston Dynamics in 2020 to bring Spot’s inspection data into AIM. In a post published with the launch, Bellanger says most operators already run drone programs, sensors and inspection contracts, and the bottleneck has moved to reviewing what they collect. He says the drones and stations stay a core part of the business.

Bellanger comes from software. He was CEO of application-security company Prevoty when Imperva bought it for $140 million in 2018. Percepto’s leadership page, which describes a team based in the US and Israel, now lists 12 executives, and neither Abuhasira nor co-founder Sagi Blonder is among them. Bellanger’s post credits the founders with starting Percepto in 2014 and says he is “grateful to the founders for building it.” Neither the post nor the release says what roles they hold now.

DroneXL’s Take

Selling the AI without the drone is the right call. Percepto’s own 2021 DJI integration shows it has known for years that its customers fly other companies’ aircraft. Percepto hasn’t published which drones Axion supports, and its product page names none.

If the list includes DJI, as AIM’s did, Percepto will build drones in the US under a Drone Dominance banner while selling software that makes the Chinese fleets those drones are meant to replace more useful. I think that’s good business, and it’s the honest answer to the DJI ban for American operators: they keep the hardware they paid for and still get the analytics. Any inspection manager with a shelf of DJI Matrices should ask for that list on the demo call.

Sources: Percepto via PR Newswire, Percepto: next chapter post, Percepto June 22 release, Percepto leadership page, Percepto Ranger, Percepto 2023 Series C release, Percepto: Sagi Blonder, Percepto AIM 2022 release, SDxCentral

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon Drones Fly Over Chicago Suburbs. The FAA Still Shows a Draft

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 01:32:00 GMT

Amazon’s MK30 delivery drones are flying over the south suburbs of Chicago from the company’s fulfillment center in Markham, Illinois, and Amazon says it has about 21 of them there, NBC 5 Chicago reported on Monday, October 26. Homewood residents have filmed the aircraft descending to deliver in their neighborhood, and one of them believes he has already had a package delivered that way. It is the launch Amazon said in February would come “later this year,” after a summer start date the company put out ahead of its March 2 Tinley Park meet-and-greet came and went.

NBC 5 reported that the company has not yet officially launched the rollout. The Village of Homewood, by contrast, told residents the service has launched and that Homewood sits inside the delivery radius, the Country Herald reported the same day. The drones are the same 78-pound (35-kilogram) aircraft that hit a construction crane twice in Tolleson, Arizona a year ago, and the FAA’s environmental review index for drone delivery, last updated October 14, still lists the agency’s Chicago file as a draft with a comment period that closed August 14 and no decision posted.

Amazon Says 21 Drones Fly From Markham. NBC 5 Calls the Rollout Not Yet Official

Amazon has deployed approximately 21 drones at the Markham fulfillment center, the company told NBC 5, each carrying up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms) as far as eight miles (13 kilometers). NBC 5 reported the rollout is not yet official and that Amazon plans to deploy drones at additional centers.

The eight miles is Amazon’s figure. Prime Air senior manager of commercial operations Josh Brundage told ABC7 in February that anyone within an 8-mile radius of the buildings should be eligible, and the FAA’s own draft for the Chicago hubs sets the MK30’s operating range at 7.5 miles (12 kilometers). NBC 5 also reported that Amazon says a delivery will cost the company less than $5. Chicago outlets reported in February that Prime members would pay $4.99 an order, and an internal Amazon projection reported in December 2024, which DroneXL covered in Amazon’s Prime Air Meets Reality, put the company’s cost at about $63 a package by 2025.

“It’s got a weird sound to it,” Homewood resident Paul Bochenk told NBC 5. It was not as loud as he expected, he said, but annoying. Marty Tully, also of Homewood, thinks he has already had a drone delivery and likes the idea for one reason. “I enjoy it because they can drop off medications,” he said, adding that fewer drivers means less traffic.

CBS Chicago reported the Markham drones delivering 12 days earlier, on October 14, after Homewood residents filmed one coming down the day before. “It was decently noisy!” one resident told CBS, and Julian Gomez asked who was piloting it. Amazon told CBS that nobody watches the onboard cameras live, that they exist for navigation and obstacle detection, and that the Markham program created 30 jobs, a figure Amazon corrected from 55 after the story aired. Amazon compared the sound to a passing car, and spokesperson Caitlin Tully told CBS the response has been positive. Prime Air’s delivery is “safe, reliable, and the customer response has been overwhelmingly positive,” a company spokesperson told NBC 5.

The FAA’s Public Chicago File Ends at a July Draft With No Decision

The FAA’s drone environmental review index, last updated October 14, 2026, lists one Chicago assessment and its appendices: a draft environmental assessment dated July 2026 for three Prime Air hubs, with comment closed August 14. No final assessment or signed finding was there when DroneXL checked on October 27.

The draft describes the Markham hub, Amazon’s IGQ1 robotics fulfillment center at 2201 W. 159th Street, with the nearest homes about 1,900 feet (580 meters) to the northwest. It proposes up to 1,000 MK30 flights a day from each of the three sites, in Markham, Matteson and West Chicago, between 6 a.m. and 10:30 p.m., seven days a week, with up to 100 of those flights in the first hour and the last half hour. The FAA’s noise appendix puts a cruising MK30 at 63.7 dBA SEL measured at 200 feet (61 meters), the same figure the FAA’s Baton Rouge filing likened to an air conditioner heard from 100 feet. Amazon’s passing-car comparison comes with no distance or metric.

Whether the Markham flights rest on that draft, or on something else, is not on the public record. On July 28 the FAA signed a national environmental finding that lets it approve new Part 135 delivery markets against one nationwide study, and 15 states, Illinois among them, asked the Second Circuit to throw it out on September 28. No public FAA document names the authorization under which Markham flies. Its Prime Air newsroom page, checked October 27, carries nothing on Chicago since the August 19 notice that promised the metro area “soon.” Matteson, the second south-suburban hub in the draft, is not named as flying in either the NBC 5 or the CBS report.

Amazon's MK30, the aircraft now flying from Markham, at the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas in September. The FAA's Chicago draft puts it at 78 pounds empty and 83.2 pounds at takeoff. Photo credit: DroneXL

Homewood Says It Cannot Ground the Drones, and Illinois Law Agrees

Homewood cannot prohibit drones over the village, set local flight restrictions or regulate the noise of an airborne drone, the village told residents, as the Country Herald reported on October 26. Federal aviation rules and Illinois law govern them. Illinois took that power from its villages in 2018.

Section 42.1 of the Illinois Aeronautics Act, 620 ILCS 5/42.1, makes regulating unmanned aircraft “an exclusive power and function of the State” and denies home-rule units the right to write their own rules, with one exception for a city of more than a million people, which is Chicago. DroneXL set out what that leaves a south-suburban village in its Matteson drone delivery guide: the building permit, the lot, and a state legislator. Markham, for its part, signed a zoning letter on November 4, 2025, saying drone delivery is permitted by right on the IGQ1 lot, per the FAA draft.

The Country Herald’s report gives residents amazondronefeedback@amazon.com as Amazon’s drone contact. That inbox is no longer monitored, according to an automated reply Amazon sent DroneXL in September. Residents can instead call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what is left once the drones are flying, and the Amazon Prime Air tracker lists the hubs and incidents DroneXL has documented. The closest precedent for what Homewood is about to live with is Richardson, Texas, where a resident’s tracker logged 52 drones over one yard in a day under an FAA decision that analyzed the same 1,000 flights a day.

DroneXL’s Take

Tully’s medication run is the case for this technology, and Amazon is flying the wrong aircraft for it. Medication to someone in Homewood who can’t get to a pharmacy earns its noise, and I’d want it flown the way Zipline flies its P2, hovering at 300 feet and lowering the package on a tether, with a parachute on board. Amazon is flying a 78-pound MK30 with no parachute over yards with mature trees and overhead wires, and each of its three collisions on record, the Tolleson crane, the Waco internet cable and the Richardson apartment building, put the aircraft on the ground, one of them on fire. My read of the FAA’s index is that Markham is flying on the July 28 national finding rather than on the Chicago draft the agency never finished, and if that is right, the 30 days of email to Washington in July and August were the only federal comment period the south suburbs will get. Amazon has not said which document it is flying under, and the FAA’s page has not changed since October 14.

Sources: NBC 5 Chicago, CBS Chicago, Country Herald, ABC7 Chicago, FAA Draft Environmental Assessment, Amazon Prime Air, Chicago, July 2026 (PDF), FAA Appendix E, Technical Noise Report (PDF), FAA drone environmental review index, 620 ILCS 5/42.1.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

China's 48-Volt Drone Motor Rule Is Narrow. Its Propeller Rule Is Not

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 01:17:00 GMT

China’s export licenses for heavy drone motors take effect in three weeks, and the spec sheets of the two biggest Chinese suppliers show the rule lands in a different place than the trade coverage says. Read from a single row of test data, the four motor tests catch neither Hobbywing’s X15 nor T-Motor’s U15 II, the largest multirotor motors either company publishes full test tables for. The propeller entry is the one that bites. The 64 to 73 inch blade options on Hobbywing’s P-series and the 62-inch carbon-fiber blades on DJI’s Agras T100 run past the lengths Announcement No. 49 lists.

DroneXL reported the thresholds when the Ministry of Commerce published them on October 19: a brushless motor needs a license from November 18 if it meets all four of rated voltage of 48 volts or more, rated power of 3 kilowatts or more, rated power density of 3 kilowatts per kilogram or more, and rated speed of 3,000 rpm or less. Hobbywing labels two of those on its sheets, rated voltage and rated power. Neither company publishes a rated speed or a rated power density, and T-Motor labels nothing “rated” at all. It publishes a full-throttle test row and a “maximum continuous power” figure a quarter the size, and which of the two counts decides whether its flagship needs a license.

Hobbywing’s Spray Motors Miss the Density Test, Its Big Blades Hit the Length Test

Hobbywing’s X11 Plus runs at 54 volts, is rated at 2,130 watts and turns 3,414 rpm at full throttle, and fails three of China’s four motor tests. The X15 runs at 69 volts and a rated 4,400 watts, but its motor weighs 2,850 grams with wire, 1.5 kilowatts per kilogram.

Both sets of figures come from Hobbywing’s own X11 Plus and X15 product pages. The density test is what does the sorting. A motor that crosses it must deliver 3 kilowatts from a kilogram of motor, and Hobbywing’s agricultural motors are built heavy for cooling and duty cycle. The company’s P-series is a different animal: its product page lists the P50M at 280 to 450 volts and 6 kilowatts rated output, the P65M at 8.8 kilowatts and the P115M at 18.3 kilowatts. Hobbywing publishes neither the bare motor weight nor a rated speed for any of them, so the two tests that would decide the P-series cannot be run from the public sheet.

Those model numbers are also where a chunk of the trade coverage went wrong. Army Recognition reported on Monday that Hobbywing’s “50 V and 65 V motor lines” sit above the 48-volt floor, and TechTimes wrote a week earlier that the P50M is rated at 50 volts and the P65M at 65. The 50 and the 65 are kilograms of rated thrust per rotor. The P50M’s input range starts at 280 volts.

The blades are simpler. Entry 9A901.c covers a carbon-fiber composite blade that passes through the center of rotation when it measures 30 inches (762 millimeters) from center to tip, a blade that does not pass through the center, such as one bolted to a hub, at 25.5 inches (648 millimeters) from root to tip, and any blade with a variable-pitch root, no length given. The P-series flies 54 to 73 inch propellers, and the three largest options put each blade past the longer line. DJI’s T100 spec page lists 62-inch carbon-fiber composite propellers that fold, so each blade is a separate part on a hub, about 4 inches past the shorter line by my arithmetic. Hobbywing sells the X15’s 63-inch propeller as two 400-gram blades and describes them as carbon-fiber-reinforced nylon. Whether that counts as the notice’s “carbon fiber composite” is a classification question Hobbywing will have to put to the ministry.

T-Motor’s U15 II Is Controlled Only if Customs Mixes Two Rows of Its Own Table

T-Motor’s U15 II KV80 lists a maximum continuous power of 1,932 watts, which is under the 3-kilowatt floor. At full throttle on 60 volts the motor pulls 8,580 watts and lifts 36.5 kilograms, but turns 3,546 rpm, over the 3,000 rpm ceiling. Read from one row, it is not controlled.

The 1,932-watt figure is the 55% throttle point at 60 volts on the company’s store page, where the motor turns 2,316 rpm. At 1,740 grams with cables, that row is 1.1 kilowatts per kilogram, so the continuous reading fails the power test and the density test together. The full-throttle row is 4.9 kilowatts per kilogram and T-Motor’s note says the test ran for one minute, which is where the speed test fails instead. The only reading that catches the U15 II takes its power and density from the full-throttle row and its speed from the continuous one, and nothing in the notice says a customs officer cannot do that.

The Shanghai law firm Allbright’s reading of the notice tells exporters to build a parameter database for every model and request a formal classification ruling where a number is in doubt. T-Motor also sells the U15 II in a custom 40 KV winding for 24-cell, 100-volt packs, which it markets for freight transport and manned aircraft programs. A lower KV motor turns slower per volt, and that version is the one the entry reads as written for. The 40-inch propeller T-Motor pairs with the stock motor sits 10 inches under the blade line.

T-Motor is the brand of Nanchang Sanrui Intelligence Technology, which Caixin reports booked 1.075 billion yuan (about $161 million) in 2025 revenue, 48.8% of it overseas, and grew first-half 2026 revenue 68.8% to 735 million yuan. Caixin puts Hobbywing’s overseas share at 21.9% of core revenue in the first half of 2025, down from 30.1% in 2022, with Europe and the United States its main foreign markets. Neither company has posted anything about Announcement No. 49 on its news pages.

Exporters Have Three Weeks to Produce Numbers Their Spec Sheets Do Not Carry

Announcement No. 49 makes exporters declare an item’s indicators to customs and mark the form “subject to export control” when the item is listed. A part that comes close to a threshold gets the same declaration, marked “not subject to export control.” If customs doubts the numbers, the goods wait.

The companion Announcement No. 52 sets the clock on that wait: the exporter gets 7 working days to answer a query, customs 15 to decide, and the ministry another 15. A T-Motor shipment to a German cargo-drone builder, or a Hobbywing X15 order for an Australian spray fleet, therefore needs a rated speed and a rated power density on paper before November 18, whether or not the motor crosses the line.

Liu Xinyu, a partner at King & Wood Mallesons, wrote in The Paper on October 20 that the new notice also removes the drone-specific catch-all clause from the 2024 rules, while the general catch-all in Article 12 of the Export Control Law still applies to anything an exporter knows or should know is headed for military use. Companies with a working internal compliance program, an export record and stable end users may apply for general licenses.

Shipments to the United States get none of that. Since August 5, listed drone items bound for the US sit under case-by-case review with no facilitation, per Xinhua, and the new motor and blade entries join that queue on November 18.

Ukraine’s Direct Chinese Drone-Part Imports Fell From 90% to 28% Before the Rule Lands

Nearly 90% of Ukraine’s imported drone parts came directly from China in early 2024. In the first eight months of 2026 the share was 28%, according to Ukrainian customs data the AP reported on October 17. Analysts say much of the Polish and Czech volume was built in China.

The parts Ukraine burns through at scale are the ones the rule skips. A 5-inch or 7-inch FPV drone runs a 6-cell pack at about 22 volts and a motor under 100 grams, nowhere near 48 volts or 3 kilowatts, and Motor-G alone ships 200,000 of those motors a month from inside Ukraine. Oleksandr Yakovenko of TAF Industries told the AP that switching entirely to Western parts could raise costs by as much as 60% and cut production by a similar amount. The exposed Ukrainian hardware is the heavy-lift bomber class and the long-range strike drones, the aircraft that fly U15-class motors and blades past 60 inches.

Washington Is Banning the Same Chinese Motors From Its Own Side

The Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program barred Chinese-origin motors and batteries from its second round in August, and Tobyhanna Army Depot opened a motor line on June 30 that officials say can build “upwards of 500,000 motors annually.” Those are motors for small drones, not the 3-kilowatt class Beijing is licensing.

The Section 232 proclamation put tariffs of up to 100% on imported drones and components, as DroneXL broke down in August. November 18 is also the first day of the APEC leaders’ meeting in Shenzhen, the city Hobbywing calls home. The Shenzhen government lists the meeting for November 18 and 19, and the Asia Society’s account of the September White House summit says both Trump and Xi intend to attend. The trade truce the two sides extended in September runs to January 10.

DroneXL’s Take

I think the motor entry is narrower than the headlines said, and the propeller entry is the one American and European heavy-lift builders should be reading. A motor that holds 3 kilowatts per kilogram under 3,000 rpm at a continuous rating is a cargo-drone and manned-aircraft part, and the biggest off-the-shelf multirotor motors from Shenzhen and Nanchang miss it on their own test tables. A 62-inch carbon blade is on every 100-liter sprayer, and the blade test has no density escape hatch. If you build with the P-series or anything turning a propeller over 60 inches, the fix is a second blade supplier, not a lawyer.

The bigger problem is the word “rated.” T-Motor’s flagship is uncontrolled if customs reads its continuous row and uncontrolled if it reads the full-throttle row, and controlled only if it takes the power from one and the speed from the other. Nothing in the notice says which row counts, so every number customs sees on November 18 will have been chosen by the exporter in the previous three weeks, and every hold will be argued over a definition. My read is that this is the point: the ministry does not need to refuse a U15 II shipment to Munich, it only needs the right to hold it for 37 working days while it asks what “rated speed” means. Washington banned the same motors from its own procurement in August. Between the two capitals, a heavy-lift builder in Ohio has a motor it may not be able to buy from China and cannot buy from the Army at all.

Sources: Ministry of Commerce Announcement No. 49 of 2026 (via Xinhua), Hobbywing X11 Plus, Hobbywing X15, Hobbywing P-series, T-Motor U15 II KV80, DJI Agras T100, Caixin Global, Allbright Law Offices, The Paper, Xinhua, AP via Taipei Times, Army Recognition, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Shenzhen government, Asia Society Policy Institute, Nikkei Asia

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

NATO Needs Drones to Become '32 Ukraines,' Ex-UK Defense Chief Says

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:58:00 GMT

NATO should field tens of thousands of cheap air, land and sea drones along its borders so that Russia faces what amounts to 32 Ukraines, two retired heavyweights argued in The Hill on Monday. Harlan Ullman, principal author of the shock-and-awe doctrine, and Field Marshal Lord David Richards, Britain’s former chief of the defense staff, call drones the only option that can hold the alliance together as Washington shifts its forces toward homeland defense and Taiwan.

They hang the plan on NATO’s top commander. US Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich laid out a theory of victory in Poland to “blunt, block and break” a Russian attack, the authors write, in a speech they say has not been released. SHAPE, the NATO command Grynkewich runs, has the full transcript and video posted on its website.

Ullman and Richards Want Drones to Fill the Gap US Troops Leave

The op-ed in The Hill proposes stationing unmanned systems across Europe, from the UK, Norway and Finland in the north to the Baltic states, Greece, Turkey and Romania. The authors say the drones would cut demand for US troops in Europe and absorb any redeployment to Asia.

They call the plan a variant of the Porcupine Strategy they first pitched in a Telegraph column in March 2025: make any first assault so costly it would become unacceptable. “Imagine how Russia would fare against 32 Ukraines,” they write, crediting Ukraine’s drone war with holding a far larger Russian army to a standstill for nearly five years.

The authors concede that “unmanned” oversells the idea, since people still have to maintain, repair and launch every system.

Grynkewich’s Transcript Pairs Cheap Drones With High-End Strike

Grynkewich spoke at the Warsaw Security Forum on October 12, and SHAPE’s transcript runs the sequence block, blunt, break. Land forces block the first assault. Autonomous systems and sensors help blunt any follow-on push. Breaking the attack takes precision munitions layered with an “overpowering mass of affordable and scalable systems.”

That is a high-low mix, and Grynkewich used those words when asked about a two-front war. Affordable mass is one part of the theory that would look different without Ukraine’s large numbers of short- and long-range drones, he said, and NATO is still learning from Ukrainian partners. Nothing in the transcript treats drones as a replacement for troops. Asked whether American soldiers would be in the ground force, he called it ultimately a political decision, then pointed to US troops already on the Eastern Flank and said no one should question the US commitment to the alliance.

The authors’ quote also swaps the first two steps. Grynkewich said block, blunt and break, in that order, three times in the speech. An unnamed NATO spokesman called the theory “consistent with and grounded upon” the alliance’s defense plans, according to Grosswald. The detailed plans stay classified.

The Pentagon’s Europe Troop Cut Recommendation Is Due November 6

The Pentagon is weighing a cut of 25,000 or more of the roughly 80,000 US troops in Europe, possibly 40,000, NBC News reported in September. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to receive a final recommendation on November 6, Anadolu Agency reported, before any proposal goes to President Trump.

Germany, Italy and Spain, which host some of the largest US deployments, are among the countries likely to lose troops. The Army canceled a planned armored brigade rotation to Poland this spring, and a Pentagon spokesman called the 5,000-troop surge that followed a temporary delay of the plan to cut Europe’s brigade combat teams from four to three, Military Times reported.

The US Army’s own drone unit in Europe is gone too. The 173rd Airborne Brigade’s drone assault battalion at Grafenwoehr went back to airborne infantry work on September 13, less than three weeks before Germany announced a 600-soldier drone regiment of its own.

DroneXL’s Take

Ullman and Richards are right that Europe needs cheap mass, and fast. I don’t like how they’re selling it. Pitching drones as a way to need fewer American troops makes them a consolation prize for Europe. Ukraine’s drone war runs on trained operators and a domestic industry that keeps redesigning what they fly, and Europe would have to build and pay for both.

Grynkewich’s version is more honest about it. He wants cheap drones on top of the high-end force, not in place of it, and he credits Ukraine for teaching NATO how to do it. The op-ed calls the lessons of Ukraine largely unique to that war in one paragraph and tells NATO to become 32 Ukraines in another, and those two claims don’t fit together.

The test comes after November 6. If the Pentagon pulls 25,000 troops and Europe answers with drone orders but no new operators, the alliance ends up with fewer soldiers and more hardware, which is the opposite of what Grynkewich described in Warsaw.

Sources: The Hill, SHAPE, Anadolu Agency, Military Times.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Army Apaches Train to Kill Shaheds, but the Newest Ones Outrun Them

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:09:00 GMT

U.S. Army AH-64E Apache crews from the 2-159th Attack Battalion, the “Gunslingers,” spent October 5 and 6 shooting target drones out of the sky over the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany. The exercise, Operation Skyfall II, trained attack helicopter crews to hunt the propeller-driven one-way attack drones known as Shaheds. The New York Times reported on the drills Monday.

In June an Apache went down over the Strait of Hormuz after an Iranian drone struck it, and a Navy sea drone pulled both crew from the water. The crews who flew Skyfall II say a jet-powered Shahed is out of their reach.

A Ground Radar Found the Drones Before the Apaches Fired

In Skyfall II, a ground radar found the drones and the helicopters killed them. An AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar from the 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment tracked MQM-170 Outlaw drones and passed each track through a tactical operations center to the crews, who destroyed three on October 6.

That handoff was the point of the test, according to the Army’s account of Skyfall II. The first Skyfall, in March, showed an Apache could engage a drone using ground sensor data, and the second gave crews more shots at it. The Sentinel sees threats farther out than the Apache’s own sensors, which gives the helicopter an earlier warning and lets the air defenders’ operations center confirm each kill. Lt. Col. John Verwiel, who commands the air defense battalion, said his crews send the track’s position in time and space “so the Apache pilot knows exactly where the track is.”

The Outlaw, built by Griffon Aerospace, is a propeller target with a wingspan of about 11 feet (3.3 meters), flown from the ground by a pilot with a radio controller. On one flight, the Times reports, a single crew took out all four drones launched.

An Apache fires its 30mm chain gun on October 6 while a Sentinel radar of the 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade tracks the target in the foreground. Photo credit: Sgt. Luis Garcia, U.S. Army

The Apache’s 30mm Gun Is the Cheap Shot Air Defenders Want

The Apache’s 30mm cannon rounds are among the cheapest ammunition in Army inventories, the Times reports. Verwiel said nations are building drones and the ability to launch them all at once. His answer to that mass is to bring every system he can, the helicopter included.

The crews fired in 20-round bursts, Stars and Stripes reported, and the Times says they used steel training rounds, not the explosive rounds they would carry into combat. “If we had our go-to-war load, it would be a lot easier,” Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jarrad Walter, one of the pilots, told the Times. A round designed for this job already exists. The Army live-fire tested the proximity-fuzed XM1225 APEX for the Apache’s M230 cannon at Yuma Proving Ground last December, as DroneXL reported in February. It bursts near a drone instead of needing a direct hit.

A Drone Struck the Apache Lost Over Hormuz

An Iranian drone struck the Army Apache that crashed near the Strait of Hormuz on June 8, a U.S. investigation found, Axios reported the next day. The investigation had not determined whether the drone targeted the helicopter or collided with it by accident.

Experts have debated whether that Shahed could hunt a moving helicopter, the Times reports. It may have carried targeting technology like that on Russia’s more advanced drones. The boat that pulled them out was a Saronic Corsair, in a rescue that took years of preparation. The Times also reports that Iranian Shaheds have caused almost all American deaths in the war with Iran to date.

Jet-Powered Shaheds Fly Faster Than the Apache Can Chase

Speed sets the Apache’s limit against the newest Shaheds. Boeing lists the AH-64E’s top level speed at just over 150 knots (173 mph), while Russia’s jet-powered Geran-4 flies at up to 310 mph (500 km/h), according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. A radar track does not close that gap.

“It’s really the speed that’s a factor for us,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Cody Schoonover, the battalion’s master gunner, who told the Times a jet-engined drone is out of the ballpark for a helicopter. Russia built the Geran-4 because Ukraine’s $2,000 interceptor drones got good enough to force a redesign, Ukrainian intelligence said in May. Ukraine still flies Soviet-era Mi-8 helicopters against the propeller Shaheds, the Times reports, and it has started testing helicopters as launchers for drone interceptors aimed at the jet variants.

The pilots expect a smaller job for the Apache. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Weisskopf said, Apaches could loiter over a battle for hours. Now they would have to rush in undetected, hit a target and leave. “We’re not envisioning these at the front,” he said. The front is where a Ukrainian unit this month released video of an FPV drone hitting a Russian attack helicopter, the Times reports.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d put the Army’s counter-drone money behind the Sentinel and the handoff it runs. Skyfall II showed a ground radar can pass a track to a shooter in the air, and that handoff can feed any shooter the Army has. The Apaches are already in Europe and their 30mm rounds are cheap, so turning them on slow propeller Shaheds costs little extra, and Apaches have already flown against one-way attack drones over the Strait of Hormuz this year. Jet drones are a harder problem for everyone. Ukraine’s quad interceptors top out around 196 mph (315 km/h), well short of the Geran-4’s 310 mph. Russia will keep redesigning, so the shooter at the end of the chain will keep changing, and the sensors and data links are the part worth building to last. The Apache is one of those shooters for now, in the role its own crews describe, away from the front.

Sources: The New York Times, U.S. Army via DVIDS, Stars and Stripes, Boeing, Axios.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FEMA's Olympic Counter-Drone Money Gives Host California 46% Less

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 18:23:00 GMT

The White House Task Force on the 2028 Summer Olympics is gathering federal counter-drone officials, state and local agencies and drone-security vendors at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on November 9. The forum lands one week before states have to apply for the second $250 million round of FEMA’s counter-drone grants, due November 16 at 5 p.m. Eastern.

This round is the first open to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories, and FEMA wrote the Los Angeles Games into its priorities, down to the torch relay. California, home of the Games, gets $18,665,396. In the World Cup round last December, it got $34,591,628.

Guaranteed Minimums Claim 70% of the Olympic Round

California’s share shrank because this round has to reach 56 jurisdictions instead of 12. Every state, Puerto Rico and D.C. is guaranteed $3,325,000, and four smaller territories at least $760,000 each. Those floors add up to $175.94 million, which leaves $74.06 million for FEMA’s risk formula.

That remainder follows the DHS terrorism risk methodology and how DHS Science and Technology reviewers score the effectiveness of each state’s projects. California’s $15.3 million above its floor is the largest slice, ahead of New York at $10.6 million and Texas at $7.2 million, according to FEMA’s allocation table. Vermont gets the smallest state award, $3,414,026.

The first round worked the other way. FEMA split $250 million among 11 states hosting or supporting World Cup matches and the National Capital Region, and California’s $34.6 million was the largest award, ahead of Texas at $30.3 million, as DroneXL reported in January when Missouri’s $14.24 million share surfaced. Both rounds come from the same $500 million that Congress put in the July 2025 reconciliation law.

The Forum Puts Five Federal Drone Officials in a Room With 2,000 Buyers and Sellers

DRONERESPONDERS and the Commercial Drone Alliance co-host the November 9 event with the White House task force. Organizers expect about 2,000 attendees, up from the more than 400 the first edition drew in November 2025 under the World Cup task force.

The event page lists Nicholas Forni, deputy executive director of the Olympics task force; Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401; Brian Reed, director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council; Steven Willoughby, executive director of the DHS program executive office for drones and counter-drone systems; and Reuben Coleman, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group. Homeland Security Today listed the second $250 million tranche among the forum’s topics.

Registration is free for public safety and government personnel. Companies apply to exhibit, and a private meeting room for the day costs $15,000. Each state’s allocation is already published. Vendors get a day with the agencies that will decide what that money buys, a week before the applications are due.

FEMA Wants Grant-Bought Jammers Working Olympic-Class Events 80% of the Time

The notice of funding opportunity sets a target that 80% of mitigation systems bought with this money protect the Olympics, the torch relay, or other National Special Security Events and SEAR-rated events. Only 20% of their use should go to events without national significance.

Mitigation means mobile jammers, radio-frequency protocol manipulation and command injection or cyber takeover systems, and only categories on the federal Authorized Technologies List qualify. Fixed mitigation equipment is not allowed. DHS Science and Technology reviewers score each state’s projects after award, with two big categories: up to 40 points for supporting a named event of national significance between 2027 and 2029, and up to 30 for mobile mitigation tied to a specific list entry.

Buying a jammer and switching it on are separate steps. Under the Safer Skies Act rules, only an accredited law enforcement or correctional agency can operate one, and only through officers holding the FBI’s mitigation certification, which is taught in person at the bureau’s Redstone Arsenal school and nowhere else. An agency can apply while its officers are still enrolled in or scheduled for the course. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in October that the school will more than double its capacity, without saying what the current capacity is. The lower detection-and-warning certificate is a free online course with no waitlist, and the government expects about 1,500 agencies to hold it within two years.

As a condition of the award, any agency buying detection hardware, software or data services with this money must give DHS access to the detection events, flight tracks, sensor metadata and Remote ID or other identifier information the system collects, to support what FEMA calls nationwide low-altitude air domain awareness.

The notice adds that the Justice, Energy and War departments, the FAA, the FCC and NTIA may also request data from recipients. Agencies report back at close-out with each sensor’s make and model, hours in use, detections, distinct drones identified and criminal investigations opened from what the systems found.

One of FEMA’s long-term targets is to launch criminal investigations on 100% of identified violations where an operator endangers the public, violates established airspace restrictions or uses a drone in another crime.

DroneXL’s Take

The detection money is easy to defend. Radar finds the aircraft. A Remote ID receiver tells an officer where the pilot is standing. After the World Cup, Willoughby told reporters that federal teams talked to nearly every operator whose drone was seized, since intent is never known until someone asks.

FEMA’s scorecard points somewhere else. A program goal of a criminal investigation for every airspace violation counts cases opened as success, and every close-out report has to tally them. Federal agencies seized more than 700 drones at the World Cup and arrested about a dozen people, and I suspect that ratio means most violators were careless rather than dangerous, the hobbyist who wandered into a TFR with a Mini. FEMA’s separate goal of sorting 90% of detected drones into commercial, recreational or malicious is the right instinct, and I’d grade the whole program on threats stopped and pilots educated. A pilot who busts an Olympic or torch relay TFR in 2028 should assume a county sensor logged the Remote ID and that the case count is part of how the program gets judged.

Sources: FEMA FY 2027 C-UAS Grant Program NOFO, FEMA Tranche 2 Fact Sheet, FEMA C-UAS Grant Program, DRONERESPONDERS, Homeland Security Today.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Tekever Sells Drones to US Special Operations but Won't Say Which

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 17:53:00 GMT

Tekever, the Portuguese-British maker of AI-driven surveillance drones, said Monday that U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has bought its uncrewed aircraft systems. The purchase followed validation and acceptance testing, with flights at several locations.

The customer is the only detail Tekever named. Its announcement says the number, model and configuration of the aircraft are not being disclosed, and it gives no contract value. It is datelined Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Tekever’s U.S. office.

Nineteen months ago, Tekever put an aircraft through an exercise with SOCOM in California, and that time it named the model.

Tekever Ran Its AR3 Through a SOCOM Exercise at Camp Roberts in 2025

The only Tekever drone named in the company’s announcements of work with SOCOM is the AR3. Tekever said in March 2025 that it had completed an operational exercise with the command at Camp Roberts, California, with the AR3 at the center and operating in a contested electronic warfare environment.

That March 2025 release pitched the AR3 on vertical takeoff and landing, which removes the need for separate launch or recovery equipment, and on a low acoustic and visual signature. Its swappable payloads included electro-optical and infrared cameras, radar and signals intelligence sensors.

Tekever's AR3 with its vertical-takeoff lift rotors fitted. Photo credit: TEKEVER

The current version, the AR3 EVO, weighs up to 55 pounds (25 kg) at takeoff, or 66 pounds (30 kg) in its VTOL setup. Tekever’s product page lists up to 22 hours of endurance as a pure fixed-wing and 14 as a VTOL, a 13-pound (6 kg) payload, a 46-knot cruise and a datalink range of up to 143 miles (230 km). It lands in a 16-by-16-foot (5 by 5 meter) space.

Monday’s USSOCOM announcement describes a “highly deployable” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system with a modular mix of aircraft, payloads, communications and AI mission software. Tekever uses the same modular language for the larger AR5, the aircraft behind the British Army’s new surveillance program. The AR5 needs an airstrip, even an unprepared one, so “highly deployable” fits the VTOL AR3 better. Tekever has not said which model SOCOM bought.

Tekever Opened Its Fayetteville Office Five Months Before the Announcement

Tekever opened its first U.S. office in Fayetteville on May 18, the first day of SOF Week in Tampa, where it was due to exhibit at the NATO DIANA booth. Fayetteville sits next to Fort Bragg, home of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and the office supports U.S. end users.

When DroneXL covered Tekever’s $74 million round in November 2024, U.S. expansion was the pitch. SOCOM is now the fourth government customer Tekever has announced since August. The Portuguese Air Force ordered AR5s on August 11, and Tekever signed the British Army’s CORVUS contract, worth up to £400 million ($530 million), on September 16. On October 13 it said the Bundeswehr had taken delivery of its first Tekever system, a heavy-lift aircraft, as it opened a German headquarters in Munich.

In between, Tekever announced the first close of a $580 million Series D at a $6.4 billion valuation, led by the University of California’s investment office and Baillie Gifford. CEO Ricardo Mendes called the SOCOM buy “an important milestone in a relationship that has been built over time.”

DroneXL’s Take

Washington now holds two opinions about drones like Tekever’s. SOCOM tested the company’s aircraft and bought them. The FCC put every foreign-made drone on its Covered List in December, with Chairman Brendan Carr saying they “pose an unacceptable national security risk,” and in July it proposed banning imports and sales of foreign drones it calls military-grade to any buyer outside the federal government. Thermal imaging puts a drone in that category, and the AR3’s payloads include infrared cameras. The proposal carves out imports for federal use, so SOCOM’s purchase is untouched. A U.S. pipeline operator or a county sheriff who wanted the same aircraft would need an exemption, such as a Blue UAS listing or a Conditional Approval from the Department of War. My read is that the risk lives in the airframe and its supply chain, not in the buyer’s letterhead. If the Department of War trusts Tekever’s drones with special operations surveillance, it should tell the FCC whether a civilian buyer can trust them too.

Sources: Tekever, Tekever (Camp Roberts exercise), Tekever (North Carolina office), Tekever (Germany), Resilience Media

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

BA's 'Four Toasters' Drone Is an Unknown Object in the Airprox Report

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 17:38:00 GMT

A British Airways Boeing 777 climbing out of Heathrow on June 24 reported a shiny silver object passing no more than 50 feet (15 meters) above its right wing, and The Independent reported it on October 26 as a drone “the size of four toasters.” The UK Airprox Board, which reviewed the report at its September 16 meeting, did not call it a drone. It filed the object as unknown.

The crew saw it at 5,800 feet (1,768 meters), about 4 nautical miles (7.4 km) northeast of Guildford, on a departure to New York. NATS, the UK air traffic service, found no radar contact for it. Of the 13 drone and unknown-object reports the Board assessed that month, this is the only one it rated Category A, its highest collision-risk grade.

Airprox Board Rates the BA Encounter Category A Without Identifying the Object

The Board’s September 2026 report lists Airprox 2026127, the BA departure, as a B777 against an “Unk Obj” and grades it Category A. On the object itself, the Board said it was “unable to determine the nature of the unknown object.”

That grade means the Board found providence played a major part or a definite collision risk existed. The crew reported 50 feet of vertical separation and gave no horizontal distance.

Eight of the 13 reports in the same batch got the Board’s standard drone finding, that the description was enough to indicate the object “could have been a drone,” but this one did not.

The pilot’s written report calls the object “likely a mid-size drone” that passed “in the opposite direction, very fast.” The fuller description came over the radio. The London controller’s account says the crew described it as probably silver, metallic and reflective, and gave the four-toasters size when the controller asked how big it was. The report logs the sighting at 12:08 UTC, which was 1:08 p.m. in London.

British Airways told The Independent the crew did not need to take any action to avoid the object and the flight reached New York as planned. Its statement opened with “We take matters such as these extremely seriously,” nearly word for word what the airline was reported as saying after a 2023 Mumbai flight’s drone report.

The Same Airprox Batch Shows Crews Confusing Foil Balloons and Drones

Silver, metallic and reflective also describes a foil party balloon, and two other crews in the September batch raised that possibility. A Cessna 172 pilot near Lee Valley Reservoir first took a drone for “a metallic helium balloon.” An airliner crew near Rochdale could not rule one out.

The Board gave the Cessna sighting its drone finding because that pilot got close enough to see rotors and lights. It filed the Rochdale object as unknown, the verdict it also gave the BA sighting.

The crew’s “very fast” does not settle it either way, because a hovering drone and a drifting balloon would both pass a climbing airliner at close to the airliner’s own speed. The Independent’s headline has the drone “hovering” over the plane, while its own story, like the crew’s report, describes an object passing in the opposite direction.

In 2021 an Envoy Air crew leaving Chicago O’Hare told controllers “I believe we hit a drone,” and the FAA later concluded it was a party balloon. In April 2023 a Finnair crew near Heathrow reported a round, purple and turquoise object as a drone passing under their A320 at 3,000 feet (914 meters), an identification DroneXL questioned at the time.

DroneXL’s Take

The Airprox Board did its job here: it wrote down what the crew saw, graded the risk on what they reported and declined to name something nobody identified. The crew called it a likely drone, and the coverage dropped the “likely” and put “drone” in the headline.

Drones do get flown where they have no business being. In the same batch an Airbus A319 crew 14 nautical miles (26 km) east of Heathrow described a dark grey four-rotor drone with black rotors at 3,750 feet (1,143 meters). That crew saw rotors, which is more than the BA crew reported, and my read is that a stray foil balloon explains every word of the BA crew’s description at least as well as a drone does. DroneXL raised similar doubts about a British Airways 787 report over Windsor in 2023. Until someone produces better evidence than a silver, reflective object moving very fast at 5,800 feet, I’d call it what the Board called it: an unknown object.

Sources: UK Airprox Board, Monthly Meeting September 2026, The Independent.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Army Calls Its Drone Demand 'Artificial.' Makers Want A Year Of Orders

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 17:22:00 GMT

The Army’s small-drone manufacturing lead says the Pentagon is trying to “artificially induce” demand so that American companies will build a domestic drone supply chain. Jon Strzelec holds that job at Army Materiel Command, and the Army is the largest single buyer of small drones in the U.S. military.

The companies on the receiving end are split. Skydio says the signal is strong. Performance Drone Works CEO James Slider says he still needs to see sustained orders, and he put a number on it: one award, then 1,000 drones a month for a year.

That is 12,000 drones from one award. The largest base order in Gauntlet I of the Drone Dominance Program, the Pentagon’s flagship small-drone buy that DroneXL has tracked since its first results in March, was 2,560 drones, due within four and a half months.

Gauntlet Orders Are Sized In Months, Not The Year Slider Wants

Gauntlet I split 30,000 drones among 11 winners, from 1,520 for Farage Precision to 4,960 for Neros including bonus orders, the program’s leaderboard shows. No winner reached half of Slider’s 12,000. Six of the 11 got bonus orders on top of their base orders.

“We need to see sustained, normalized demand,” Slider told Breaking Defense. The program’s delivery terms run the other way. Gauntlet I winners had to ship half their base orders within two and a half months and the rest within four and a half. At that pace even the 2,560-drone order averaged under 600 drones a month, for less than half a year.

Gauntlet II in August was bigger: 30,000 drones in each of two missions, with orders of 8,000 down to 4,000 for the top five. Neros placed on both boards and announced a combined 14,000-drone order covering both missions, the only Gauntlet award that clears Slider’s 12,000, and only by adding two placements together. At the roughly 1,200 Archers a week Neros said it was building when it closed its Series C in August, that order is under three months of output. The leaderboard also says quantities are set at contract award and that awards are not guaranteed.

PDW is not on either leaderboard. It competed in Gauntlet I and is listed among the companies that did not rank, and it took part in the Phase 2 Qualifier at Camp Grayling, Michigan, but was not among the 19 companies advanced to Gauntlet II, according to the program’s participant page. PDW holds Army contracts for reconnaissance drones like the C100, and on July 31 it signed a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million with the Office of Strategic Capital to build drone component capacity. That loan would fund capacity. Slider’s question is who orders the drones.

The Army Says It Is Inducing Demand Because Many Makers Won’t Invest Without It

Army officials describe the Gauntlets as a deliberate push, not a steady market. Strzelec said many companies tell the Army there isn’t enough demand to justify building a U.S. supply chain, so the department is trying to force one to stand up by creating that demand itself.

Andrew Evans, who directs the Strategy and Transformation Office in the Army’s G-2 intelligence directorate, said the department’s challenge is keeping production lines open even when demand falls between buys. “How do you incentivize industry to build if your ordering period is so episodic?” Evans said.

The program was built that way, as repeated smaller deals adding up to $1 billion over two years. Skycutter won Gauntlet I with 99.3 points and fell to fourth on Gauntlet II’s Deep Strike board. Neros’s Gauntlet I bonus orders included 800 drones it picked up from rivals that missed their deadline. The same structure that rewards delivery leaves a company with no guaranteed follow-on order between rounds.

Skydio Hears A Strong Signal, While AeroVironment Wants Steady Awards

Skydio sells across the federal government and reads the market differently. Chief Revenue Officer Callan Carpenter said on October 13 that demand is strong at the Department of War, Homeland Security and civilian agencies, and that Skydio sells into all of them.

“The demand signals are very strong, and it’s not just DOW either,” Carpenter said.

Skydio does not appear on the Drone Dominance Program’s participant or leaderboard pages, and its biggest Army order came outside the program. The Army placed a $52 million order for more than 2,500 X10D drones in March, which Skydio called the largest single-vendor small drone buy in Army history.

Chad Chasteen, who leads Army business development at AeroVironment, said during a panel at the AUSA conference the same day that the Army’s habit of switching solutions every year or two throws the supply chain into disorder. He wants continuous orders to follow continuous competitions, not rounds of white papers. “There is no supply without demand,” Chasteen said.

John Burer, CEO of the American Center for Manufacturing & Innovation, said he would not invest ahead of a large budget or a consistent signal if he made drones. Slider said he does not expect much more private equity to flow into the sector without stronger commitments.

The $54.6 Billion That Would Answer Slider Is Stuck In Reconciliation

The money Slider says would change his read, $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, Replicator’s successor, in the Pentagon’s FY27 budget request, has not been appropriated, and most of it rides on a reconciliation package Congress has not passed.

Slider said seeing DAWG money flow down to companies would be very encouraging, even if it lands in the base budget at those levels. For now, he said, the answer on whether that money arrives changes with whoever he talks to.

Congress holds the other open piece too. The four-star Autonomous Warfare Command Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered on September 30 needs legislation before it can stand up, and his memo set no budget line for it.

DroneXL’s Take

Strzelec is right to call the signal artificial, and I give the Army credit for saying so plainly. Moving undelivered drones to companies that did ship is merit-based competition, and it beats picking a winner once and living with it for a decade.

PDW didn’t rank in Gauntlet I or reach Gauntlet II, so Slider has a stake in how the Pentagon buys. His number still holds up. A thousand drones a month is roughly a fifth of what Neros says its line already builds, so Slider isn’t asking for Neros-scale volume, only for it to last. In two rounds and 90,000 drones, one company has cleared his 12,000, by combining two placements, and that order still covers less than three months of its own production. My read is that the Gauntlets can keep choosing the best drone every six months, but they can’t give anyone a year of production on their own. Appropriated DAWG money can. Until Congress passes it, I’d give Slider’s skepticism more weight than Skydio’s optimism, because Skydio’s biggest Army order didn’t come out of a Gauntlet.

Sources: Breaking Defense, Drone Dominance Program leaderboard and participant list.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Antigravity A1 on a Watch and Ring, Plus the New RC the US Can't Buy

Russ 51 Drones — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 16:55:00 GMT

I left the goggles and the motion controller at home to fly the Antigravity A1 360 camera drone with the new Follow Me Bundle. It comes with a watch you can fly the drone with and a gesture control ring, and after about a month with it, this has been one of the most fun ways I have ever used this drone.

Antigravity sent me the bundle and sponsored the video. I’ve also been flying the company’s new remote controller for the A1, which, as of the making of my video, you can’t buy in the United States.

The Ring and Watch Steer the A1 Wherever You Move Your Hand

Gesture control uses the ring and the watch together, so both have to be on the same hand. It works in every flight mode except manual. You hold the ring’s button, the watch vibrates to tell you it’s connected, and the A1 goes wherever your hand goes.

I started in Deep Track, which you pick in the lower left corner of the watch. I set it to forwards so the drone stays in front of me, hit start, and it counts down 3, 2, 1. Then I had to correct myself, because you don’t need to be in Deep Track for gesture control. Orbit or any of the other modes work too. You don’t even need the ring: in any mode, you can engage gesture control on the right-hand side of the watch and steer with just the watch.

Move your hand left, and the drone moves left. Hold the button and lower or raise your hand to bring it down or up. To bring the drone closer, hold the button and turn your wrist in. Turn it the other way, and it backs away from you.

Once I start walking, the drone takes a few seconds to figure out where I’m going, then swings around in front of me and follows. You don’t have to hit record in Deep Track, because it records while it follows. The watch face shows a live preview from the drone, plus battery, signal strength and everything else you’d see on a normal controller.

The Watch Flies 12 Modes, and Deep Track Is the One Most People Will Use

The watch flies the A1 in 12 flight modes, and Deep Track, which is basically follow me, is the one I think most people will use with this bundle. You can change the direction and the distance in it and in every other mode.

Some of the modes are really cool, and some I don’t see the need for. Manual mode lets you fly up and down, forwards and backwards from the watch and steer a little with your finger. It’s useful for fine-tuning where the drone sits, but it’s not very convenient, and I don’t think many people will use it.

Orbit Follow circles you and keeps the same distance even while you walk. Cycling Track and Ski Track are designed to keep up with you on a bike or skiing downhill. Fly Away is a dronie: the drone goes out in front of you and backs up. Antigravity Line sends the drone out from you, over you and back, and I really don’t know what that one’s for.

Ascend, otherwise known as rocket mode, starts in front of you and goes straight up while it keeps its focus on you. Oval Orbit circles you in more of an egg shape. Spiral Ascent is like a tornado, circling you while it gradually climbs. Arc Shot flies away from you, comes back toward you, arcs around you and stops behind you, and Arc Out arcs around you and then flies away.

Obstacle avoidance stays engaged in all of these modes. If the A1 comes up to a tree or a building, it stops the flight mode and just hovers there.

The A1 Followed Me Down a Wooded Trail Where It Got Stuck Last Year

With the bundle’s prop guards on, the A1 followed me down the same wooded trail where it got stuck a few times last year and I had to go retrieve it, and this time I never had to fetch it once, even through really thin branches.

The A1 with the Follow Me Bundle's prop guards on the wooded trail. Photo credit: Russ 51 Drones

It paused a few times. I just kept walking, and it eventually found me, caught up and kept following. I don’t know if a firmware update improved the obstacle avoidance or if the watch and ring give it a better connection, but it follows so much better now.

The A1’s obstacle avoidance works really well, and the prop guards cover the little things it can’t see. They protect most of the drone. A hit can still hurt the lens if the drone lands on top of it, but thankfully the A1 has replaceable lenses.

People really don’t consider the A1 a tracking drone. I didn’t either, because most of the time I fly it as an FPV drone or for the 360-degree immersive experience, the way I did in my first hands-on. Deep Track was okay before, and with the watch and ring it’s great. A lot of people don’t want a grip controller or goggles but still want a 360 drone they can fly normally, and I think this opens the A1 up to them.

The Watch, Ring and Guards Come as a Kit for Existing A1 Owners

You don’t have to buy another drone to get the watch and the ring. Antigravity’s Follow Me Bundle page has the bundle with the A1 included. A separate accessory kit, with the watch, ring, prop guards and landing pad, is for people who already own one.

The landing pad is really cool, and I think every drone company should do this. The drone recognizes it and asks if you want to land there, and you hold the red button on the controller or on your watch to set it down right on the pad.

Antigravity advertises a maximum range of about 650 feet (200 meters) with the watch. I haven’t tried to fly it that far, because in Deep Track you’re usually 50 or 100 feet away at most. Around trees and buildings, I get 200 to 300 feet before I start to see any trouble, so the range might be better than what I’ve been getting.

The watch and ring are rated for 5 hours: 5 hours of Deep Track on the watch, and 5 hours of the ring being on. I’ve been flying this for a month and haven’t charged the watch yet, though I’m guessing I haven’t flown 5 hours total. I’ve charged the ring once.

With the prop guards on, the A1 weighs more than 250 grams. If you fly it that way, you might have to register it with whatever your governing authority is, so check your local guidelines.

If you’re new to the A1, the goggles bundle is also a great way to start, and Antigravity has a local repair and return policy in the United States. My first flight tutorial walks you through that setup.

Antigravity’s A1 Remote Controller Is Finally Here, Just Not in the US

People have asked for a regular remote since the A1 shipped with only the motion controller, and Antigravity’s RC is finally here. As of my video, it’s available just about everywhere except the United States, including Canada, so if you live near the border, you can drive up.

It’s very good quality, with about the same build feel as the motion controller, just heavier because it’s bigger. It’s not a toy. It feels like any other RC controller I’ve used over the past 10 years, and because of muscle memory, flying the A1 this way has been so much fun. You start the motors with the sticks down and in.

The goggles give you two viewing modes. Fixed view is how most people will want to fly with this controller: the goggles view faces the direction the drone is traveling, and it feels like flying an FPV drone. Hit record and it still captures 360 degrees. With the grip controller you can only fly forwards and pick your point of view later. With the RC, you can fly the A1 backwards and laterally.

Free view works like the grip controller, where you fly one direction and move your head to look all around. It’s quite disorienting, so I wouldn’t do it on a regular basis, but it’s a fun way to share the view: put the goggles on someone else and keep the drone close enough that you know which way it’s going. Most of the time, I’d leave it in fixed view.

If you have the A1, are you going to get the Follow Me Bundle? If you don’t, does it change your opinion about the drone? Let me know in the comments on the video. Thank you again to Antigravity for sending me the bundle and sponsoring the video.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Russ 51 Drones. Watch the full video on the 51 Drones YouTube channel, and find more of Russ’s work on his DroneXL author page.

Unusual Machines' New Battery Unit May Use Cells From China's Tenpower

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 16:51:00 GMT

Update, October 26: Upgrade Energy CEO Matthew Barnard responded to this article publicly on LinkedIn. He said Upgrade manufactures its batteries in the U.S. and gives customers with NDAA-related sourcing requirements verification documentation where applicable. For customers without those restrictions, he said, Upgrade keeps several qualified cell suppliers for redundancy, availability and pricing, and “using internationally sourced components does not inherently conflict with U.S. manufacturing.” He said the article implied wrongdoing without establishing any. DroneXL has no evidence that any pack sold to a defense customer contained Tenpower cells. We have renamed the earn-out section and removed one sentence about the merger agreement.

Unusual Machines closed its acquisition of Upgrade Energy, a drone battery pack maker in Torrance, California, on October 19, in a deal worth up to $52 million. Upgrade’s online store says its RED V4 high-power packs may be built with Amprius, Tenpower or Reliance cells, “depending on availability at the time of production.” Tenpower is a battery maker headquartered in China.

Unusual Machines bills itself as a provider of NDAA-compliant drone components. In the merger agreement, Upgrade promised that no battery it supplies for government drones would make the aircraft a covered system, and that it collects country-of-origin attestations from its cell suppliers. Prepared Senate testimony said the second phase of the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program would ban systems with batteries from covered countries. The store listings don’t say which cell ends up in which customer’s pack.

Upgrade’s RED V4 Line Is The Only One With A Tenpower Option

Eight RED V4 listings on Upgrade’s store name three possible cells: the Amprius SA124, Tenpower 50XG and Reliance RS50. Tenpower is Jiangsu Tenpower Lithium, a cylindrical cell maker headquartered in Zhangjiagang, China, with a second plant in Malaysia. The listings don’t say where Upgrade’s 50XG cells are made.

The other 31 packs in the store each name a single cell. The GOLD and GREEN lines use Amprius silicon-anode cells (SA08, SA10 and SA03), and the RED V3 packs use Molicel P30B and P50B cells from Taiwan’s E-One Moli Energy. The RED V4 listings went up on May 28, 17 days after Unusual Machines announced the deal and nearly five months before it owned Upgrade. They were still listed on October 26.

An Upgrade Energy Dark Lithium Gold Series pack, which the store lists with Amprius SA08 cells. Image credit: Upgrade Energy

None of the 50 product listings on Upgrade’s store on October 26 mentions the NDAA or where a cell was made. The homepage says the packs are “Assembled in the US” and tells program buyers to contact the company for configuration-specific compliance documents. The pack labels in its product photos read “Manufactured in the USA,” and an undated Upgrade profile in Commercial UAV News’ supplier directory calls the packs fully NDAA-compliant.

An Amprius cell isn’t automatically an American cell either. Amprius CEO Tom Stepien told CNBC in September that the company still has cells made in China. It builds through a South Korean contract manufacturer and a U.S. partner, Nanotech Energy, for cylindrical cells like the 21700-format SA124, as I reported when Amprius won a grant of up to $75 million.

Upgrade Promised Its Government-Bound Batteries Won’t Make A Covered Drone

The merger agreement has Upgrade represent that no battery or component it supplies for drones bought by the Department of War or other federal agencies would make the aircraft a Covered UAS. Upgrade also said it keeps bills of materials and supplier attestations to back that up.

Another section says Upgrade collects country-of-origin and component provenance attestations from suppliers of battery cells and other critical parts. The exceptions to those promises sit in Schedule 3.27, which isn’t public. A separate schedule lists Upgrade’s “written remediation and transition plan” and supplier attestations for battery products likely to end up in government drones.

Barnard Can Collect Up To $26 Million More If Upgrade Tops $10 Million

Founder Matthew Barnard got 1,792,012 Unusual Machines shares, valued at about $25 million at $13.95 a share, and $1 million in cash at closing, the company’s October 23 filing shows, and he collects up to $26 million more if Upgrade’s revenue tops $10 million in a 12-month window.

The agreement counts Upgrade’s sales to Unusual Machines and its affiliates as revenue for the earn-out. The first window opened on the signing date, May 7, 2026, and runs to early May 2027, while the earn-out statements count revenue from the October 19 closing, about 200 days. If Upgrade misses in year one, year two pays pro rata, and the agreement’s own example puts $9 million of revenue at a $23.4 million payout. Barnard now runs Upgrade on a two-year employment agreement at a $300,000 base salary. Upgrade had about 30 engineering and production staff when the deal was announced in May.

Unusual Machines announced a $16.9 million Powerus order for motors, batteries, cameras and video transmitters on October 22, three days after closing. The release doesn’t say whether Upgrade builds those batteries. Unusual Machines disclosed a $30 million equity investment in Powerus in June, the drone roll-up Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump backed in March. Trump Jr. joined Unusual Machines’ advisory board in November 2024, as DroneXL reported. Unusual Machines’ largest customer, unnamed in its Q2 shareholder letter, accounted for about 42% of $16.7 million in second-quarter revenue.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d argue a battery pack is only as American as the cells inside it. When Beijing ordered Dongguan Poweramp to stop supplying Skydio in 2024, America’s largest drone maker had to ration batteries and expected no new supplier until spring 2025.

A commercial FPV pack with a Tenpower cell breaks no law, and 31 of Upgrade’s 39 packs name a single Molicel or Amprius cell. My problem is the RED V4 listing. A buyer can’t tell from it which of three cells they’ll get, while the label on the photo reads “Manufactured in the USA” and Upgrade’s directory profile calls the packs fully NDAA-compliant. I think that’s the wrong default for a battery maker whose new parent sells NDAA compliance.

The merger agreement shows Upgrade already tracks cell origin for products bound for government buyers, so putting it on the public listing costs little. Unusual Machines reports third-quarter results on November 5, and that call is the first chance to hear CEO Allan Evans say which cells go into the packs it sells to defense customers.

Sources: Unusual Machines 8-K, October 23, 2026, Merger agreement, May 2026, Upgrade Energy, Unusual Machines Q2 2026 shareholder letter, Powerus order announcement, Battery-Tech.net, Commercial UAV News.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Purdue's "From Scratch" Drone Flies on a Hong Kong Lab's Planner

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 14:14:00 GMT

Purdue University associate professor of computer science Aniket Bera posted a 44-second video on LinkedIn on Friday evening, October 23, of an autonomous drone following a person through a forest with no GPS and no prior map. His post says his IDEAS Lab “developed every layer of this autonomous drone from scratch.”

Two reposts of the clip on X passed 1.7 million views combined by Monday. Frame by frame, the video’s own telemetry overlay labels the drone’s motion planner as SUPER and its altitude estimate as FAST-LIO. Both are open-source packages from the University of Hong Kong, and the video doesn’t say whether the lab modified them.

SUPER and FAST-LIO Come From the University of Hong Kong’s MaRS Lab

SUPER is the motion planner that Fu Zhang’s MaRS Lab at the University of Hong Kong published in Science Robotics on January 29, 2025, with its code under the LGPL-3.0 license. FAST-LIO, the label on the altitude trace, is the same lab’s LiDAR-inertial odometry package, released under GPL-2.0.

A frame from Bera's video. The speed chart reads "SUPER commanded" and the height chart "altitude vs take-off (FAST-LIO)." Image credit: Aniket Bera, Purdue IDEAS Lab

In Bera’s video, the LiDAR map legend also reads “SUPER cmd,” and the mode bands on the charts are Stabilized, Position and Offboard, the standard flight modes of the open-source PX4 autopilot. HKU reported SUPER flying a quadcopter with a 280 mm wheelbase through unknown environments at more than 20 meters per second (about 45 mph). FAST-LIO has about 5,300 stars on GitHub.

Kevin Biju Mathew, a Purdue graduate student researcher, answered two technical questions in the post’s comments. Localization uses LiDAR-inertial odometry, he wrote, and a “ROG map” turns each scan into a live 3D occupancy grid for the planner. ROG-Map is a third MaRS Lab package, presented at IROS 2024, and it ships inside the SUPER repository. Bera’s post lists “visual-inertial odometry” in the drone’s pipeline. Mathew’s answer and the FAST-LIO label point to LiDAR-inertial odometry instead.

The post does not mention the University of Hong Kong or the MaRS Lab. As of Monday, the IDEAS Lab’s publications page lists no paper on the forest demo, and DroneXL found none on arXiv.

HKU Publishes SUPER’s Airframe Files Too

Bera’s post credits his lab with the CAD design and the 3D-printed carbon fiber airframes, and HKU released a kit of that kind for SUPER on March 9, 2025: SolidWorks assemblies, STEP files for 3D printing and carbon fiber cutting, and a full parts list under the MIT license.

The parts list HKU published for SUPER, from the frame plates to the LiDAR. Image credit: HKU MaRS Lab

The SUPER-Hardware bill of materials pairs a Livox Mid-360 LiDAR, from the DJI spinoff that just launched a cheaper Mid-360L, with an Intel NUC 12 computer and an NxtPX4 flight controller. HKU says SUPER has been deployed for object tracking by day and at night. The released code is the planner, mapping and a simulator, not a person detector. Purdue’s video shows the camera feed, the LiDAR map and the charts, and never the airframe itself.

Bera’s Clip Shows a Jogging-Pace Follow at About 7 mph

In Offboard mode, the drone’s speed trace tops out near 3 meters per second, about 7 mph. It holds roughly 6.5 feet (2 meters) off the ground and 16 to 33 feet (5 to 10 meters) behind the person it follows, whom the overlay labels “walker.”

The 44 seconds join at least two armed sessions, because the chart’s seconds-since-arm axis restarts between them. Asked how the system handles the runner disappearing behind trees, Bera replied that a prediction module estimates the person’s path when they vanish or the tracking gets noisy.

For scale, the University of Zurich drone DroneXL covered in 2021 flew through dense forest at 25 mph. NYU’s NOVA system reported following a target through forest trails at more than 31 mph (50 km/h) using only a stereo camera and an IMU. On the consumer side, DC Rainmaker ran a DJI Neo 2’s tracking down tight forest trails in his gauntlet test.

The reposts added their own claims. Sadao Tokuyama’s Japanese-language post, at about 780,000 views, noted that it was a research demo whose real-world performance and safety still needed checking. Praveen Kumar Verma’s English rewrite, past 1 million views, promised “massive implications for next-gen search & rescue.” Bera’s post says nothing about search and rescue.

Bera’s Lab Holds a $1.5 Million Army Grant for GPS-Free Robots

Purdue has announced Army funding for Bera’s GPS-free robotics work. On November 26, 2025, the university said the Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL) had awarded his lab a five-year, $1.5 million agreement. It covers air and ground robots that map and navigate hostile terrain without GPS, using drones as scouts.

Bera’s LinkedIn post does not say what paid for the forest flights. Purdue’s announcement places that work in the university’s Hicks Robotics and Autonomy Testbed, part of a broader Purdue push into drone autonomy.

DroneXL’s Take

Building on SUPER, FAST-LIO and ROG-Map is the smart move, and I’d tell any lab to do the same. Tracking a person and predicting where they went behind a tree is real work, and if that’s what Purdue wrote, it deserves a paper.

“Every layer from scratch” is a different claim. The lab’s own charts carry the names of two Hong Kong packages, SUPER and FAST-LIO, and its grad student named a third. SUPER’s source files ask anyone who uses the code to cite the MaRS Lab’s publications, and Bera’s post doesn’t name the lab. In a field that runs on citations, I don’t think that’s a small omission. Put the MaRS Lab’s name on the video.

Sources: Aniket Bera on LinkedIn, Sadao Tokuyama on X, Praveen Kumar Verma on X, hku-mars/SUPER, hku-mars/SUPER-Hardware, hku-mars/FAST_LIO, Science Robotics, HKU Mechanical Engineering, Purdue Computer Science, IDEAS Lab publications, NOVA on arXiv

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FAA Vertiport Draft Flattens Air Taxi Approaches It Won't Protect

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 14:00:00 GMT

The FAA posted a draft advisory circular on October 22 that merges its heliport design standard and its interim vertiport guidance into one document, AC 150/5390-4, Vertical Flight Aircraft Infrastructure Design. Once final, it cancels AC 150/5390-2D, Heliport Design, and Engineering Brief 105A, the interim brief that air taxi pads such as the Orlando International vertistop were designed to. Comments are due January 11, 2027, and the FAA says final standards follow in summer 2027.

The 140-page draft drops the aircraft limits EB 105A applied and widens the touchdown area to 10 feet (3 m) beyond the aircraft’s propellers. For powered-lift aircraft, it sets the approach surface at 15:1 or shallower, about half the climb of a helicopter’s 8:1. The same section says the FAA does not evaluate slopes shallower than 8:1 for obstructions.

The Draft Drops EB 105A’s Aircraft Limits and Grows the Landing Pad

EB 105A covered only aircraft with three or more battery-powered propulsors, a pilot on board, a maximum takeoff weight of 12,500 pounds (5,670 kg) and a span of 50 feet (15.2 m) or less. The draft lifts those limits and applies one set of formulas to helicopters and powered-lift aircraft.

The draft circular sets the minimum touchdown and liftoff area (TLOF) at the aircraft’s rotor diameter plus 10 feet (3 m), where rotor diameter is the smallest circle around all the lift-producing propellers. The final approach and takeoff area (FATO) is at least 1.5 times the aircraft’s overall controlling dimension and must sit 0.34 times that dimension beyond the TLOF on every side. The safety area adds 0.28 times the dimension, never less than 20 feet (6.1 m). For a 50-foot aircraft whose propellers set its outer edge, EB 105A called for a 50-foot TLOF, a 100-foot FATO and a 125-foot safety area. Under the draft the separation rule, not the 1.5 multiplier, sets the FATO, and the numbers become 60, 94 and 134 feet.

The FAA’s letter to industry says the pad sizes come from research on where aircraft actually touch down. When we covered Wisk’s test vertiport at Hollister in August, the city’s filing dated this circular to 2027, and the FAA’s own release now holds to that year. The draft also retires the Transport heliport category while keeping separate rules for hospital heliports, and on airports it recommends a marked aiming point instead of a dedicated helipad where there are no more than 10 piloted VFR vertical flight operations a day.

The Downwash Zone Gets Fixed Dimensions for Aircraft Up to 7,000 Pounds

The draft keeps EB 105A’s 34.5 mph (55.5 km/h) outwash threshold and, for aircraft of 7,000 pounds (3,175 kg) or less, sizes the caution area at a minimum of 420 by 780 feet (128 by 238 meters), centered on the pad under each approach and departure path.

EB 105A described the downwash/outwash caution area without fixing its size. It pointed to FAA Technical Center surveys still collecting data, noted velocities well above the threshold 126 feet (38.5 m) from the pad for some designs, and told developers of heavier aircraft to work out the size with the FAA. The draft adds a 210-foot (64 m) radius around the aircraft wherever it taxis, says the area can extend past the property line, and names keeping bystanders out as the primary mitigation. AC 150/5390-2D had no such area, so helicopter pads pick it up as well. The draft gives no dimensions for aircraft heavier than 7,000 pounds.

Figure 4-8 from draft AC 150/5390-4: the minimum caution areas for approach, departure and taxi. Image credit: Federal Aviation Administration

Charging and Pilotless Aircraft Get Placeholders, Not Standards

The charging chapter has two standards. Aircraft battery storage stays out of the landing, safety and approach areas, and chargers must meet building, fire and NFPA codes. The FAA writes that consensus has not been reached on charging classes or connector standards, and that guidance for hydrogen will come later.

A separate standard keeps charging equipment out of the heliport protection zone, which runs 280 feet (85 m) out under each approach path. Everything else in the chapter, from raised pads against flooding to collision barriers, is recommended practice.

Pilotless aircraft get one page. The autonomy appendix says the FAA will write infrastructure standards for aircraft without a pilot on board after further research, and tells sponsors expecting one to contact their FAA Airports District Office and Flight Standards District Office. Autonomous cargo flights are part of the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, which the FAA says will feed future revisions. Administrator Bryan Bedford said in the FAA’s announcement that “the next generation of aircraft is here.”

Powered-Lift Approaches Get 15:1 Surfaces the FAA Will Not Evaluate

The FAA checks obstructions only against the 8:1 heliport surface in Part 77, its airspace obstruction rule. The draft says shallower slopes, including the 15:1 surface it sets for powered lift, are not evaluated by the agency and are not considered when it charts new objects.

EB 105A required 8:1 approach paths. The draft keeps 8:1 as the maximum for helicopters and lets the sponsor pick a flatter slope, naming 15:1 and 20:1, because powered-lift aircraft, and aircraft that cannot hover out of ground effect on a given day, may fly shallower approaches. It recommends 15:1 or 20:1 to serve a wider mix of aircraft and asks sponsors to record the shallower slope in the FAA’s airport data system.

The approach surface runs 4,000 feet (1,219 m) from the pad. At that distance an 8:1 surface sits 500 feet (152 m) above pad elevation and a 15:1 surface about 267 feet (81 m). A tower reaching 300 feet above the pad there clears the helicopter surface and penetrates the powered-lift one, and the FAA’s obstruction review covers only the first. That review applies only to public-use heliports and those with an instrument approach procedure, so a private-use rooftop pad gets no Part 77 protection at either slope. The draft’s advice is to route approach paths over freeways, railroads, lakes and rivers where possible.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d rather have pad sizes built on landing research than on the preproduction assumptions behind EB 105A, even if a 50-foot air taxi ends up with a slightly bigger footprint. Commenters should push on the approach surface before January 11. An advisory circular can’t change what Part 77 evaluates, so closing the 15:1 gap takes a separate Part 77 rulemaking.

Until Part 77 changes, a rooftop vertiport’s 15:1 approach path is protected by local zoning or by nothing. Florida’s vertiport law kept local zoning in charge of siting, and Atoms and Joby said they will initially focus on Florida, New York and Texas for the vertiport network they announced in August. Whoever builds those pads should read the 15:1 paragraph before signing a rooftop lease, because the FAA won’t treat a new tower that breaks only that surface as a hazard.

Sources: Federal Aviation Administration, Draft AC 150/5390-4, FAA Industry Letter (October 22, 2026), Engineering Brief 105A, AC 150/5390-2D, Joby Aviation.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Matrice 5TD's Native 1280 Thermal Has a US Drone Maker Alarmed

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:48:00 GMT

Jason H. Lu, founder and CEO of Los Angeles drone maker Flyby Robotics, posted on X on Sunday, October 25, that DJI is mass rolling out 1280 by 1024 thermal imaging on its Mavic-sized drones while American 640 by 480 imagers sit on lead times of six months or more. “This should be a MASSIVE wake up call to the Western industrial base,” he wrote. The post passed 165,000 views by Monday morning.

The camera in his image is the gimbal of the Matrice 5TD, the dock drone DJI launched with Dock 4 on October 14. Replies argued that its thermal sensor is a 640 upscaled in software. Lu answered that 1280 is the native resolution.

DJI’s spec sheet backs Lu on the sensor. It does not show a Mavic-sized drone carrying it.

DJI Lists a Native 1280 by 1024 Detector on 8-Micron Pixels

The Matrice 5TD specifications list an uncooled vanadium oxide microbolometer at 1280 by 1024 with an 8 μm pixel pitch, running at 30 Hz. A separate UHR Infrared Image mode outputs 2560 by 2048, the super-resolution figure Lu cited in a follow-up reply.

The Matrice 5TD gimbal image Lu posted. Its labels match DJI's spec sheet: 1280 by 1024 thermal, a 3,000 m laser rangefinder and three 50 MP cameras. Image credit: DJI Enterprise, via Jason H. Lu on X

The skeptics were reading the wrong drone. One reply posted screenshots of DJI’s Matrice 4 series specs, which list the Matrice 4T’s detector at 640 by 512 on a 12 μm pitch and reach 1280 by 1024 only as video with Super Resolution switched on. Another said the 5TD’s detector is 640 by 512 as well. DJI’s 5TD sheet lists no Super Resolution mode at all, and the 1280 figure sits in the sensor’s own resolution field. DroneXL took the same number from the same sheet on launch day.

DJI has shipped the format before. The Zenmuse H30T launched in May 2024 with a native 1280 by 1024 thermal camera on a 12 μm pitch, as a payload for the much larger Matrice 300 RTK and 350 RTK, and DJI now lists the Matrice 400 as a carrier too. The 5TD’s change is the pixel. Shrinking it from 12 μm to 8 μm puts the same 1.3 million pixels on a sensor with less than half the area, and a smaller sensor needs a smaller lens for the same field of view.

The Matrice 5TD Is a 2.6 kg Dock Drone, Twice a Matrice 4T

The Matrice 5TD in Lu’s image is not Mavic-sized. It weighs 2,600 g and measures 393 by 477 by 230 mm (15.5 by 18.8 by 9.1 inches) without propellers. It is a dock drone that cannot be flown from a remote controller at all.

The folding thermal drone in DJI’s line is the Matrice 4T, at 1,219 g and 260.6 by 113.7 by 138.4 mm (10.3 by 4.5 by 5.4 inches) folded, and it still carries the 640 by 512 detector. A foldable Matrice 5 on Matrice 4-style arms showed up in a Polish dealer’s post last week and is the closest match to Lu’s description, but DJI has not named it and the image did not show its gimbal.

“Mass rolling out” is ahead of the record too. DJI has published no production figures for the 5TD. In China, the Dock 4 kit with the Matrice 5TD and O4 Ground Station lists at 167,999 yuan, hardware only, DoNews reported on launch day. DJI has given no US or European price.

America’s 1280 Thermal Core Is Sold for Weapon Sights

Leonardo DRS, the Arlington, Virginia, defense contractor, already sells a 1280 by 1024 uncooled core, the Tenum 1280, on a 10 μm VOx pixel at 30 Hz. DRS markets it for weapon sights, goggles, combat vehicles, missile seekers and space, with no drone on the list.

The DRS camera built for drones is the Tenum 640 Orbit. On July 15, DRS signed a blanket purchase agreement for more than 50,000 Tenum Orbit cameras and said its factories are sized for annual production in the hundreds of thousands. Skydio’s X10, which Skydio says is assembled in the US, carries a Teledyne FLIR Boson+ at 640 by 512.

Lu’s six-month lead time is his own figure, from a company that buys thermal cores, and neither the DRS nor the Teledyne release below gives one. He also sells against DJI: his pinned X post advertises the Flyby F-11 as made in Los Angeles with zero Chinese Communist Party components. The Army is paying to grow the supply. On August 25, Teledyne FLIR OEM said it was selected for the Army’s DUTCH initiative, short for Delivering Unmatched Thermal Capability Hastened, which targets smaller, cheaper uncooled sensors and high-volume production. DRS lists its own DUTCH selection.

One reply said the US has had higher-resolution imagers for decades and export rules keep them off commercial drones. Lu answered that his US Army and Air Force customers would gladly buy those imagers on a Mavic-sized drone for under $15,000.

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that Lu has the right alarm and the wrong diagnosis. America can build a 1280 thermal core, and the Tenum 1280 proves it. The gap is in the drones. The X10 and the Matrice 4T that US departments buy today both carry 640 by 512, and DJI fit 1280 onto an 8 μm pixel, smaller than the 10 μm DRS lists.

I don’t see how keeping the 5TD out closes that gap. The December 2025 Covered List action already blocks it from the US, and the Docket 26-189 proposal would bar the sale of foreign thermal drones outright, which would also reach the H30T DJI has sold here since 2024. Banning DJI’s 1280 camera doesn’t put one on any American drone.

Sources: Jason H. Lu on X, DJI Dock 4 specifications, DJI Matrice 4 series specifications, Leonardo DRS Tenum 1280, Leonardo DRS press release, Teledyne FLIR OEM press release, Skydio X10, DoNews

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Michigan Medicine Will Test Drone Organ Flights in $1.7M State Round

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:31:00 GMT

Brighton drone maker blueflite will test flying donor organs to Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s academic medical center, in a state-funded pilot announced Wednesday, October 21. Michigan’s Office of Future Mobility and Electrification (OFME) gave blueflite $245,000 for the Ann Arbor project, the largest of 12 drone and advanced air mobility grants that add up to $1,705,000.

The other 11 grants run from $70,000 to $230,000. They pay for a drone-as-first-responder program for the Battle Creek Police Department and thermal drone scans of downtown Detroit buildings, among other work. Eight of the 12 projects are in Detroit, and all of them came through the Michigan Mobility Funding Platform, which NextEnergy runs for the state.

The state’s announcement sets no performance goal for any of the 12 projects. The organ team published its own the same day.

Blueflite Targets 30% Faster Organ Transport Over 20 Test Flights

Where the state’s release names no goals, the organ project’s partners published three: at least 20 end-to-end demonstration missions, at least a 30% cut in last-mile organ transport time against historical ground benchmarks, and mission reliability of 95% or better. Testing starts at the Mcity Test Facility in Ann Arbor.

The targets come from Mcity’s announcement of the grant. Blueflite joined M-air, U-M’s advanced air mobility initiative inside Mcity, as a founding member with the grant. Michigan Medicine is the clinical partner and the transplant recipient site, and M-air handles airspace integration and the beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations. The project will record payload temperature, vibration and shock exposure, plus a time-stamped chain of custody.

Dr. Florian Schmitzberger, a clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at the U-M Medical School, said in the Mcity release that “Minutes lost to traffic or logistical bottlenecks directly impact organ viability and patient outcomes.”

A blueflite drone takes off during a demonstration at the M-air proving grounds. Photo credit: Calvin Tuttle, U-M Transportation Research Institute

The organ grant adds to a busy fall for blueflite. The same company flies the Jack Demmer Ford auto parts network that opened in Wayne on August 25 on a $740,000 state grant, and it is flying Munson Healthcare’s second medical delivery trial in Traverse City through October 30. Its Cobalt 461 holds a Department of War conditional approval that exempts it from the FCC Covered List. Blueflite also took this round’s smallest grant, $70,000, to test Tubular Network’s automated vertical tubes at the Detroit Smart Parking Lab. The tubes carry a package from a rooftop drone drop-off point to the floor it is addressed to.

Detroit Takes Eight of the 12 Projects and $990,000

Detroit hosts eight of the 12 projects and $990,000 of the $1.705 million, more than half the money, and three of them run inside the city’s Transportation Innovation Zone, including General Orbit’s $150,000 test of magnetic navigation for drones flying in GPS-degraded and GPS-denied environments.

The other two in the zone are delivery and route-planning tools. ESSPI, the Detroit battery-safety company whose Med Hawk division supplies medical payload bags for blueflite’s Munson flights, gets $110,000 for a real-time oversight system for medical drone deliveries. Wolverine Radar gets $136,000 to test a satellite-derived hazard warning system for drone route planning.

The largest Detroit grant, $230,000, sends Lamarr AI’s thermal drones over 2 million gross square feet of privately owned downtown buildings to check façade safety and energy performance. Birdstop, which DroneXL covered in May when its drones began counting open spaces at two Detroit truck lots, gets $110,000 for 24/7 truck parking monitoring from self-charging drone perches. Airspace Link, the Detroit airspace software company on the Jack Demmer Ford project, gets $80,000 to run a UAS traffic management service over the city. Future Flight Global gets $104,000 to work with TruWeather Solutions and Bedrock Detroit on feeding localized urban wind data into Detroit’s digital twin for drone mission planning.

Konner Petz, head of special projects at the City of Detroit Office of Mobility Innovation, said in the state’s release that Detroit’s lead in mobility testing “now extends into our airspace.”

Two grants went further north. CENSYS Technologies gets $170,000 to demonstrate drone power line inspections in Traverse City. The company was already flying its Sentaero fixed-wing VTOL with the Ohio Department of Transportation when sales director Kyle Miller talked BVLOS on DroneXL’s PIXL Drone Show in June 2024. Westwood AI gets $100,000 in Calumet, in the Upper Peninsula, to test AI-assisted drone data capture for land and infrastructure inspections. It is Westwood AI’s second state award in ten weeks. On August 12 it was one of five companies that split $2 million in a separate OFME challenge, paired with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Battle Creek Police Get a Drone First Responder Program From ResilienX

ResilienX won $200,000 to deploy its ORION-X drone services platform in Battle Creek. The first job is a drone-as-first-responder program for the Battle Creek Police Department. The state’s release says the platform should later serve other municipal and commercial customers as well.

ORION-X is an on-demand aerial data service. A customer requests images, video or a lidar scan, and ResilienX handles the flight.

The Syracuse, New York company is already building Battle Creek’s airspace infrastructure. Battle Creek Unlimited picked ResilienX in January to install a ground-based detect-and-avoid system at Battle Creek Executive Airport for the city’s MICH AIR hub, combining radar, ADS-B and Remote ID into one picture of the local airspace.

DroneXL’s Take

Michigan is right to spread $1.7 million across a dozen small bets, and it should make every one of them publish its results. The organ team set its targets before a single organ flight, so anyone can check later whether blueflite hit them.

Munson’s first medical drone trial published its numbers afterward, in a December 2025 report that listed all 67 flights and the six it lost, and I trust that program’s second phase more because of it. A $110,000 demo that ends in a press release teaches the next city nothing. OFME should require each of these 12 grantees to publish a results report, failures included, the way Munson did.

Source: Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, October 21, 2026, Mcity, October 21, 2026, ResilienX.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

White County's New Rescue Drone Is a DJI Matrice 4TD It Didn't Name

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:14:00 GMT

White County Public Safety in the north Georgia mountains has a new search-and-rescue drone, paid for with Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) money that county commissioners approved. The county announced it in a news release that NOW Georgia carried on Monday, October 26. Public Safety Director David Murphy called it “a direct return on the investment our voters made through SPLOST.” Emergency Management Division Chief Don Strength will fly it, and any public safety agency in the county, including Cleveland and Helen, can call on it.

The release lists better thermal imaging, a live loudspeaker and the ability to fly in rain, which grounded the county’s earlier drones. It does not name the manufacturer. The county’s own photo shows a DJI Matrice 4TD. The FCC put DJI, along with every other foreign drone maker, on its Covered List ten months ago.

The County’s Photo Shows a Matrice 4TD, Not the “Air 2” on Its Arms

The fixed white arms, the Matrice 4 series camera and DJI’s AL1 spotlight and AS1 speaker on top identify White County’s drone as a DJI Matrice 4TD. The “Air 2” stickers on its arms are the county’s own name for the aircraft, not a DJI model.

The thermal camera rules out the camera-only Matrice 4D, and the rain claim fits the 4TD. It is IP55-rated for dust and water, while the folding Matrice 4T that DroneXL reviewed in February 2025 carries no rating at all, according to Heliguy’s comparison. DJI built the 4TD for the Dock 3 drone-in-a-box it launched that same month, and US dealers such as DSLRPros also sell it standalone with the RC Plus 2 controller. The county’s release names a pilot and mentions no dock.

The two accessories are the county’s “live loudspeaker” and the twin lamps in the photo. DJI’s AL1 spotlight lights subjects up to 328 feet (100 meters) away and can run alongside the AS1 speaker, which lets a crew talk to someone awaiting rescue before responders reach them.

Georgia Let Both of Its DJI Purchase Bans Die in 2026

Nothing in Georgia law kept White County from buying DJI. House Bill 205’s approved-drone list and Senate Bill 64’s ban on Chinese and Russian drones would both have bound state and local agencies from January 1, 2028, and neither one became law.

BillTrack50 marks HB 205 and SB 64 dead as of April 2. DroneXL covered both bills when they were introduced in February 2025. HB 205 cleared the House that month with one vote against, according to Capitol Beat. It reached the Senate Transportation Committee in March 2026, where emergency managers and public safety drone pilots testified that it would cut their capability and cost counties heavily, and the committee voted unanimously to table it. SB 64 was recommitted on January 12 and never came back. The agency HB 205 would have put in charge of the approved list, the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, is the one that can now request White County’s DJI drone for neighboring communities.

The federal rules leave the purchase alone too. The FCC’s December 22, 2025, listing blocks new DJI models from authorization, but the Matrice 4D and 4TD got their equipment authorization on February 28, 2025, ten months earlier, so dealers can still sell them and agencies can still fly them. The American Security Drone Act bars federal grant money from buying Chinese drones, and SPLOST is a county sales tax. Florida, whose agencies cannot fly Chinese-made drones, parked a fleet worth an estimated $200 million under its own state ban.

DroneXL’s Take

Georgia’s Senate Transportation Committee listened to the emergency managers who testified against HB 205, and I think it made the right call. White County put its sales tax money into a thermal drone built to fly mountain searches in the rain. Under Florida’s rules, that aircraft would be parked.

I’d still like the release to name the aircraft. Local releases rarely name vendors, and the county did publish a photo that shows it, but Murphy frames the drone as a return on the voters’ investment, and those voters should be told what they bought. A county that made a defensible choice can say “DJI” in a press release. If the FCC adopts its July proposal on thermal drone imports, the next Georgia county that wants this aircraft won’t be able to buy it new, whatever Atlanta decides.

Sources: NOW Georgia, Georgia HB 205 on BillTrack50, Georgia SB 64 on BillTrack50, Georgia SB 64 on LegiScan, Citizen Portal, FCC ID SS3-M4D2411, Heliguy

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Sweden Pays Saildrone for Baltic Sea Data, Not the Boats Collecting It

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:44:00 GMT

American sea-drone maker Saildrone has started a year-long mission for the Swedish Armed Forces, patrolling Sweden’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea with four wind-powered Voyager uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). Sweden’s Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) signed the framework agreement, the first national deployment under the Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO) framework.

Defence Minister Pål Jonson saw one of the boats at an FMV media day in Nynäshamn, south of Stockholm, on October 22. In January, Jonson announced Sweden’s $440 million push into unmanned military systems, with sea surveillance on the list. Four Voyagers now sail for the Swedish Navy, and FMV says Sweden did not buy any of them.

Sweden Pays Saildrone for Surveillance Data Instead of Boats

Sweden is paying for what the Voyagers see. Saildrone deploys and operates four of them for 360 days each, 1,440 contracted vehicle-days, and the Swedish Navy receives their maritime surveillance data around the clock. Saildrone’s own staff monitor the boats at all times.

FMV project manager Johan Wahren said Sweden is “purchasing a persistent maritime surveillance service” in Saildrone’s announcement of the mission. In FMV’s own release, published in Swedish, he calls this service model a concept FMV sees spreading internationally. The Navy hands Saildrone its tasks, and the contract lets Sweden add more sea drones to the service.

The US Navy already buys Voyager time this way. In August, Saildrone announced a $16.3 million Navy task order to keep its Voyager fleet operating in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific for US Naval Forces Southern Command and the Fourth Fleet, where Saildrone has run the boats since 2023. Its larger Surveyor also fired two JAGM missiles at the US Navy’s RIMPAC exercise this summer.

Sweden's Minister for Defence Pål Jonson (left) and Saildrone European Managing Director Robert Kleist at FMV's media day in Nynäshamn on October 22, 2026. Photo credit: Saildrone

Denmark’s Six-Month Saildrone Mission Detected 170,000 Vessels

Saildrone’s Baltic track record comes from a six-month mission for the Royal Danish Navy, where four Voyagers held 92% fleet uptime, sailed more than 20,000 nautical miles and detected over 170,000 unique vessels, according to Saildrone. Sweden’s contract uses the same four-boat fleet size.

NORDEFCO links Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, and has done so since 2009. FMV says the agreement lets other Nordic nations sign up on their own terms, and it drafted an implementing arrangement to make that easier. Saildrone says more national deployments will follow.

Robert Kleist, Saildrone’s European managing director, said “Sweden is investing in year-round maritime awareness as an operational capability.” The company opened its European headquarters in Copenhagen this year, backed by a 2025 financing round led by the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO), and now registers Voyagers under the Danish flag. That is why the Swedish Navy’s boats carry a Danish flag on the sail.

Voyager SD-2032 during the four-boat departure from Denmark, Saildrone's European base. Photo credit: Saildrone

Saildrone Voyagers Check Baltic Ships Against Their Own AIS Signals

Detecting ships is only part of the job. Wahren says in FMV’s release that the Voyagers also check that a vessel really is what its AIS transponder says it is. Another task is confirming the position of ships that may have broadcast a false one.

Each Voyager is a 33-foot (10-meter) sailboat carrying camera and radar, driven mainly by wind. Solar panels power the electronics, and a small engine with a fuel tank backs up the sail. The boats move between positions on their own within the mission Saildrone is given.

The work ties into NATO. FMV says the Swedish boats contribute to Task Force X Baltic, a NATO Allied Command Transformation project to speed up unmanned sea surveillance. It grew out of Operation Baltic Sentry, launched after subsea cable breaks in 2024 and 2025. In February, Sweden and seven other allies agreed to cooperate on acquiring new maritime technology for Baltic security.

In July, an IISS report on Russian drone incursions described shadow-fleet vessels sailing close to European coastlines with their AIS transponders switched off. Saildrone sells the same boat at home, too: Voyagers were scheduled to watch vessel traffic on the Great Lakes for the US Coast Guard from May through October.

Voyager SD-2015 with a support boat alongside during FMV's October 22 media day. Photo credit: FMV

DroneXL’s Take

Sweden is buying sea drones the way they should be bought. The Navy pays for a picture of the Baltic, and as I read the service model, a Voyager that breaks its wing sail in a January storm is Saildrone’s problem to fix. Denmark’s 92% fleet uptime is the figure Sweden should hold Saildrone to, because uptime is what it is paying for. The model suits the AIS work too. A Voyager cruises at about 5 knots, so it won’t chase a tanker, but it can sit off a shipping lane for months and report ships whose transponders don’t match what the camera sees, without tying up a crewed patrol vessel. Finland and Norway can now sign on through the same NORDEFCO arrangement, and I think they should.

Sources: Saildrone, Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV), NATO

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Helsing Prices Jet-Drone Interceptors Under €100,000, None Before 2027

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:30:00 GMT

Helsing unveiled an air defense system called Contra in Berlin on Monday, along with two interceptor missiles it says will cost less than €100,000 each. The AD-1 Inferno is jet-powered and built to loiter. The AD-2 Ambush rides a solid rocket motor. Both are aimed at the jet-powered Geran drones Russia now launches at Ukraine by the thousand every month.

Contra is the Munich company’s first air defense system. DroneXL last covered Helsing in August, when Rakuten was brokering a sale of its HX-2 strike drone to Japan’s army, and in July, when it picked West Virginia for an HX-2 factory. Co-founder Gundbert Scherf told reporters on Monday that one customer, which he did not name, has already signed a contract for the Contra command system.

Neither interceptor has finished flight testing. A Helsing representative at the briefing put the earliest deliveries in the second quarter of 2027.

Helsing Prices Both Missiles Under €100,000 and Promises 1,000 a Month

Scherf put the unit price of the AD-1 and the AD-2 below €100,000 apiece and said mass production of the AD-1 means 1,000 a month. Helsing’s comparison, as hartpunkt reported it, puts existing interceptor missiles at €500,000 to €4 million each, shipping in the hundreds or thousands per year.

The saving, by Helsing’s account, comes from an active radar seeker built from commercial off-the-shelf parts. The company says the seeker costs less than a tenth of comparable seekers and, per hartpunkt, is largely the same part in both missiles. It pairs an optical sensor with the radar, and Helsing says the radar is there because Russia times its attacks for darkness and bad weather, when camera seekers go blind. “When we say mass-producible, we mean 1,000 units per month,” Scherf said, according to defence-network.

Both missiles use jet engines and rocket motors Helsing developed in-house, on supply chains the company describes as free of US export restrictions and mostly European. The two missiles get separate supply chains, and both would be built in the decentralized plants Helsing calls Resilience Factories. German defense site hartpunkt reported that output would reach several thousand a month once development ends in the second half of 2027.

The AD-1 Loiters and Re-Attacks While the AD-2 Sprints Past Mach 2

The AD-1 Inferno is a jet-powered interceptor that tops 435 mph (700 km/h). It reaches 12 miles (20 km) and climbs above 29,500 feet (9,000 meters). The AD-2 Ambush passes Mach 2 on a solid rocket motor with the same range and ceiling, built for threats beyond the AD-1’s reach.

Both launch from 20-foot shipping containers, 20 AD-1s or 40 AD-2s per box, moved by truck, rail or ship. Contra’s ground radars guide them mid-course and the onboard seeker takes over for the final approach. The AD-1 can loiter, fly as a swarm and come back for a second pass if it misses, and Helsing’s product page places it between electric interceptor drones and legacy missiles. Niklas Köhler, Helsing’s co-founder and president, told reporters the pair delivers “autonomous fire superiority at altitudes of up to 10 kilometers.”

Helsing's AD-1 Inferno slide from the Berlin briefing lists a top speed above 700 km/h, a ceiling above 9,000 meters and container launch in lots of 20. Image credit: Helsing

The target is the drone Ukraine’s intelligence service took apart in May. The GUR teardown DroneXL reported on May 26 put the Geran-4 at 310 mph (500 km/h) and 16,400 feet (5,000 meters), and said Russia built it to outrun Ukraine’s $2,000 interceptor drones. Helsing says Russia now uses 4,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month, and hartpunkt put their unit cost at €200,000 to €250,000. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s own count, which DroneXL cited in its September teardown story, was more than 2,730 jet-powered Shaheds launched in September, with Ukraine stopping 55 percent of them.

Contra Runs on Altra and Has a Customer Before the AD-1 Has Flown

Contra runs on Altra, the command software Helsing uses for its HX-2 strike drone, and the first contract covers that software, not the missiles. The system fuses radar, electro-optical, infrared and acoustic sensors from any vendor, assigns each track to the best weapon and can re-task interceptors in the air.

Helsing's Contra concept render shows AD-1 and AD-2 interceptors launching from shipping containers against a mass drone attack on a city. Image credit: Helsing

The company says third-party guns, lasers, net launchers and interceptor drones can be plugged in through open interfaces within days, that operators set the rules of engagement, and that the system connects to SitaWare and the German army’s own battle management software. It showed a video of an AD-2 test flight. The AD-1 went from concept to demonstrator in two months, Helsing said, and its first flights are due in the coming weeks.

DroneXL’s Take

The price is a promise and the seeker is the bet. My read is that Helsing has the diagnosis right: GUR said in May that Russia built the Geran-4 to fly away from Ukraine’s $2,000 interceptor drones, and a 435 mph jet with a radar nose is the correct shape of answer. But a radar seeker assembled from catalog parts that sees through fog at a tenth of the usual cost is a claim every missile house would love to make, and what Helsing showed in Berlin was a flight video, not a seeker test. I’ll believe the seeker when a European army publishes a result, and until then Contra is a contract and a concept render. Ukraine is stopping 55 percent of Russia’s jet Shaheds today with the interceptors it has, and Helsing’s earliest delivery is the second quarter of 2027. Russia went from the propeller Geran-2 to the jet Geran-4 and Geran-5 inside a year to beat a $2,000 drone, and I expect it to change the aircraft again before Helsing fills its first container.

Sources: Helsing, defence-network, hartpunkt, dpa, Militarnyi

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Sky Elements Flies 10,183-Drone Dragon, Lands Two Guinness Records

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:03:00 GMT

Sky Elements now holds two more Guinness World Records, and its X post on Monday morning showed the certificates. One is for the largest aerial display of a mythical creature, a blue dragon formed by 10,183 drones over Blue Ridge, Texas. The other is for the most drones launched in a week: 71,207, across seven shows on three nights starting September 27.

Both records were flown with Damoda America, the US partner of the Shenzhen drone-show maker whose own 10,197-drone show held the world record for the most drones airborne at once until late 2025. The dragon was flown with 14 fewer drones than that.

The Dragon Beat the Old Record by More Than 7,900 Drones

The previous mythical-creature record was 2,247 drones, set by the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah on New Year’s Eve 2025. Sky Elements flew the dragon on September 28, according to Guinness World Records, which published its account on October 6 after adjudicator Michael Empric signed off on both titles.

The week record replaced the 55,939 drones that Aerial Illuminations Drone Shows and UVify launched earlier this year. Sky Elements says six of its seven shows used 10,000 drones each and the finale used 11,000, which the company calls the largest drone show ever flown in America. Guinness confirmed the week total and the dragon, not the single-show claim. Guinness counts the attempt as running September 27 to 30, a day longer than the company’s own September 27 to 29, and says the crews got the first show up on Sunday before a thunderstorm rolled in and flew five shows on the final night.

Empric called it “one of the most challenging drone attempts I’ve adjudicated.”

The formations were original for every show and ran through an eagle, a lion, turning gears, Pegasus, a black hole, Noah’s Ark and a closing UFO sequence, according to the company’s October 2 release. These are Sky Elements’ 18th and 19th Guinness titles, after the 5,000-drone Vecna over Las Vegas last December and the 2,977 drones that rebuilt the Twin Towers over New York Harbor in September.

The two certificates, in front of the Damoda trays that launched and recharged the fleet between shows in Blue Ridge, Texas. Photo credit: Sky Elements

Damoda’s Trays Made Seven Relaunches Possible

Each drone lived in a Damoda storage box. The large tray charges the aircraft and doubles as its launch and landing pad, so nothing was placed by hand between shows, according to Guinness. Damoda engineers from Shenzhen worked the farm alongside the Sky Elements crew.

CEO Rick Boss says shows of this size had until now happened in Asia and the Middle East, and that the week proves an American team can fly them at home. The company now wants to sell 10,000-drone shows to sports leagues, cities and brands.

DroneXL’s Take

The hardware is the bigger story here. The world record for drones airborne at once is EHang’s 22,580 over Hefei, more than double the Blue Ridge finale, and every holder of that title since 2024 has been a Chinese operator. Sky Elements closed part of that gap with Damoda’s drones, Damoda’s trays and Damoda’s engineers on the field. My read is that Rick Boss is right about the team and wrong about the framing, because the week showed an American operator can run a 10,000-drone show and it also showed the fleet to do it with is still Chinese. A ban on Chinese show drones would not create an American Damoda, it would just make the dragon smaller. Sky Elements was grounded by the FAA 22 months ago after part of a 500-drone show fell into a crowd in Orlando, and if I were buying a 10,000-drone show I’d ask about that week as much as about this one.

Sources: Guinness World Records, Sky Elements (PR Newswire), Sky Elements on X

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Drone LiDAR Finds Three Aboriginal Shelters Missing From NSW Register

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:27:00 GMT

Archaeologists at the University of Sydney flew a DJI Matrice 350 carrying a YellowScan Explorer V2 LiDAR over the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and found three Aboriginal rock shelters that were missing from New South Wales’ official heritage register. All three hold stone tools, and one has a pair of red hand stencils on a rock panel. The survey also pinned down six shelters already on the register, and the drone’s coordinates landed closer to the real sites than the register’s own. The work was done with the Dharug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation and published in the journal Remote Sensing on October 12, with a university release following on October 14.

The university calls the three shelters “previously unregistered.” The project’s co-director, Wayne Brennan, told the Australian Associated Press that skilled bushwalkers had already spotted all three.

The Matrice 350 flew four zones at 246 feet and flagged 2,017 spots

The team flew the Matrice 350 at 246 feet (75 meters) above ground over four zones near Mount Irvine and Djulpura, in crosshatch patterns at 16 to 22 mph (7 to 10 m/s). That produced at least 100 LiDAR points per square meter, against 0.5 for the state’s aircraft data.

A Leica GS16 base station and SBG Systems’ Qinertia software corrected the flight tracks to under 4 inches (10 centimeters). The team then stripped the trees out of the point cloud, rebuilt the bare ground, and ran a model in ArcGIS Pro that looks for the shape of an overhang: a sharp vertical step, a steep slope, and open ground in front of it. Across the four zones the model flagged 2,017 candidate spots.

The LiDAR drone over one of the four survey zones in the Blue Mountains. The tree cover is what hides the shelters from cameras. Photo credit: University of Sydney

The team inspected the most promising candidates in 3D point cloud profiles before anyone walked in, then checked 19 of them on foot. Every one of the 19 was a shelter, an overhang or a recessed cavity. Three of them, now logged as BM139, BM140 and BM141, had no entry in the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System, the NSW register known as AHIMS. BM139 had three large stone artifacts on its floor. BM140 had 21, plus a panel of two red pigment hand stencils, a left and a right side by side, about 14 by 6 inches (35 by 15 centimeters) in total, which the team reads as one person’s work in a single sitting. BM141, near the Pierces Pass walking track, had 26 artifacts on a quick surface inspection.

Bushwalkers knew the shelters, and the register’s coordinates were off

Brennan, a Gomeroi man and the project’s rock art expert, told AAP that researchers had learned of the three shelters from skilled bushwalkers before the flights, and the drone confirmed them. “So we know people have stayed there,” he said of the stone tools on the floors.

The paper is blunter about the register than the press release is. AHIMS records can be uploaded by anyone with an account, nobody checks the coordinates, and many older entries were converted from paper maps and older coordinate systems with errors along the way. The result, the authors write, is that listed positions are “sometimes hundreds of metres off” the actual site. For six known shelters the team measured the gap between the register’s coordinates and the drip line it mapped on the ground, and the drone’s detections sat on or within 3 feet (1 meter) of the real drip lines at Honey Upgrade and Morley’s Creek. The team has set up its own database, called Coolamon, to re-record sites with corrected positions. The paper, by lead author Jacob Bongers and co-directors Amy Mosig Way and Brennan, is open access at Remote Sensing, and the University of Sydney release carries the field photos.

Wayne Brennan (right) with students at one of the shelters the drone flagged. Photo credit: University of Sydney

The model’s hit rate is still unknown across 408 square miles

Run on the state’s free aircraft LiDAR over the full 408-square-mile (1,057 square kilometer) study area, the same shelter-finding logic produced 751,655 detections. All 85 registered shelters in that area had a detection within about 126 feet (38 meters), but nobody has walked those spots, so the false-alarm rate is unknown.

The authors say so themselves. The 19 candidates they checked were hand-picked after looking at the point clouds, not sampled at random, so the paper cannot report precision, recall or a false-negative rate. The thresholds were also tuned for Blue Mountains sandstone and bush, and the team expects to recalibrate before using them anywhere else. The paper notes the team used ChatGPT to help refine the logic of the ArcGIS models, with the parameters set and checked by the authors.

The scale problem is the reason the method exists. More than 200 rock shelters with cultural material are recorded in the Blue Mountains, and Way estimates only about 10% of the region has ever been surveyed because of the terrain. The Gulamada Project, which carries this work, got AU$248,610 from the Australian government’s First Nations Heritage Grants program. Next stops are the tropical savannas of western Arnhem Land and the semi-arid country of western NSW, with local Aboriginal communities. Bongers calls the approach “an efficient and accurate way to locate sites in rugged environments.”

DroneXL’s Take

The AAP headline that ran across Australian papers on October 14 says ancient sites were uncovered by laser drones, and earth.com went with drones discovering ancient rock art. The paper says the survey located the shelters, and its co-director says bushwalkers had seen all three first. I’d rather have the second version, because the real result is better than the headline. A LiDAR drone turned 408 square miles of cliff country into a ranked list of overhangs, and then put the known sites back where they belong after the state database had them hundreds of meters adrift. That is the same job Bongers did at Peru’s Band of Holes with a Mavic 3E, and the same one a Matrice 400 did over Maya cities in Guatemala in March. Until someone walks a random sample of those 751,655 detections and reports how many were rock, this is a very good filter and not yet a detector, and the authors deserve credit for saying exactly that.

Sources: Remote Sensing, University of Sydney, AAP via National Indigenous Times

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Avata 360 Waypoints Arrive, and the RC Pro 2 Needs Its Own Update

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:25:00 GMT

DJI has released firmware v01.00.0800 for the DJI Avata 360, and the release notes, dated October 20, 2026, list four additions: Waypoint Flight, zoom inside FocusTrack, support for the DJI RC Pro 2, and automatic display orientation switching in Vision Assist. It is the first feature release for the drone since June 23, and the first time any drone in the Avata line has been given waypoints.

Shawn from Air Photography flew the new build the next day and walked through the waypoint and RC Pro 2 workflow for DroneXL. This piece covers what DJI’s own release notes add to that: the version numbers, the controller dependency, and what else in the kit moves.

The aircraft update alone does not get an RC Pro 2 owner flying. DJI’s notes list RC Pro 2 firmware V01.00.0900 next to the aircraft build. The controller went on sale in May 2025, almost a year before the Avata 360 launched.

Nine version numbers change across the Avata 360 kit

The October 20 notes pair aircraft v01.00.0800 with DJI RC 2 v10.00.0900, RC Pro 2 V01.00.0900, Goggles N3 v01.00.1300, Goggles 3 v01.00.1600, RC-N2 and RC-N3 v01.00.0300, DJI Fly v1.21.16 and DJI Studio v1.2.11. The RC Motion 3 and FPV Remote Controller 3 keep their launch builds.

Against the September 1 notes, the Goggles N3 skip from v01.00.1100 straight to v01.00.1300, and the Goggles 3 move from v01.00.1500 to v01.00.1600. The September build and July’s v01.00.0500, which ended the black-screen video loss in the goggles, each carried a single line in DJI’s release notes: “Fixed some known issues.” That line closes this list too.

The RC Pro 2 launched alongside the Mavic 4 Pro in May 2025, and Russ reviewed it as a controller built for DJI’s camera drones. DJI’s Avata 360 notes list the RC Pro 2 for the first time with this release, so an owner who updates the drone and not the controller has changed nothing about how they fly.

DJI repeats its standing warning that the update can reset RTH Altitude and Maximum Flight Distance. Write both down before you tap update.

Waypoint Flight reaches the Avata line for the first time

Neither the original Avata nor the Avata 2 ever received Waypoint Flight. DJI’s release notes for both, running through October 20 and July 30, 2026, list no waypoint mode in any build. The Avata 360 gets it with v01.00.0800, planned in the DJI Fly map view.

A five-waypoint Avata 360 mission with a point of interest, built on the RC Pro 2. Photo credit: Air Photography

In Shawn’s test, a five-waypoint mission around a point of interest showed a calculated time of one minute and 50 seconds, the active waypoint and the total distance, and the drone held its camera on the point of interest as it flew the loop. He had the mission set to return home at the end and canceled the RTH at waypoint five to keep flying. The mission builder is the one he covered in his DJI Mini 5 Pro waypoint tutorial.

Heading matters less on a 360 camera than on a flat one, because the final angle can be chosen in the edit. It matters again the moment you use the auto-export tools, which export the view on the screen.

The other two additions are smaller. Zoom in FocusTrack lets you punch in on a tracked subject, and DJI’s notes give no magnification figure. Vision Assist now switches its view to match the stick: forward shows the front, back shows the rear, sideways shows that side, and up and down show above and below the aircraft. Shawn walked through the same automatic switching on the Mini 5 Pro in February.

DroneXL’s Take

In April the Avata 360 lost a back-to-back FPV flight test to the Avata 2. Six months later DJI hands it waypoints, a feature the Avata 2 never got in two and a half years of firmware. I take that to mean DJI has settled which drone is the FPV machine and which is the 360 camera that flies itself, and the firmware roadmap now says so in writing. DJI made the right call there, because the people buying an 8K 360 drone want repeatable paths more than they want acro. For an owner, the order is controller first, then aircraft, then a look at the RTH altitude, and the first waypoint mission belongs somewhere you can see the drone the whole way around.

Sources: DJI Avata 360 Release Notes, DJI Avata 2 Release Notes, DJI Avata Release Notes

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Avata Firmware Returns After Nearly 3 Years to Fix 'Known Issues'

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:25:00 GMT

DJI has published a new firmware release for the original DJI Avata, the ducted FPV drone it launched on August 25, 2022. The notes are dated October 20, 2026, and move the aircraft to v01.06.0000, the DJI Goggles 2 to v01.14.0000, the Goggles Integra to v01.10.0000, the RC Motion 2 to v01.08.0000 and the FPV Remote Controller 2 to v02.00.1100, with DJI Fly v1.21.16 on iOS and Android.

The previous Avata firmware, v01.05.0000, is dated December 28, 2023. This is the first update in nearly three years for an aircraft DJI succeeded with the Avata 2 in April 2024 and the Avata 360 in March 2026.

Under “What’s New,” DJI lists one item: “Fixed some known issues.”

Five of the Avata’s seven firmware numbers change and two stay put

The October 20 release moves the aircraft, the Goggles 2, the Goggles Integra, the RC Motion 2 and the FPV Remote Controller 2. The DJI FPV Goggles V2 stay on v01.07.0000 and the original Motion Controller on v02.00.0700, both unchanged since the December 2023 notes.

DJI’s release notes for the Avata 360 carry the same October 20 date and the same DJI Fly build, and that drone’s update added Waypoint Flight and RC Pro 2 support. The Goggles 2 and Goggles Integra are not Avata-only hardware either: both headsets have flown the Avata 2 since May 2024.

DJI’s Avata notes repeat the warning attached to every Avata release: the update may reset the RTH altitude and the maximum flight distance, so note both before updating and set them again afterward.

The Avata’s last new feature arrived in March 2023

The Avata received six firmware releases in its first 16 months and none between December 2023 and this one. Launch-day v01.01.0000 added a custom auto ISO limit, v01.02.0000 on December 8, 2022 brought Remote ID and 10-bit D-Cinelike, and v01.03.0000 on March 28, 2023 added RC Motion 2 support.

DroneXL covered the launch-day update and the 10-bit D-Cinelike release at the time. The March 2023 build also added Goggles Integra support, a Clear All Data option under Settings > About, an RTH altitude prompt after a Home Point update, and a 15-second low-battery RTH countdown. December 2023’s v01.05.0000 was the first release whose only line was “Fixed some known issues,” and v01.06.0000 is the second.

DroneXL’s Take

A one-line changelog after a gap of nearly three years is not good enough, and I don’t think DJI would accept it from a supplier. An owner who kept a 2022 Avata flying has no way to tell whether this build touches the thing they live with, and DJI has now used the identical sentence for three of the Avata 360’s six releases this year as well. Shipping anything for a drone two generations old is more than most of this industry does, and the Goggles 2 build reaches a headset Avata 2 pilots fly too. But a company that can write “Added RTH altitude prompt after updating the Home Point” in 2023 can name a fix in 2026. If your Avata flies fine today, I’d write down the RTH altitude and maximum distance before you update, because that reset is the only change DJI has told you to expect.

Sources: DJI Avata Release Notes, DJI Avata 360 Release Notes

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Grand Teton Butte in Deleted DJ Drone Video Sits in Airport Airspace

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 18:20:00 GMT

Grand Teton National Park officials are aware of a deleted drone video of a DJ in a green jacket mixing music on what the Jackson Hole News&Guide identified as Blacktail Butte. The park has not confirmed where it was filmed. Asked by the News&Guide and Outside, park spokesperson Emily Davis did not say whether the pilot had the superintendent’s written permission, whether officials are investigating, or whether rangers have issued citations.

The video was on YouTube and Reddit on October 14 and came off Reddit that morning, the News&Guide reported on October 22. It was later deleted after a wave of criticism, though another Reddit user reposted it. The pilot deleted his Reddit account and could not be reached by the News&Guide’s press time, and Outside said the video’s creator had not responded by its publication time.

Blacktail Butte’s summit, nearly 7,700 feet high, sits about three miles northeast of Jackson Hole Airport, inside the airport’s Class D airspace.

Grand Teton Bans Drone Flights Without the Superintendent’s Written OK

Launching, landing or operating a drone in Grand Teton National Park or the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway is banned without written permission from the superintendent, Public Affairs Officer Emily Davis told the Jackson Hole News&Guide. The ban covers recreation, photography, filming and commercial work alike.

A violation is a misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine, the National Park Service says, and rangers decide enforcement case by case. Davis cited wildlife, noise and visitor safety as reasons for the ban, and told Outside: “Unauthorized flights can also ground aerial search-and-rescue missions and wildland firefighting operations.”

Outside dated the ban to 2014. The Park Service’s own drone page, last updated May 22, 2025, still calls that year’s Policy Memorandum 14-05 in force with a few exceptions. The agency’s newer aviation reference manual says otherwise: Chapter 12, approved September 25, 2024, rescinds the memo and folds its policy into the manual, including the sentence every park must put in its compendium. It bans launching, landing or operating a drone from or on park land and water unless the superintendent approves in writing, and Grand Teton’s compendium carries it word for word. The drone page adds that Park Service jurisdiction ends at the park boundary and that the policy does not modify any FAA requirement.

A no-drones sign at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota cites 36 CFR 1.5, the closure authority Grand Teton's compendium uses for its drone ban. Photo credit: DroneXL

Blacktail Butte Sits Inside Jackson Hole Airport’s Class D Airspace

Because Blacktail Butte sits inside Jackson Hole Airport’s Class D airspace, any drone flight there needs FAA approval, park permission or not. That airspace runs from the ground to 8,900 feet above sea level, and 100 feet is the highest altitude LAANC can approve over the summit.

DroneXL checked the summit’s coordinates against the FAA’s published airspace and UAS facility map data on October 25. The summit is 2.6 nautical miles from the airport’s reference point, and the Class D boundary runs about 2.4 miles north of it, past the butte’s north end, so the whole butte sits inside. When the tower is closed, the same area becomes Class E surface airspace, which also requires authorization under 14 CFR 107.41 and the recreational flyer rules. The grid is open to LAANC (Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability) requests from Part 107 pilots and recreational flyers, and anything above 100 feet needs a request through FAADroneZone.

The park decides who takes off from its land, and the FAA decides who flies in the airspace, so a legal flight on Blacktail Butte needs approval from both. Neither the News&Guide nor Outside reported which drone filmed the set, how high it flew, or whether the pilot asked the FAA for authorization.

DroneXL’s Take

Park drone videos tend to end with the clip gone and no public account of how it was shot. DJI pulled a Mavic 4 Pro promo with apparent Yellowstone and other park footage last October, four days after we asked how those shots were legal. DJI later said an independent creator made it and that it was investigating. Blacktail Butte adds an airport, and my read is that the airport is the bigger problem. Since DJI’s geofencing change in January 2025, updated DJI apps show US airport zones as FAA-based warnings a pilot can acknowledge and fly through. Whatever drone filmed this set, that leaves the pilot as the main check three miles from an airport. Get a LAANC authorization and the park’s written OK, or leave the drone in the car, because I think every unexplained flight like this one feeds the case for tighter rules on the rest of us.

Sources: Jackson Hole News&Guide, Outside, National Park Service, FAA

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Barksdale Indictment Alleges DJI Air 3 Flights After the Incursions

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 16:46:00 GMT

Federal prosecutors in Louisiana have charged a man with flying an unregistered DJI Air 3 around Barksdale Air Force Base from March 22 to 26, 2026. Fuad Mousa Naji faces two counts: violating national defense airspace and failing to register an aircraft. He was arrested in Michigan on September 29 and is due in federal court in Shreveport on December 2.

Barksdale is home to the 2nd Bomb Wing’s B-52H bombers and the headquarters of Air Force Global Strike Command. A shelter-in-place order on March 9 opened a week of incursions over the base that DroneXL reported in March, and they ran through March 15. The period charged in Naji’s indictment begins a week after that.

Prosecutors Charge Two Counts, and Registration Carries the Higher Maximum

The indictment, filed in the Western District of Louisiana’s Shreveport Division, accuses Naji of knowingly and willfully operating a drone he knew was not registered, under 49 U.S.C. § 46306(b)(6)(A). A second count charges a national defense airspace violation. Each count carries a forfeiture notice, KSLA reported.

The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, which reported the indictment on October 20, a day before KSLA, put the maximum at a year in prison. That figure fits the airspace count, because 49 U.S.C. § 46307 caps a first offense at one year. The registration count runs to three years under § 46306, the same section that, by DroneXL’s reading, accounts for six of the eight years a Dallas drone pilot faces. Together the two counts carry a combined statutory maximum of four years.

KSLA’s report on the filing identifies the drone as a DJI Air 3. At 720 grams it sits well above the FAA’s 250-gram registration line, and a recreational registration costs $5 and covers every drone a pilot owns for three years (our registration walkthrough has the steps).

A federal magistrate signed the order transferring Naji to the Western District of Louisiana on the day of his arrest. His initial appearance is set for the Tom Stagg U.S. Courthouse in downtown Shreveport. An indictment is an accusation, and Naji is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

The Charged Period Starts After the Incursions Cassidy Described

Sen. Bill Cassidy told reporters on March 27 that there had been “five or so at Barksdale from the 9th through the 15th,” one of them a hobbyist and four of unclear origin. A briefing obtained by ABC News described waves of 12 to 15 drones over that same week.

That briefing, reported by ABC News and dated March 15, said the aircraft showed non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links and resistance to jamming, and that incursions like these require the flight line to be shut down. Air Force Global Strike Command pushed back on parts of the coverage on March 31, saying operations from Barksdale “continue unabated” while a federal investigation runs.

On March 27, Cassidy and a Barksdale public affairs spokesperson reported that two drones had been recovered. In a video after his briefing, Cassidy said investigators were not sure one of them was tied to the incursions and were looking for fingerprints and other clues to the drones’ origins. Neither the Advocate’s October 20 report nor KSLA’s October 21 report says whether Naji’s Air 3 was one of those drones, or how investigators connected the alleged March 22 to 26 flights to Naji.

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that this is a hobbyist case until the government says otherwise. The charges are the same airspace-and-registration pairing prosecutors brought against Yinpiao Zhou, arrested in December 2024 over a drone flight at Vandenberg Space Force Base, and Zhou pleaded guilty to the airspace count. Zhou’s case also alleged an altitude-limit override, and nothing reported about Naji’s does. Neither local report on the charges connects them to the jamming-resistant drones in the March briefing, so anyone treating Naji’s arrest as the answer to Barksdale is ahead of the record. For anyone who flies near a base, the lesson costs $5, because a registered drone takes the three-year count off the table.

Sources: The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, KSLA, The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, March 31, KSLA, March 27, KSLA, March 31, ABC News, 49 U.S.C. § 46306, 49 U.S.C. § 46307

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

New York's Hobby Drone Exemption Stops Just Short of DJI's Mini 5 Pro

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 19:52:00 GMT

New York has made it a crime to fly a drone within 500 feet of places including schools, police and fire stations, airports, prisons, critical infrastructure and any event drawing 500 or more people. The offense, unlawful use of a drone, came in with the 2026-27 state budget as Penal Law Article 280 and has been in force since August 25. It is a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

On Friday, Vic Moss, CEO and co-founder of the Drone Service Providers Alliance, walked the Commercial Drone Pilots group on Facebook through the law and concluded that commercial operators flying under Part 107 are covered. The text backs him. The exemption the law writes for hobbyists is narrower: it covers drones that weigh 0.55 pounds or less at takeoff. DJI’s spec sheet puts the DJI Mini 5 Pro at 249.9 grams.

Part 107 Pilots Fall Under New York’s Lawful-Purpose Exemption

Section 280.10(3) exempts drones flown for commercial, educational, agricultural, journalistic, infrastructure or other lawful purposes that comply with every applicable federal, state and local rule. The exemption covers both the prohibited-space ban and the nefarious-use ban, and it falls away only when a pilot recklessly risks injury or property damage.

Moss leads with a different argument and adds that exemption after it. Section 280.05 bans flights over prohibited space made without “express prior approval from someone the person reasonably believes has the authority” to grant it. He cites 49 U.S.C. 40103, which gives the federal government exclusive sovereignty over US airspace, and argues that a pilot flying legally under Part 107 or the recreational exception in 49 U.S.C. 44809 would reasonably believe they have that approval. His advice is to print the full article and “keep it in your Policy and Procedures manual.” He labeled the post as not legal advice.

Near an airport, a LAANC authorization may well count as that express approval. In uncontrolled Class G airspace a Part 107 flight needs no authorization from anyone, which makes the exemption the firmer footing. The approval route also runs through the site itself, since the statute accepts approval from anyone the pilot reasonably believes can grant it.

New York’s Prohibited Space Names No Sites and Comes With Takedown Powers

Section 280.00 extends prohibited space 500 feet beyond each site’s boundary and 400 feet up, or higher without FAA authorization. Its critical infrastructure category borrows a Freedom of Information Law definition. That definition covers anything “so vital to the state” that losing it endangers the public, without naming any site.

The same budget bill gave police a way to act on that space. Executive Law Section 236 lets trained police and peace officers detect, track, intercept or disable a drone that poses a credible threat. Non-kinetic measures need reasonable suspicion that a drone is flying in prohibited space or in a nefarious manner. Kinetic measures need probable cause and federally approved equipment, and only come into play when non-kinetic measures have failed or would be expected to.

Officers must finish State Police training plus whatever certification federal law requires, which ties New York’s authority to the federal SAFER SKIES Act that let the NYPD stand up its counter-drone unit in May. The State Police have six months from the section taking effect to write the mitigation rules, and agencies must report every use to them within 48 hours.

DJI’s Mini 5 Pro Spec Sits Above New York’s Hobby Weight Line

Converted, 0.55 pounds is 249.5 grams, so DJI’s own 249.9-gram figure for the Mini 5 Pro is 0.4 grams over New York’s recreational drone line. DJI lists a tolerance of plus or minus 4 grams, and DroneXL has reported Mini 5 Pro units weighing 252 to 253 grams.

The definition also requires a drone flown exclusively under 49 U.S.C. 44809, and it counts everything on board at takeoff. A recreational drone loses its status the moment it carries a payload beyond its flight equipment and onboard sensors. A DJI Mini 4 Pro on its standard battery, which DJI rates under 249 grams, fits. The 724-gram DJI Air 3S from DroneXL’s six-month review does not come close.

At 724 grams, the DJI Air 3S weighs nearly three times New York's recreational drone limit. Image credit: DJI

Outside prohibited space, a hobbyist with a heavier drone commits no crime under Article 280 unless they fly in a nefarious manner. Inside it, their one possible shelter is the “other lawful purposes” language in subsection 3, and the text does not say whether a recreational flight counts. The law’s separate toy drone exemption does not help: it excludes any drone carrying a camera or other recording sensor.

DroneXL’s Take

New York wrote a hobby exemption that fits a Mini 4 Pro and stops short of the Mini 5 Pro, DJI’s current sub-250-gram flagship. The nefarious-manner half of Article 280 targets conduct that actually happens, like the knives and drugs a drone dropped into Marcy Correctional Facility in March, and I have no quarrel with it. The prohibited-space half is different. A 500-foot ring around every school and firehouse, plus critical infrastructure the law never lists, is a lot of airspace for a hobbyist to map alone, and the weight cap leaves anyone flying a Mini 5 Pro or an Air 3S near a volunteer fire station relying on a court reading “other lawful purposes” generously.

I doubt anyone in Albany set out to make that flight a misdemeanor, but the text allows it, and once the State Police rules are written, Section 236 lets a trained officer move against it on reasonable suspicion of a credible threat. The fix is one change to Section 280.00(3): drop the weight cap and keep the 44809 requirement. The legislature convenes in January. Until it acts, anyone flying anything heavier than a Mini 4 Pro for fun in New York should treat those 500-foot rings as no-fly zones unless they have the site’s express OK.

Sources: New York Penal Law Article 280, New York Executive Law Section 236, Vic Moss in the Commercial Drone Pilots Facebook group.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Drone Meth Drop in a Fake Crow Earns Texas Woman 70 Months in Prison

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 19:50:00 GMT

A Texas woman who conspired to fly a crow-shaped package of methamphetamine into the federal penitentiary at Pollock, Louisiana, by drone was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison on October 16. Melanie Jean Worthington, 39, of Joshua, Texas, had pleaded guilty in June to drug conspiracy and providing contraband into a prison.

U.S. District Judge Jerry Edwards Jr. sentenced a second Pollock drone defendant in Alexandria the same day. Yoan Seirra Hernandez, 42, of West Park, Florida, got 120 months. He admitted he intended to fly drugs into the prison, and deputies investigating a December 2024 trespassing complaint later found him at a nearby Airbnb.

In Worthington’s case, penitentiary staff recovered a crow full of meth.

The Crow Was the Package, and the FBI Photo Shows a Stock Quadcopter

The Justice Department describes a package designed to look like a crow, smuggled using a drone. Penitentiary staff recovered one holding more than 100 grams of methamphetamine, suspected THC concentrate, SIM cards, charging cords and wireless earbuds, and KALB reported it was found inside the prison.

KALB’s sentencing report describes “drones disguised as crows,” and the Justice Department captions its own photos “the ‘crow’ drone.” The text of the department’s release describes a package instead, and its FBI photo of the car evidence shows a dark gray quadcopter in a hard case, with the brand name Aeroo on the aircraft, its installed battery and two boxes. The Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office photo above shows a taped crow lying beside a conventional drone.

Investigators got reports of drone activity near the prison early that morning. Detectives found Worthington and a person prosecutors describe as a co-conspirator in a car with a drone box and a remote controller attached to a cell phone, plus a crow full of cigars, tobacco and paper soaked in synthetic marijuana. A third crow turned up in Worthington’s hotel room with cell phones, rolling papers and tobacco.

KALB reported in March, citing the Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office, that the two women said they were being paid $40,000 to smuggle in the items. KALB counted theirs as the ninth and 10th smuggling arrests at the prison in 2026. By KALB’s tally the count reached 26 in September, when a drone carrying $31,000 of meth flew itself back to its launch point on a low battery. The federal release does not name Worthington’s co-conspirator or say where that case stands, and the second woman is presumed innocent unless convicted.

Yoan Hernandez’s Case Involved 776 Grams of 98 Percent Pure Meth

Yoan Hernandez was caught with far more methamphetamine than Worthington’s case describes. A lab confirmed 776 grams at 98 percent purity, prosecutors said, plus about two kilograms of lower purity, six pounds of marijuana and 50 sheets of suspected K2, recovered from his Airbnb and a rental car outside.

The case began on December 6, 2024, with a trespassing complaint. Surveillance cameras caught three people walking the property line near USP Pollock at about 4:30 a.m., one of them apparently carrying a drone, and officers heard a drone had been seen flying there earlier that morning. The Airbnb’s owner reported suspicious activity, and a search warrant turned up what prosecutors called a co-conspirator hiding inside, along with two drones, a 9mm handgun and artificial turf meant to disguise packages.

Federal law sets a 10-year minimum for trafficking 50 grams or more of methamphetamine, or 500 grams of a mixture containing it, under 21 U.S.C. § 841, and § 846 applies the same penalties to conspiracies. Hernandez’s 120 months equals that floor. The release does not say which penalty provision applied in either case. Hernandez pleaded guilty on June 26 and admitted he expected a percentage of the drug proceeds.

Pollock also appears in a larger federal case. FCI Pollock was one of ten federal prisons named in a June indictment in Georgia that accuses twelve people of at least 38 drone drops, and those defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted.

DroneXL’s Take

The crow is the detail everyone will repeat, and I think it is the least important fact in the case. Staff recovered the bird anyway, and detectives found the car after reports of drone activity near the facility. A decoy built for a guard’s eyes did nothing about either.

My read of the two cases side by side is that the drone barely moved the outcome. The release gives no reasons for either sentence, but Hernandez, with no delivery described in his case, drew 10 years on 776 grams of nearly pure meth. Worthington, whose conspiracy got a package to the penitentiary, got 70 months.

If the women’s account to deputies is right, someone was paying $40,000 for this job, and it bought almost six years of Worthington’s life. The next courier at Pollock should do that math before the drone goes up.

Sources: U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana, KALB, Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Neo Is $169 on Amazon, $30 Off List but $30 Over Its Prime Low

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 19:22:00 GMT

The DJI Neo is $169 on Amazon for the controller-free base kit, 15% under its $199 list price and in stock with next-day Prime delivery. DJI’s own US store charges the same $169 for the same kit, and it is sold out there, with a one-per-customer limit for when stock returns. DroneXL checked both stores at 3:22 p.m. Eastern on Friday, October 23.

On October 6 and 7, the same DJI Neo listing sold for $139.

Get the DJI Neo for $169 on Amazon

The Neo in a hover, propeller guards on, during Air Photography’s six-month review. Photo credit: Air Photography

Amazon’s $169 Is DJI’s Own Price, and Every Sale Since Fall 2025 Went Lower

Amazon’s $139 on October 6 and 7 was a Prime Big Deal Days price. On October 23 the listing was back at $169, the price DJI’s store showed during Prime. The 15% saving Amazon displays is measured against a $199 list price DJI itself no longer charges.

The Neo hit $159 for Prime in October 2025 and again on December 8, that time with a $40 coupon. It was $149 in April, then $139 for June’s Prime Day, on September 2 and at the October Prime event.

The bundles climbed further than the base kit. The Three-Battery Combo is $245, up $44 from its Prime price. The Fly More Combo with the RC-N3 controller is $295, up $53, and the Motion Fly More Combo is $449, up $80. The base kit is sold by the DJI Tech Hub storefront and shipped by Amazon, and the DJI Neo 2 is $259 from a third-party seller.

The $169 Neo Flies From Your Palm Without a Controller or a Phone

The Neo lifts off your hand at the press of its mode button, flies a preset shot such as Follow, Circle or Rocket, and lands back on your palm. The $169 kit includes the drone, one battery, propeller guards, a gimbal protector, spare propellers, a screwdriver and a USB-C cable.

A phone adds virtual joysticks out to 164 feet (50 meters) and voice commands through the DJI Fly app. Android owners get that app from DJI’s website, because DJI Fly is not on Google Play, a point the Amazon listing makes in its first bullet. Shawn of Air Photography, who has flown the Neo for DroneXL since its 2024 launch, said in his one-year review that gusts push it around mostly when you fly it higher with a controller.

DJI Neo Specs: 4K/30 Video, but Vertical Clips Stop at 1080p

The Neo shoots 4K at 30 fps in 16:9 from a 12-megapixel 1/2-inch sensor with RockSteady or HorizonBalancing stabilization. Native 9:16 vertical video, the format TikTok and Reels want, tops out at 1080p at 60 fps, according to DJI’s spec sheet.

Stabilization starts with a single-axis tilt gimbal. Video bitrate peaks at 75 Mbps, and stills are JPEG only. DJI rates the flight time at 18 minutes per battery, 17 with the guards on, and wind resistance at Level 4, 18 mph (8 m/s). Footage goes to 22 GB of internal storage with no microSD slot, so on a long day of flying, Shawn wrote, you may have to offload mid-session.

At 135 g the Neo Skips FAA Registration, but Not the FAA’s TRUST Test

The Federal Aviation Administration requires registration only for drones of 250 g (0.55 lb) or more, so a recreational Neo pilot registers nothing and needs no Remote ID broadcast. Every recreational flyer must still pass the free TRUST test and carry proof of it, whatever the drone weighs.

The FAA’s recreational flyer rules also set a 400-foot (122-meter) ceiling in uncontrolled airspace and require LAANC or DroneZone authorization in controlled airspace near airports. Flying the Neo for pay changes the picture. Commercial work needs a Part 107 certificate and a registered aircraft at any weight, and the FAA requires every drone that needs registration to broadcast Remote ID unless it flies inside an FAA-recognized identification area.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d buy the Neo at $169 only if you need it this week. Black Friday is November 27, and every Amazon sale event DroneXL has tracked since October 2025 has put this drone at $159 or less. The risk in waiting is stock, because DJI’s store is already empty and the bundles have climbed by as much as $80 since Prime. A successor won’t rescue you either. The Neo 3 leaks keep coming, and the FCC’s Covered List decision of December 22 blocks authorization of new DJI models, which rules out an authorized US release. My read is that $169 is the Neo’s regular price now, and anything at $159 or under is the deal worth waiting for.

Sources: Amazon, DJI, FAA

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DroneXL: The Independent Drone Authority — DJI, FAA, Reviews & Deals

Wing Wants Seven St. Louis Drone Hubs Live at Once. Manchester Is Next

Wing Plans a Seven-Nest Launch With 12 St. Louis Walmarts in Play

High Ridge Is the Only Approval Reported, and No County Agenda Shows It

Manchester Hears Wing Twice in Three Days With No Vote Scheduled

No FAA Comment Period Is Required for St. Louis Under the National Finding

DroneXL’s Take

Alibaba Says a Pentagon Law Cost It Every Lobbyist. DJI Kept Two Firms

Section 4663 Binds The Pentagon And Reaches Lobbyists Through Their Clients

The Judge Found The Pentagon Brought One Exhibit

Courts Keep Questioning The Pentagon’s China List

DroneXL’s Take

SFPD's Proposed Drone Rules Stop Short of Sonoma's Court Settlement

Sonoma’s settlement also makes the county tell residents when a drone watched them

San Francisco’s order bans general surveillance but has no notice rule

California has no comprehensive police drone law, so each city sets its own limits

Berkeley’s drone review is a slide deck that found no proof of a safety payoff

DroneXL’s Take

Percepto Opens Its Inspection AI to Rival Drones Under a New CEO

Axion Runs 160-Plus AI Models on Data Percepto’s Drones Never Collected

Percepto Keeps Its Drones and Moves Their Production to the US

Percepto’s AI Read DJI Footage in 2021, and Now the Software Leads the Sale

DroneXL’s Take

Amazon Drones Fly Over Chicago Suburbs. The FAA Still Shows a Draft

Amazon Says 21 Drones Fly From Markham. NBC 5 Calls the Rollout Not Yet Official

The FAA’s Public Chicago File Ends at a July Draft With No Decision

Homewood Says It Cannot Ground the Drones, and Illinois Law Agrees

DroneXL’s Take

China's 48-Volt Drone Motor Rule Is Narrow. Its Propeller Rule Is Not

Hobbywing’s Spray Motors Miss the Density Test, Its Big Blades Hit the Length Test

T-Motor’s U15 II Is Controlled Only if Customs Mixes Two Rows of Its Own Table

Exporters Have Three Weeks to Produce Numbers Their Spec Sheets Do Not Carry

Ukraine’s Direct Chinese Drone-Part Imports Fell From 90% to 28% Before the Rule Lands

Washington Is Banning the Same Chinese Motors From Its Own Side

DroneXL’s Take

NATO Needs Drones to Become '32 Ukraines,' Ex-UK Defense Chief Says

Ullman and Richards Want Drones to Fill the Gap US Troops Leave

Grynkewich’s Transcript Pairs Cheap Drones With High-End Strike

The Pentagon’s Europe Troop Cut Recommendation Is Due November 6

DroneXL’s Take

Army Apaches Train to Kill Shaheds, but the Newest Ones Outrun Them

A Ground Radar Found the Drones Before the Apaches Fired

The Apache’s 30mm Gun Is the Cheap Shot Air Defenders Want

A Drone Struck the Apache Lost Over Hormuz

Jet-Powered Shaheds Fly Faster Than the Apache Can Chase

DroneXL’s Take

FEMA's Olympic Counter-Drone Money Gives Host California 46% Less

Guaranteed Minimums Claim 70% of the Olympic Round

The Forum Puts Five Federal Drone Officials in a Room With 2,000 Buyers and Sellers

FEMA Wants Grant-Bought Jammers Working Olympic-Class Events 80% of the Time

Every Grant-Funded Sensor Has to Share Its Drone Data With DHS

DroneXL’s Take

Tekever Sells Drones to US Special Operations but Won't Say Which

Tekever Ran Its AR3 Through a SOCOM Exercise at Camp Roberts in 2025

Tekever Opened Its Fayetteville Office Five Months Before the Announcement

DroneXL’s Take

BA's 'Four Toasters' Drone Is an Unknown Object in the Airprox Report

Airprox Board Rates the BA Encounter Category A Without Identifying the Object

The Same Airprox Batch Shows Crews Confusing Foil Balloons and Drones

DroneXL’s Take

Army Calls Its Drone Demand 'Artificial.' Makers Want A Year Of Orders

Gauntlet Orders Are Sized In Months, Not The Year Slider Wants

The Army Says It Is Inducing Demand Because Many Makers Won’t Invest Without It

Skydio Hears A Strong Signal, While AeroVironment Wants Steady Awards

The $54.6 Billion That Would Answer Slider Is Stuck In Reconciliation

DroneXL’s Take

Antigravity A1 on a Watch and Ring, Plus the New RC the US Can't Buy

The Ring and Watch Steer the A1 Wherever You Move Your Hand

The Watch Flies 12 Modes, and Deep Track Is the One Most People Will Use

The A1 Followed Me Down a Wooded Trail Where It Got Stuck Last Year

The Watch, Ring and Guards Come as a Kit for Existing A1 Owners

Antigravity’s A1 Remote Controller Is Finally Here, Just Not in the US

Unusual Machines' New Battery Unit May Use Cells From China's Tenpower

Upgrade’s RED V4 Line Is The Only One With A Tenpower Option

Upgrade Promised Its Government-Bound Batteries Won’t Make A Covered Drone

Barnard Can Collect Up To $26 Million More If Upgrade Tops $10 Million

DroneXL’s Take

Purdue's "From Scratch" Drone Flies on a Hong Kong Lab's Planner

SUPER and FAST-LIO Come From the University of Hong Kong’s MaRS Lab

HKU Publishes SUPER’s Airframe Files Too