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

Ørsted's Turbine Drone Looks Like a DJI Heavy Lifter the US Taxes 100%

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:58:00 GMT

Ørsted spent four weeks flying maintenance kits of 121 to 143 pounds (55 to 65 kg) from a service vessel to turbines at Hornsea 2, its wind farm in the North Sea, with Skyports Drone Services flying the aircraft. When the technicians finished, the drone went back out, picked up the bag on an automatic hook so nobody had to clip it on by hand, and returned it to the ship.

Ørsted announced the trial on October 7. Neither its release nor the copy Skyports posted names the aircraft, but the photo Ørsted published with it shows what DroneXL identifies as a DJI FlyCart 100, the heavy lifter the United States put in a 100% tariff bracket on Sept. 3.

Drones have delivered to Hornsea 2 before. Last summer a different operator flew safety boxes to more than 400 Ørsted turbines, Hornsea 2’s included.

Ørsted’s 2025 Flights Dropped Boxes Off, While Hornsea 2 Ran Round Trips

The 2025 program, flown by Skylift on FlyingBasket drones, left evacuation kits of up to 154 pounds (70 kg) on turbines at four Ørsted wind farms over 550-plus flights. The Hornsea 2 trial flew task-specific maintenance kits out before technicians arrived and carried them back once the work was done.

Each bag held the tools and parts for one job. Ørsted project lead Richard McCrilley said the team had a daily presence on site and took ad hoc flight requests as they came in. “We were able to cover both planned and reactive works,” he said.

The turbine keeps generating while the drone delivers. Ørsted put numbers on that in 2025: a crane delivery to the nacelle took two lifts and up to a six-hour shutdown, against about five minutes by drone, according to Ørsted’s account of the Skylift program. DroneXL covered those flights when the BBC reported them.

The Trial’s First BVLOS Delivery Ran 2.5 Miles Inside Hornsea 2

The team’s first delivery beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) inside Hornsea 2 ran about 2.5 miles (4 km), planned and monitored from a specialist service vessel. The UK Civil Aviation Authority helped secure the airspace approvals for the project, which Ørsted calls a milestone.

Ed Clay, the CAA’s head of technical strategy for future safety and innovation, said the regulator is working toward “integrating routine BVLOS operations into the airspace system.” Clay also spoke for the CAA when Glasgow’s Airspection flew a shore-launched drone to a Liverpool Bay wind farm beyond line of sight, announced the day before Ørsted’s release.

Skyports has done longer offshore runs. In 2025 it teamed with Skyways and RWE to fly Skyways V2 aircraft on 50-mile (80.5 km) round trips from port to RWE’s Arkona wind farm in the Baltic, with payloads of up to 22 pounds (10 kg). Hornsea 2’s BVLOS leg was shorter, and its kits weighed 5.5 to 6.5 times as much.

Ørsted’s Photo Matches DJI’s FlyCart 100, the Only FlyCart Sized for the Load

The drone on the vessel’s deck in Ørsted’s release has the FlyCart 100’s coaxial eight-rotor layout, top-mounted parachute and twin side battery cases. DJI rates it at 143 pounds (65 kg) for 7.5 miles (12 km) on two batteries. That is the top of Ørsted’s kit range.

The rest of DJI’s lineup doesn’t fit. The FlyCart 30 carries 66 pounds (30 kg) on two batteries, and the much larger FlyCart 200 launched in April for the Chinese market only. DJI’s own photo of the FlyCart 100, below, shows the same fuselage, parachute housing and battery cases.

DJI's FlyCart 100 with its winch cable deployed. Image credit: DJI

DJI sells the FlyCart 100 with a winch that has an electric hook and 98 feet (30 meters) of cable, with automatic release and retrieval. Ørsted credits the trial team with developing the automatic-hook pickup and doesn’t say how much of it is DJI’s stock hardware and how much is Skyports’ own procedure.

DroneXL’s Take

Washington is making the job in Ørsted’s photo harder to do in American waters, and I think that’s a mistake. Ørsted also runs South Fork Wind off Long Island. A US operator who wanted to sell the Hornsea 2 service there would already need an FAA exemption to fly a drone over 55 pounds, and since Sept. 3 it would also pay a 100% tariff on the aircraft, while the FCC weighs ending U.S. sales of heavy-lift drones it already approved. None of that makes an American heavy lifter carry more or fly farther. It makes the crews keeping US turbines running pay more for the same delivery, or go back to the crane and the six-hour shutdown. If American drone makers want the offshore wind work, I’d like to see them win it on payload, range and price.

Sources: Ørsted, Skyports Drone Services, DJI.

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 2 Reads 492 Feet Below Takeoff, Nears Auto-Return at 71%

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:11:00 GMT

Marcus, who runs the Idaho Quadcopter YouTube channel, flew a 151-gram DJI Neo 2 off the rim of the Snake River Canyon at Dedication Point, about 16 miles south of Kuna, Idaho, and took it down to the rapids. The drone’s altitude readout showed 150 meters (492 feet) below its takeoff point. He filmed the flight at the 2026 Dedication Point drone meetup and posted it on October 19. DroneXL covered his take on drone tariffs and the FCC in August.

His earlier flight at the meetup ran fully autonomous, and this time he flew the Neo 2 on a DJI RC 2 controller. Over the rapids the battery still read 71 percent, and Marcus said the drone was almost into return-to-home.

Marcus pairs the RC 2 at the rim, then takes the Neo 2 down to the rapids. Video credit: Idaho Quadcopter

Pairing the RC 2 at the Canyon Rim Took a Phone Hotspot

The RC 2 had never been paired with this Neo 2, and the controller had to download Neo 2 resources before it would connect. It wasn’t on Wi-Fi, so Marcus ran a hotspot from his iPhone, pulled the files and let the controller update its firmware.

After that the pairing took seconds. With the transceiver installed and the drone powered on, he tapped Pair Now and held the drone’s button until it beeped. RC 2 support came with a DJI Fly update in November 2025, and Marcus said the resource download is a job for home. His safety screen showed 30 satellites and a 120-meter maximum altitude setting, and he cut the return-to-home altitude from 45 to 25 meters (148 to 82 feet).

The Neo 2 Read 492 Feet Below Takeoff When It Neared Auto-Return

The 71 percent reading came with the Neo 2 over the rapids. Its own readout put it 150 meters (492 feet) below the takeoff point, so getting home meant a long climb as well as the flight back. Marcus said the drone “doesn’t like flying this far from home.”

On the way down he pushed Sport mode to almost 12 m/s (about 27 mph), then switched back to Normal mode for obstacle avoidance before going low over the water. Heading back along the canyon wall, he watched the yellow return marker on the battery bar slide away as the drone got closer, and he credited DJI’s software with tracking how close to home it was. He had been recording for almost five minutes by then. Shawn at Air Photography got close to 13 minutes of recording before hitting 12 percent in his Neo 2 e-bike tracking test, so a 71 percent reading a few minutes in looks in line with normal use. The flight ended with a landing in Marcus’s hand.

The video doesn’t settle how deep the drop was. The Bureau of Land Management puts the Dedication Point overlook 400 feet above the Snake River, about 90 feet less than the readout, and the footage doesn’t show whether the rapids sit lower than the river below the overlook or the readout drifted.

DroneXL’s Take

Below your takeoff point, the battery percentage stops telling you how much flight you have left. Marcus had 71 percent on the screen and a drone already close to heading home. On flat ground, 71 percent on a Neo 2 is most of a flight. I’d treat a canyon dive like a hike into one, because the way out is uphill and the turnaround comes earlier than the gauge suggests. The yellow return marker on the battery bar is the number to watch down there, and Marcus watched it all the way back. If you take a Neo 2 to the bottom of a canyon, start the climb back while the battery still looks generous.

Sources: Idaho Quadcopter on YouTube, Bureau of Land Management.

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

Red Cat Bids €205M for Its Drone Boat Engine Maker After Walking Away

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:45:00 GMT

Red Cat Holdings will offer €39.00 in cash for every share of Steyr Motors AG, the Austrian company whose diesel engine powers the Variant 7 drone boat Red Cat builds in Georgia and Maine, the Salt Lake City defense drone maker said on October 19.

Across Steyr’s 5,251,261 shares, the bid values the company at about €205 million. Anchor shareholder B&C Holding Österreich has irrevocably agreed to tender its stake of roughly 15%, and the acceptance period is set to close on December 18.

Red Cat has already walked away from Steyr once this year. On July 28 it said it had withdrawn a non-binding proposal for the company, and six days later its Blue Ops unit announced it had fitted a Volvo Penta diesel into the V7.

Red Cat Needs Half of Steyr’s Shares, and B&C Brings 15%

The €39.00 price is 28.9% above Steyr’s October 16 close. It also tops the 30-day volume-weighted average by 27.3% and the 52-week low by 55.8%. The offer succeeds only if Red Cat reaches 50% of the shares plus one and wins approval in Austria, Italy, Australia and the UK.

B&C’s stake covers about 788,000 shares against the roughly 2.63 million Red Cat needs. Steyr CEO Julian Cassutti said in Red Cat’s announcement that he will tender his own shares, and supervisory board chair Rolf Wirtz said the board views the deal favorably, pending the final offer document. Steyr’s own notice names the bidder as SMOT Acquisition GmbH in Vienna and puts completion in the first half of 2027.

A 50% threshold also means Red Cat can win and still own a listed company with public minority shareholders, as drone industry veteran Brandon Torres Declet pointed out on X. Neither company’s announcement says what Red Cat plans for shares that stay outside the offer.

Steyr Cut Its 2026 Forecast Three Weeks After Red Cat Withdrew

On August 17, Steyr lowered its 2026 revenue guidance to roughly €56 million to €61 million, down from €75 million to €95 million, and withdrew its 2027 outlook. The company blamed delays in international defense projects, which left about €10 million of planned first-half revenue unrealized.

First-half adjusted EBIT came in at €0.1 million. The 52-week low that Red Cat’s premium is measured against works out to about €25 a share. NuWays, which covers Steyr, still puts fair value at €49, about a quarter above the bid, according to Trending Topics.

Blue Ops Added Volvo Penta So V7 Output Wouldn’t Hinge on One Engine Maker

Blue Ops president Barry Hinckley told WorkBoat Blue Ops added the Volvo Penta D4-320 in August because it wanted more engine vendors, so production of the V7, which launched on Steyr’s 270-horsepower six-cylinder diesel, would not depend on one maker’s capacity.

Red Cat’s May 28 release on full-rate production of the “U.S.-built” Variant 7 named the Steyr engine, and WorkBoat’s launch coverage gave its specs. Red Cat’s own August 3 release was gentler than Hinckley, presenting Volvo Penta as more choice for customers and access to a global service network.

Blue Ops is the maritime unit Red Cat partly funded with a $46.75 million share sale in June 2025 and later built out with a 155,000-square-foot plant in Georgia. Monday’s announcement pitches Steyr as part of that USV strategy. Red Cat says it will keep Steyr’s headquarters, factory and R&D in Austria and keep selling to Steyr’s other customers, which buy its engines for military special vehicles, boats, and auxiliary power units in main battle tanks and locomotives. “We see Austria as central to the future of the business,” CEO Jeff Thompson said.

Steyr already sells into drones beyond Red Cat. Three days before the bid, it announced it will supply M12 generator units for the ground charging system of the Grille 9X, an all-electric medevac and resupply drone from German maker Avilus.

DroneXL’s Take

Buying Steyr is the right call for Red Cat, and it shows that “U.S.-built” defense hardware still runs on allied parts. The V7 is assembled in Maine and Georgia, and its engine comes from a factory in Steyr, Austria. Red Cat could have tried to stand up a marine diesel line at home. It chose to pay a premium and ask four governments for approval to secure a supplier it already relies on. My read is that Steyr’s August forecast cut is the reason Red Cat gets to buy at €39 rather than the €49 NuWays puts on the company. Allied supply chains are how capable hardware gets built quickly, and nobody can decree one into existence. I made the same argument in DJI and the American drone delusion in January.

Sources: Red Cat Holdings via GlobeNewswire, Steyr Motors AG, WorkBoat, Trending Topics, Brandon Torres Declet 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.

China Puts Big Drone Motors and Props on Its Export License List

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:18:00 GMT

China will require export licenses for heavy-lift drone motors, their speed controllers and large carbon-fiber propellers starting November 18. The Ministry of Commerce published the revised list on Monday, October 19, together with the General Administration of Customs and the Central Military Commission’s Equipment Development Department. Drone autopilots, long-endurance drones that fly beyond visual line of sight, and the software and technology behind them are on it too.

Tunnel boring machines and dredger parts got their own notices the same day. A fourth notice, in force immediately, sets deadlines for Chinese customs queries on suspected dual-use exports and extends the procedure to cross-border e-commerce parcels, mail, express packages and passenger luggage.

The ministry calls the drone change an “optimization” and says some once-advanced drones are now mass consumer products. A Shenzhen drone industry official says common agricultural spraying drones generally fall below the new lines. DJI’s own spec sheet puts the Agras T100 sprayer’s 100-liter tank over one of them.

China’s Parts List Targets 48-Volt Motors and Big Carbon Props

The new 9A901 entry covers brushless drone motors rated at 48 volts or more, 3 kilowatts or more, at least 3 kilowatts per kilogram and no faster than 3,000 rpm. Matching speed controllers need licenses too, as do large carbon-fiber propeller blades and variable-pitch blades of any length.

The blade test has two versions. A blade that passes through the center of rotation is covered at 30 inches (762 millimeters) from that center, and a folding blade at 25.5 inches (648 millimeters) from its root. These thresholds sit well above FPV hardware. Reaching 48 volts takes a 13S or larger battery, more than double the 6S packs most FPV quads fly on, and a 3-kilowatt motor rated under 3,000 rpm turns a big, slow propeller.

DJI’s Agras T100 shows how close the line runs. DJI’s spec page lists 52-volt flight batteries and a 60 rpm-per-volt motor rating, which works out to about 3,120 rpm with no load on that pack. It does not publish rated power or power density, the other two motor tests, or the blade length behind its 62-inch carbon propellers. The 100-liter spray tank is clearer. A separate entry, 9A112, covers autonomous or beyond-line-of-sight drones built to carry aerosol dispensing systems larger than 80 liters, plus any drone with a range of 186 miles (300 kilometers). Hobby and competition model aircraft are exempt.

Xiang Zheng, deputy secretary-general of the Shenzhen Drone Industry Association, wrote in the 21st Century Business Herald that thresholds for low-sensitivity civil drones went up while motors, speed controllers and propellers got tighter controls. He says common models for spraying, power-line inspection, delivery and filmmaking generally sit below the lines, and that companies get a one-month transition to adjust their customs paperwork.

DJI's exploded view of the Agras T100's motor and speed controller, the two part types China's 9A901 entry now licenses above 48 volts and 3 kilowatts. Image credit: DJI

China Measures Whole Drones by Endurance and a 25-Knot Gust Test

Complete drones need a license under entry 9A012.a if an operator can control them beyond natural line of sight and they either fly 3 hours or longer, or fly between 30 minutes and 3 hours while taking off and holding stable flight in gusts of 25 knots (46.3 km/h).

That wording follows the Wassenaar Arrangement’s 9A012 entry, the multilateral control list behind US and EU export rules, where the first tier ends at one hour instead of three. The US moved the other way this year. Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security dropped the license requirement for 9A012.a.1 drones headed to most Wassenaar members in January, as DroneXL reported.

The gust test does the sorting. DJI rates the Matrice 4 for winds of 12 m/s (about 23 knots) during takeoff and landing on its enterprise spec page, with a 49-minute maximum flight time. Drones that do land in the 30-minute tier get the lightest treatment in the notice: the exporter registers each shipment for an export certificate and ships without a license. Radios built for these drones need a license if their airborne output reaches 30 dBm or one ground station can fly more than 10 aircraft. Exporters with a working compliance program, an export record and steady end users may apply for general licenses.

Bloomberg reported that the list adds new types of drones. The notice itself does not say which entries are new and which carried over from the 2024 list. A ministry spokesperson said in a Q&A that China briefed the countries and regions it holds export-control dialogues with before publishing.

Chinese Customs Queries Now Reach Parcels and Passenger Luggage

Notice No. 52, in force since Monday, sets deadlines for an existing customs procedure. When an exporter can’t show a Commerce Ministry license and customs has evidence the goods may be dual-use, customs holds the shipment and issues a query. The exporter has 7 working days to answer with documents.

Those documents include contracts, invoices, transport records and technical data. Customs gets 15 working days to decide or refer the case to the ministry, which has another 15. The notice applies the same procedure to cross-border e-commerce, passenger, postal and express channels, the routes a parts order from a Shenzhen seller travels. The drone notice adds a paperwork rule on top: a motor or propeller that comes close to the thresholds without crossing them must still be declared with its specs and marked “not subject to export control.”

US-Bound Drone Items Get Case-by-Case Review and No Fast Lane

None of Notice 49’s facilitation measures reach American buyers. Since August 5, drones, components and technology on China’s dual-use list headed to the United States get “rigorous case-by-case review” and no license facilitation, Xinhua reported. The registration route and general licenses both sit under that heading.

My reading of the August rule is that motors, speed controllers and propellers crossing the new lines go into that review from November 18, while a qualifying exporter may apply for a general license to ship the same 48-volt motor to Germany. DroneXL covered the August restriction as Washington pushed on the same supply chain from its side. The Section 232 proclamation put tariffs of up to 100% on drones and critical components, as DroneXL broke down in August.

DroneXL’s Take

I think “China curbs more drones” gets this backwards for most pilots. The airframe test is borrowed from a Wassenaar entry the US itself just loosened, and the Matrice 4’s wind rating sits under the gust line. The tightening is in the parts list, and it lands on the American builders who are supposed to replace DJI. The Section 232 proclamation concedes that most US-built commercial drones use foreign parts, and as DroneXL noted in August, the motors and speed controllers among them still come mostly from Chinese suppliers. After the 2024 round of Chinese controls, US-bound infrared parts fell 60% in volume and cost 3.5 times as much within eight months, per Nikkei’s read of Chinese customs data that DroneXL covered last year. Beijing is using export licenses as a trade weapon, and Washington is taxing its own builders for buying the only parts on offer. If you build heavy-lift or spray drones in the US, check your motor and ESC spec sheets against 48 volts and 3 kilowatts before November 18.

Sources: Ministry of Commerce Announcement No. 49 of 2026 (via Xinhua), Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Q&A, Bloomberg (Josh Xiao), 21st Century Business Herald, Xinhua, DJI

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

Archer Flies Midnight Over San Francisco Bay, Runway to Runway

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:36:00 GMT

Archer Aviation flew its piloted Midnight air taxi around San Francisco Bay over several days, taking off from and landing at Oakland International Airport. One flight went from Oakland to San Francisco’s Marina District in about 10 minutes, a drive Archer says routinely takes more than an hour in traffic.

The Bay flights closed the Northern California leg of Archer’s “No Roads” tour, which worked north from Salinas through Hollister, San Martin, San Jose, Mountain View and Hayward. Archer says Midnight hit 131 mph and covered more than 200 miles, flying into seven cities over three days.

Midnight is an eVTOL, built to take off and land vertically. In the nearly 20-minute uncut video Archer posted Monday, it rolls down a runway to take off and touches down on Oakland’s Runway 28 Left like an airplane.

Archer's uncut video of Midnight's flight from Oakland International Airport around San Francisco Bay. Video credit: Archer

Archer Flew the Bay Tour in Airplane Mode

Archer’s announcement never uses the word “vertical,” and its own photos of the Bay flights show why. The six rear lift propellers sit stopped and stowed while the six front propellers pull Midnight along on its wing, the way a conventional airplane flies.

That pattern runs through the whole tour. Archer’s July 30 round trip between Salinas and Monterey also used conventional runway takeoffs and landings, Aviation Week reported. N703AX is the same airframe DroneXL wrote about in March, when it had spent all of 2025 flying as an airplane with no piloted vertical takeoffs or landings. Archer’s piloted vertical testing runs on a second aircraft, N704AX, which received its special airworthiness certificate in February.

Midnight passes the San Francisco skyline during the Bay Area flights. Photo credit: Archer

Archer Still Owes Its First Piloted Transition

Archer has not yet announced a piloted Midnight flight that takes off vertically, transitions into wingborne cruise and lands vertically, the maneuver the aircraft was designed around. On the company’s August 10 earnings call, CEO Adam Goldstein said Archer is “on track to full transition later this year.”

On the same call, Goldstein said the first operations under the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) will start with CTOL aircraft, meaning conventional takeoff and landing. Los Angeles is Midnight’s next stop as Archer prepares for those operations. Rival Joby Aviation flew its first piloted transition on April 22, 2025, at its Marina, California, test site, and flew past the Golden Gate Bridge in March to open its own tour.

DroneXL’s Take

Getting a piloted eVTOL in and out of Oakland, inside the airspace around three international airports, took real coordination with the FAA and the Oakland tower, and Archer earned that part of the headline. But a runway-to-runway flight over the Bay is something a Cessna does every day, and the reason anyone wants Midnight in a city is that it shouldn’t need a runway at all. I think Archer is running a very good marketing tour around the one flight it hasn’t shown yet. Goldstein put full transition on the calendar for this year, and there are about ten weeks left in it. When a piloted Midnight takes off vertically and flies away on its wing, we’ll know whether it can work from a rooftop vertiport in Los Angeles.

Sources: Archer, Archer on YouTube, Aviation Week, 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.

29 Governors Ask DOJ for a Prison Drone Course Its Rule Already Offers

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:57:00 GMT

Twenty-nine governors from both parties have asked the Trump administration to open up counter-drone training for the state and local agencies that gained the power to take down drones under the Safer Skies Act. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster led the October 6 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and FBI Director Kash Patel.

The governors want more seats at the FBI’s counter-drone school, a dedicated course for prison staff, and access for National Guard members. Without more training, they write, many jurisdictions will not be able to use the authority Congress gave them.

The federal rule that has run the program since July 1 already offers the prison course. It also lets the Attorney General open the extra training sites the governors want.

The Federal Rule Already Offers a Prison Course and Allows New Sites

Section 124.5 of the interim final rule states that the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center offers an abbreviated Correctional Mitigation Certification for prison staff. The same section lets the Attorney General add sites for the full mitigation course. That choice is his alone and carries no obligation to any agency.

The rule spells the prison course out in some detail. It is shorter than the standard mitigation course because a prison’s fixed perimeter and constant threat need less mission planning, and holders may only act at a prison. The FBI may hand delivery to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers or another qualified provider while it keeps control of the curriculum.

The letter cites neither provision. It asks the departments to “urgently develop” a corrections curriculum, and its version is wider than the rule’s: it adds evidence collection and coordination with police to a certificate the rule limits to mitigation at a prison.

South Carolina has the most reason to push. Aubrey Richardson, who runs the State Law Enforcement Division’s counter-drone unit, told lawmakers this spring that hundreds of drones fly over the state’s prisons and military bases every year, as DroneXL reported in May.

Mitigation Training Runs Through One FBI School in Huntsville

Only resident training at the FBI school in Huntsville, Alabama, qualifies an officer to take down or take control of a drone. The school had certified 61 officers across about 46 agencies by July 6, and the departments expect 150 agencies at that tier within two years.

The detection tier is an online course, and the departments expect about 1,500 agencies to hold it in the same window. The bottleneck the governors describe is the gap between those two numbers. The FBI told FedScoop in August it expects to train 250 more mitigation officers by the end of next fiscal year.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said on October 1, five days before the letter went out, that the school would more than double its capacity in its second year, without giving a baseline. The War Department already helps: Joint Interagency Task Force 401 embeds instructors in the school’s operator course.

The National Guard Request Reaches Past the Safer Skies Act

The Safer Skies Act extended counter-drone authority to state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement and correctional agencies. The National Guard is not on that list. The 2026 rule implementing the act never mentions the Guard, so training Guard members would not by itself give them the power to act.

The letter asks for Guard training through the FBI school or War Department programs, citing the Guard’s role at major events and critical infrastructure. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed it. His state’s Guard ran a tabletop exercise in November 2025 that simulated a drone attack on Seattle’s Lumen Field during a World Cup match, and responders reported running into limited authorities across levels of government.

Congress has a bill for the authority itself. Rep. Michael McCaul introduced the Guard the Skies Act, H.R. 8697, on May 7. It would let the Guard protect facilities from drones at a governor’s request with the defense secretary’s approval, and it was referred to three House committees.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d have the Justice Department run the prison course before anything else on this list. A certificate that only works inside one prison perimeter is the narrowest counter-drone power the government can hand out. A corrections officer who can knock down a drone carrying drugs over a yard holds far less power than a deputy with a jammer at a parade.

Prison enforcement also helps the rest of us. A drone dropping contraband over a prison fence is a crime in progress, which is a different picture from the World Cup, where more than 700 drones were seized and none carried ordnance. Seizures at a prison catch smugglers, and nobody can turn those numbers into an argument against hobbyists. The DOJ wrote this course into its own rule in July. If governors from 29 states still felt they had to ask for it in October, the FBI should put corrections classes on the calendar and say when they start.

Sources: Office of Gov. Josh Stein, Federal Register, AVweb, DVIDS, GovInfo, 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.

Wing Demos Walmart Drones in New Jersey Before Naming Philly Stores

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:45:00 GMT

Wing and Walmart held a drone delivery demonstration last week at the Walmart Supercenter on Route 73 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, according to Influential Drones, a drone services company based in neighboring Marlton. The company posted photos over the weekend of a Wing aircraft in flight and a drone marked “DEMO” on a stand, and wrote that the demonstration was for the local community.

When Wing and Walmart added Philadelphia to their delivery network in June, Walmart named no stores and gave no launch date. The first Wing demo to surface in the area took place on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.

Influential Drones' post on the Wing and Walmart demonstration in Mount Laurel. Photos: Influential Drones / Facebook

Wing’s Walmart Page Still Lists Philadelphia as Coming Soon

Walmart’s Mount Laurel Supercenter, store #5944, sits at 934 Route 73. Wing’s Walmart page, which added Denver and Seattle this month, lists Philadelphia as “Coming soon” and does not mention New Jersey as of October 19. Neither company has tied the demo to that launch.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in June that service would reach Philadelphia sometime in 2027, and that a Walmart spokesperson gave no timeline and did not say which of the city’s five stores would get it. Philadelphia would be the first Northeast market in Walmart’s drone program, the paper noted. Wing’s June 8 announcement gave no dates for the seven new metros. It said the partners would “work closely with local leaders and community members” before launching in each city.

The photos show a demonstration setup, and none of them shows a nest or a loading enclosure. A worker in a hard hat and safety vest stands beside ground markers inside portable orange crowd barriers. Bentonville’s staff conditions for a Wing nest at Walmart’s Store #100 included an eight-foot fence.

Walmart’s website put Wing’s range at up to eight miles from a store in June, and the drones lower orders on a tether, the Inquirer reported. Delivery is free for Walmart+ members for a limited time and $19.99 for everyone else.

West Deptford Said in Late August That Amazon Lacked FAA Approval to Fly There

Local officials said Amazon planned to start Prime Air deliveries this fall from 240 Mantua Grove Road in West Deptford as early as October. West Deptford then told News 12 New Jersey that Amazon lacked the FAA approvals to fly there and still needed planning or zoning board approval.

West Deptford Mayor James Mehaffey and Mantua Police Chief William Murphy gave the October timing to the Inquirer, and Murphy shared a screenshot he said came from an Amazon Zoom briefing, showing a delivery radius of about 15 miles. Mantua Mayor Bob Zimmerman said in a Facebook post that the township has “no say over the matter.” By August 23, more than 100 people had signed a petition asking for public hearings and written disclosures about Prime Air’s data practices.

Amazon told West Deptford it was in the early stages of diligence for a proposed Prime Air operation and agreed to hold public information sessions before starting, News 12 reported on August 27. A DroneXL search of news coverage on October 19 found no report of those sessions and no later update on Amazon’s FAA status there.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d rather a town meet its delivery drones over a Walmart parking lot than through a relayed Zoom briefing. Wing flew an aircraft on Route 73, where people could watch it. Amazon’s South Jersey plan reached residents second-hand, and more than 100 of them answered with a petition.

A demo still isn’t a permit, though. If Wing files for a nest on Route 73, ask Mount Laurel’s planning board for the conditions Bentonville’s staff attached to its Wing permit: monthly reports of daily flights, property-line noise checks and a 24/7 emergency contact. The township has the most leverage before an application is approved.

Sources: Influential Drones on Facebook, Walmart Supercenter #5944, Wing Walmart delivery page, Wing, June 8, 2026 announcement, The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 12, 2026, The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 23, 2026, News 12 New Jersey, August 27, 2026

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

Anduril's Ghost Shark Drone Sub Gets 12 Sea Mines and Altius Swarms

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:36:00 GMT

Australia pulled the cover off three previously classified payloads for Anduril’s Ghost Shark on Monday, October 19, at Anduril Australia’s factory in Sydney. The extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle can lay 12 sea mines in one mission, drop logistics caches on the seabed, and release swarms of tube-launched Altius loitering munitions, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said. He told reporters: “The Ghost Shark now has teeth.”

The payloads head to San Diego this week for Exercise Maritime Big Play Pacific, an AUKUS Pillar II event with the United States and the United Kingdom. The U.S. Navy picked Anduril’s Dive-XL, the commercial baseline the Ghost Shark is built on, for its own extra-large AUV program in March. Asked what appetite Washington and London have for the platform, Conroy said the AUKUS work is “more about the payloads.”

Ghost Shark Lays 12 Mines a Sortie and Launches Altius From Its Payload Bays

Conroy told the press conference the Ghost Shark can deploy 12 sea mines at a time, carry equipment caches built by the Defence Science and Technology Group, and release swarms of Altius uncrewed aircraft for reconnaissance and strike. He withheld the swarm count for operational reasons.

Anduril Australia CEO David Goodrich went further than the minister on what the hull can hold. He said the payload bays also support heavyweight and lightweight torpedoes and what he called “cost-effective, undersea effectors,” and that the vehicle will be able to engage threats on its own. Chief Defence Scientist Tanya Monro said her group took the logistics cache from concept to integration, so that supplies can sit beneath the surface and be recovered when a unit needs them. Conroy would not say which forces would use the caches beyond telling reporters to use their imagination.

The Altius is the same tube-launched family the U.S. Army fired from an Apache at Yuma Proving Ground in February, and the one whose two Eglin test crashes Reuters documented last November. Goodrich said Anduril is looking to bring the Altius to Australia at scale, subject to government approval. Monday’s event showed the munitions on floor stands beside the sea mines and a Ghost Shark hull, in photos published by Defence Connect and the ABC. The Defence imagery set the government’s media note points to, S20263404, had not been published when I checked Monday morning.

The Payloads Go to a U.S. Navy Exercise Under AUKUS Pillar II

Some of the new payloads will take part in Maritime Big Play Pacific, the government’s media release says, an AUKUS Pillar II exercise running near San Diego from October 5 to 25 hosted by Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, per Naval News.

The exercise follows May’s first AUKUS Pillar II signature project, common payloads and sensors for the three navies’ uncrewed undersea vehicles, and that framing explains Conroy’s answer on exports. The AUKUS partners each have their own hulls, so the marquee project funds payloads that fit all of them. Conroy said Australia has not given up on selling the Ghost Shark itself to the U.S. and the UK, both of which have seen it on display at Maritime Big Play, and that the hull is one of the priority campaigns for the Australian Defence Strategic Sales Office. Goodrich said Anduril is fielding an enormous amount of demand from allies.

The payload work covers two more platforms. Conroy announced the first payload for the Ocius Bluebottle uncrewed surface vessel, a thin-line towed array sonar for detecting submarines, and the media release names the Speartooth uncrewed underwater vehicle as a third integration target. On the U.S. side, Anduril’s Dive-XL line at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and the Maryland shipyard DroneXL covered when the Navy put $6.6 billion into it this month are where the same hull family gets built for American crews.

Anduril Delivered the First Ghost Shark Three Months After Signing

Australia signed the A$1.7 billion (about $1.2 billion) Ghost Shark production contract on September 10, 2025. The Navy took delivery of its first vehicle for testing and acceptance early this year, Conroy said. The only fleet size he would give was “dozens and dozens.”

The program sits inside up to A$5.8 billion (about $4 billion) the government has budgeted over the decade for autonomous undersea warfare. Goodrich put the supplier base at 42 Australian companies and Anduril Australia’s headcount at 350. Conroy called the program the fastest peacetime acquisition of a major platform in Australian Defence Force history, three years from concept to delivery. When DroneXL reported on Albacore’s Ghostfin drone subs in August, the Ghost Shark’s concept-to-contract sprint was already the benchmark the smaller American program was being measured against.

DroneXL’s Take

Announcing classified payloads is a deterrence move, and Conroy said so in plain words: an adversary now has to assume any shipping container near an Australian wharf could hold a Ghost Shark, and that the Ghost Shark carries mines. I rate the mine payload as real today. Mines are heavy and well understood, and laying them from an uncrewed hull is the dull, dangerous job Goodrich described.

I want to see the Altius swarm fly. The Altius has launched from tubes on helicopters and ships for years, so the unproven step is getting one out of a submerged hull and into the air, and nothing released Monday showed that. Anduril gets to prove it in front of its most important customer, because the AUKUS common-payload project makes whatever works off San Diego this month a candidate for the Dive-XL the U.S. Navy is now buying. If Defence releases footage of an Altius leaving a Ghost Shark, the deterrent gets a lot more convincing. Until then, Australia has an uncrewed minelayer, and its neighbors already have to plan around that.

Sources: Australian Minister for Defence media release and press conference transcript, Defence Connect, ABC News, Naval News.

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

US Army's Own Enemy Force Now Flies Ukrainian-Designed Stork Drone

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:12:00 GMT

US Army soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment launched a Stork LR reconnaissance drone at the Hohenfels Training Area in Germany during exercise Combined Resolve 27-01 last week. The Army published eight photos of the fixed-wing aircraft on Saturday, taken on October 15 and 16, showing the troops assembling it and firing it off a pneumatic catapult into the Bavarian sky.

The Stork is built by U&C UAS, a Czech company founded by the owners of Ukrainian drone maker DeViRo. It descends from the Leleka, the recon drone that has flown for Ukrainian artillery since before the 2022 invasion. U&C announced a contract to supply ISR drones to US Army units in Europe on May 18, and the Hohenfels photos are the only Army imagery of the aircraft on DVIDS, the Pentagon’s media hub.

The 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry is not a line unit. It is the resident opposing force at Hohenfels, the unit that plays the enemy for every brigade that rotates through. This spring, a Ukrainian-reinforced opposing force on the same ground beat a US armored brigade with drones, and in August the Army ordered its only drone assault battalion back to regular infantry work.

The Stork Reached the Enemy Force Five Months After the Contract

U&C UAS signed its US Army contract in May 2026 through ATP Gov, a US government contractor, to supply reconnaissance drones for scouting and base protection in Europe. The company disclosed no value, quantity or delivery date. The Army picked the Stork after trials in exercises simulating high-intensity combat.

“Our products held up in trials during exercises, against other solutions on the market,” production director Pavel Bulant told Forbes Česko in May, in a quote translated from Czech. Chief commercial officer David Jirman told Army Technology the Army valued the aircraft’s long-endurance surveillance and real-time data.

Two sets of photos exist on DVIDS. Spc. Kaleb Lampkin of the Joint Multinational Readiness Center shot the first, which carries an October 15 timestamp under captions that say October 16, and Sgt. Addison Shinn of V Corps shot the second on October 16. Shinn’s captions name the operators: Spc. Alexander Walker, an infantryman, and Pfc. Mathew Munoz, an M1 tank crewman who prepared the takeoff site. Defence Blog first reported the sighting on Monday.

A 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment soldier launches a Stork LR from its catapult at Hohenfels during Combined Resolve 27-01. Photo credit: Spc. Kaleb Lampkin, U.S. Army

That unit has been the Army’s drone-heavy enemy all year. At Saber Junction 26 in August, the same battalion turned 1,900 autonomous systems on the 173rd Airborne Brigade. The Stork gives it a five-hour reconnaissance aircraft on top of the quadcopters.

Stork Is the Leleka, Built in Kolín at About 300 Drones a Month

DeViRo’s co-owners founded U&C UAS in the Czech Republic in July 2022 and started serial production in Kolín, east of Prague, in 2024. The plant turns out up to 300 Stork and Mace drones a month, per Forbes Česko, and booked more than 150 million euros in revenue last year.

DeViRo has built drones in Ukraine since 2014, according to Militarnyi. DroneXL covered its Leleka-100 in March 2022, when one was credited with spotting a Russian Buk launcher for Ukrainian artillery, and the Mace at Eurosatory 2024, where it was presented under the UAC name the Army captions still use. Former EU commissioner Štefan Füle holds a 10% stake in the Czech company, which expects to double its revenue this year, according to Forbes Česko.

U&C’s spec sheet puts the Stork LR at 31 pounds (14 kg) takeoff weight, up to five and a half hours in the air, an 84-mile (135 km) tactical range and a 14,800-foot (4,500 m) ceiling at a cruise of 42 mph (19 m/s). It carries a jam-resistant satellite receiver and falls back to inertial navigation when jamming or spoofing overwhelms it, and one Stork can relay for another over a mesh link. Bulant told Forbes that hundreds of Storks are flying in Ukraine right now.

That record made U&C a Russian talking point in April. Russia’s defense ministry published addresses of what it called Ukrainian and joint drone enterprises in Europe on April 15, and Dmitry Medvedev called it a list of potential targets. The list named DeViRo and the Czech firm PBS Group, not U&C, Seznam Zprávy reported, and Bulant told the outlet the threat applied to his company too. The Czech foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador the next day.

Raybird and Magura Boats Make It Three Ukrainian Designs in Army Hands This Fall

The Stork is the third Ukrainian design to show up with US Army units since September. The Army awarded Skyeton Inc. a $10.64 million firm-fixed-price contract for Raybird reconnaissance drones on September 18, due December 15. Magura-type drone boats launched aerial drones at Bayonet Quest 26 in Michigan this month.

Skyeton says the Raybird has logged more than 350,000 combat hours in Ukraine, Kyiv Independent reported. The company is building a Raybird factory in Fayetteville, North Carolina, next door to Fort Bragg. The MV7 boats, built by Ukrainian manufacturer UFORCE, launched aerial drones from a platform on the bow during the 7th Infantry Division’s exercise, which ran from September 26 to October 6, according to Defence Blog. The division has not said how many boats took part or what they carried.

DroneXL’s Take

The Army is learning Ukraine’s drone war through its enemy force before its line units. The brigade that lost to Ukrainian operators at Hohenfels this spring went home without a Stork, and the 173rd’s drone battalion is back to airborne infantry. The only Storks the Army has put on DVIDS belong to the battalion whose job is to make American soldiers miserable. I don’t think that’s an accident. The opposing force is where the Army keeps what it learned from Kyiv, and a brigade rotating through Bavaria will meet the Leleka as a threat long before it gets one as equipment. The contract does say base protection and ISR for units in Europe, so line units may be flying Storks that nobody has photographed yet, and U&C has not said how many it sold. Until a photo shows a US brigade launching one for its own side, the Ukrainian drone lesson at Hohenfels is still something done to American troops, not by them.

Sources: Defence Blog, DVIDS, Forbes Česko, Seznam Zprávy, Army Technology, Kyiv Independent, U&C UAS.

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

Foldable DJI Matrice 5 Slips Into a Polish Dealer's Dock 4 Post

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:12:00 GMT

A Polish fire and rescue equipment seller has posted an image of an unreleased DJI Matrice 5 with folding arms. It sits among five images in a Facebook post about the Dock 4 and Matrice 5TD that DJI launched on October 14, and the 5TD in the other four has angled arms that do not fold.

The seller, uStrażaka.pl, equips Polish fire brigades and sells the Matrice 4. Its post says its instructors had already flown the new dock system, and the caption describes only Dock 4 and the 5TD. DJI’s launch named no other Matrice 5, and the post was still up on Monday.

The Image Shows Matrice 4 Folding Arms on a Matrice 5 Body

The foldable aircraft in uStrażaka’s image carries a black dome on the top deck and a gray cylinder behind it, the same pair the Matrice 5TD carries. Its arms follow the Matrice 4 layout instead: front arms set high on tall landing legs, rear arms swung out low.

DJI lists the Matrice 4 series with folded and unfolded sizes. The Matrice 5TD specifications give one, 393 by 477 by 230 mm (15.5 by 18.8 by 9.1 inches) without propellers, and the 5TD cannot be flown from a remote controller at all.

From the rear, the battery slot shows a power button and charge-level lights. Both sides carry accessory modules. The right one has a finned housing like a spotlight’s heat sink, and the left one is a box with two square grilles. DJI mounts the 5TD’s spotlight on the right and its loudspeaker on the left.

The gimbal is out of sight, so the image does not show whether this is a thermal model. DJI sold the Matrice 4 as the 4E and the thermal 4T, and it has published no name for this aircraft.

Igor Bogdanov Photographed the Same Airframe in July

This is the second time the foldable airframe has surfaced. Igor Bogdanov’s July 26 photos showed a gray prototype with the same high front arms, tall legs and top-deck dome. His September photo of the Matrice 5TD showed the angled arms DJI launched on October 14.

uStrażaka.pl's collage puts the foldable Matrice 5 (top left) and the Matrice 5TD (top right) on the lid of the same Dock 4. Image credit: uStrażaka.pl

A collage in the same Facebook post shows the foldable drone in the same pose on the lid of a closed Dock 4, the lid the 5TD sits on in the next frame. The white-background image on our cover appears to be an edited copy of that frame, and Facebook tags the post “AI content” without saying what changed. The collage frame and the July photos show the same arm layout, and the story rests on that layout.

Asked about the price, uStrażaka replied that it had shown a test version, not yet for sale, and that DJI has not announced Polish prices. It credited the invitation to NaviGate.pl, whose hands-on test covers Dock 4 and the 5TD and never mentions a second aircraft.

The Foldable Matrice 5 Has No FCC Path Into the US

The Matrice 4T is the drone American fire and police departments fly from the field, and Princeton police built a program on one in January. A foldable successor cannot get FCC authorization while DJI sits on the Covered List, which took in foreign-made drones on December 22, 2025.

Dock 4’s spec sheet already shows the pattern. It lists transmitter power for Canada, the European Union, China and Japan, and nothing for the FCC. The FCC’s Docket 26-189 proposal would go further and bar foreign drones with thermal imaging or LiDAR from import and sale, which would cover the Matrice 4T itself.

DroneXL’s Take

I think the foldable airframe in uStrażaka’s image matters more to American crews than the dock drone DJI launched last week. A dock program needs a rooftop site and a cloud platform such as FlightHub 2. A Matrice 4T rides in a case in the truck and flies wherever the crew parks. uStrażaka sells the Matrice 4 to Polish brigades, and I expect it to sell them this drone once DJI launches it. A US county fire department can’t buy it, and the FCC’s own proposal would leave a US-built drone with the same thermal sensor on sale. That makes this a test of where a drone is built, and I’d rather the FCC wrote one a drone could pass on its behavior.

Hat tip to Antoine Tissier, who spotted the image and identified it as the non-dock Matrice 5.

Sources: uStrażaka.pl on Facebook, DJI Dock 4 and Matrice 5TD specifications, DJI Matrice 4 series specifications, NaviGate.pl

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

Ukraine's Fourth Law: Jamming Fails Once a Drone Picks Its Own Target

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:08:00 GMT

Ukrainian autonomy developer The Fourth Law says electronic warfare stops working as a defense once a drone navigates, finds and attacks its target on its own, and that both sides of the war are getting there fast. Maksym Savanevskyi, the company’s vice president of marketing and communications, told Ukrainian outlet LB.ua in an interview published October 7 that Ukraine learns of a new Russian autonomous system every two to three weeks, each one brought down or recovered after it fails to detonate. The company shared the interview on X on Monday with the line that autonomous drone use in Ukraine has grown tenfold in six months.

Savanevskyi also says Western defense companies took about two years to react to the drone war, lag Ukraine substantially today, and will fall further behind. The example he gave of a Western firm whose drones see real combat is Eric Schmidt’s, which LB.ua identifies as Swift Beat, maker of the Bumblebee drones DroneXL reported on in January and which Ukraine’s Khartia brigade said in March it flies.

Jamming Has Nothing to Cut Once the Drone Stops Needing a Pilot

Electronic warfare, as Savanevskyi frames it, exists to break the link between drone and operator, and an autonomous drone has no link to break. Once navigation, detection, tracking and the strike decision all run onboard, the aircraft never needs a radio signal and the jammer has nothing to cut.

“At that point, electronic warfare as a countermeasure loses its meaning,” he told LB.ua (quotes translated from Ukrainian). He calls electronic warfare one of the main challenges of the moment, and he says the answer that survives full autonomy is a physical one: interceptors that hit the drone itself. The Fourth Law sells the autonomy modules that make his point true, so it is also the company’s pitch. Ukraine and Russia are both building interceptors. Ukraine’s defense ministry said on September 25 that interceptors were the most-ordered category among the 590,000 drones that units ordered through the Brave1 Market this year. In tests Brave1 reported on September 8, six of seven companies passed a fully autonomous strike on a moving ground target locked from more than 1,640 feet (500 meters) away, pilot’s hands off the sticks, with two hits in three attempts the pass mark.

Brave1’s count is where the tenfold figure comes from. Its September statement says Ukrainian strikes using AI guidance have grown tenfold since the start of 2026, which is a longer window than the six months in The Fourth Law’s post. Neither party has published the base number.

He breaks autonomy into pieces rather than treating it as a switch: autonomous navigation to a point, detection, identification, tracking a moving target, the decision to attack, and the attack itself. Different drones carry different pieces today. The Fourth Law’s own TFL-1 module handles the last stretch of a strike run on drones like the Kolibri 10 Advance, and the company’s roadmap runs through TFL-5, which it describes as full autonomy. Asked whether its earlier forecast of full autonomy by the end of 2026 still holds, Savanevskyi said he could not comment, only that the pace is high on both sides.

A Lupynis-10-TFL-1 lifting off during testing. Photo credit: The Fourth Law

Russia Trains Its Drones to Hit Anything That Moves, and Decoys Only Go So Far

Russia is testing autonomy across several drone types at once, Savanevskyi says. He does not claim a full picture of what Russia has deployed, and calling it mass use today would be a stretch. He expects fast scaling once a design is stable, because scaling is what Russia does well.

The case he reached for is the Molniya that hit a Zaporizhzhia gas station on July 6 and killed three people. Its Nvidia Jetson Orin module carried terrain imagery and code telling the drone which objects to attack, and DroneXL covered that forensic finding in August. Asked whether Russian strikes on civilians reflect an immature system, he said no. The model is trained to hit a moving object, any moving object, and the operators do not care whether it is military.

LB.ua asked whether decoys could fool AI terminal guidance, with look-alike objects placed near a real target or the target’s appearance changed periodically. Savanevskyi called that a normal tactic with limits. Ten vehicles with one real and nine fake pose the same problem whether a pilot or a model is choosing, he says, so autonomy changes nothing about how the strike is delivered. Good detection systems already out-recognize a person, a model can be retrained on a new decoy quickly, and the attacker scouts the area first. For civilians, he says, an autonomous drone is no more and no less dangerous than a piloted one, and the advice is unchanged: go to the shelter when the sirens sound.

Maksym Savanevskyi, vice president of marketing and communications at The Fourth Law. Photo credit: The Fourth Law

Western Firms Took Two Years to React and Savanevskyi Expects the Gap to Grow

Most Western defense companies took about two years to move from watching the drone war to building for it, Savanevskyi says, and the leaders still sit well behind Ukraine. He blames business models: a $400 to $1,000 drone killing a multimillion-dollar tank breaks procurement systems built over decades.

He does not see those companies as competitors. He calls them outside observers trying to work out which way to move, and he expects partnerships with Ukrainian firms in specific slices of autonomy, some already under way.

Schmidt’s company is his example of a Western maker with drones in real combat use, and he says almost no other foreign producer has results at the scale that counts, thousands or tens of thousands of sorties rather than a unit shipped once for a test. The Fourth Law itself says its modules fly with more than 50 Ukrainian units and more than 20 drone makers, figures from its own website.

On the policy fight, his position is that stopping autonomy is no longer possible because the advantage is too large for whoever gets it first. He calls autonomy the Manhattan Project of the 21st century and a deterrent in the same way nuclear weapons were. The Fourth Law backs a human making the final strike decision, he says, and Russia does not care about such agreements. LB.ua framed the question around the United States and Russia moving to drop human confirmation of AI-chosen targets. Reuters reported on September 4 that both countries proposed late changes and deletions to the draft text at the UN’s Geneva talks on autonomous weapons. Savanevskyi’s reading is that Washington and Moscow are writing down where the world is going anyway.

DroneXL’s Take

I think Savanevskyi’s jamming point is the part American buyers should read twice. The counter-drone kit I see pitched to US police departments and stadium operators is built around detecting and breaking a radio link, and much of what the Pentagon buys works the same way. The Molniya that killed three people in Zaporizhzhia carried no radio antennas at all, and six of seven companies just passed Brave1’s hands-off strike test on a moving target, even if the pass mark was two hits in three. A jammer bought today is buying against last year’s drone.

Jamming still works against most of what flies right now, so nobody should rip it out. But the next dollars belong to the layer that physically stops an aircraft, and Ukraine is already ordering interceptors ahead of everything else on its own marketplace. Hegseth’s new four-star drone command has an October 2027 target date and was announced without a budget line. Savanevskyi says the gap with the West is growing, and the first purchase against it should be the interceptor, not the jammer.

Sources: LB.ua, The Fourth Law on X, Brave1, Ukraine Ministry of Defense, Reuters via Defense News.

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

China Reads Ukraine's Drone War in 4 Months and Shops DJI, CSIS Finds

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:58:00 GMT

China’s military takes an average of four months to study a new drone tactic from the Russia-Ukraine war and a year or more to train on it, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analysis of more than 90 Chinese-language military and industry sources. Lilly Min-Chen Lee and Kateryna Bondar published the analysis on October 7, and CSIS promoted it on X on Sunday. The sources run from July 2022 to August 2026 across 45 outlets, including the Central Military Commission’s own newspaper and the peer-reviewed journals of China’s missile, shipbuilding and aviation conglomerates.

Chinese analysts call 2024 “year one of world drone war,” the authors write, and treat the fighting as a living textbook. Chinese analysts flagged Russia’s fiber-optic FPV drones six days after they first appeared at the front, and a Chinese unit was training on them 410 days later. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) runs the effort. Beijing’s official position, restated in its 2023 drone export controls, opposes the military use of civilian drones. The PLA’s own procurement website carries a military unit’s tender for DJI docks and Matrice airframes.

Fiber-Optic FPVs Took China 6 Days to Notice and 410 to Train On

CSIS tracked five techniques of the drone war through three milestones: first battlefield use, first Chinese analysis, and first PLA training or hardware. Fiber-optic FPV drones appeared at the front on March 2, 2024, drew a Chinese analysis six days later, and entered PLA training on April 16, 2025.

The pattern holds across the other four techniques in the paper’s Figure 1. Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web hit Russian bomber bases on June 1, 2025, and the first Chinese analysis followed one day later. By October 2025, 136 days after the raid, a PLA brigade ran an exercise defending against a drone attack team of more than 20 operators, using detection gear that locates drones by their radio emissions and matches them against a catalog of more than 800 commercial models. The Chinese foreign ministry’s magazine put Russian losses in the raid at 11 strategic bombers and identified its novelty as the launch from inside Russia, at close range. DroneXL reported on June 4, 2025 that the strikes reached airbases from Irkutsk to Murmansk.

Ukraine’s drone-unit organization got a Chinese analysis within two days in June 2024 and institutional evidence 338 days later. Sea drones took longer to reach the training ground. The first Ukrainian naval drone appeared in September 2022, a Chinese analysis followed in 43 days, and the first PLA training evidence came 1,054 days later, in August 2025. Interceptor FPVs are the outlier: first seen in February 2024, they waited 528 days for a Chinese analysis and the first PLA hardware evidence is dated October 4, 2026, three days before the paper came out.

The April 2025 training milestone for fiber-optic drones was a China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast showing a People’s Armed Police unit in Yunnan training with FPV drones and researching fiber-optic models. The PLA Daily had flagged the shift to fiber in May 2024, within weeks of its operational debut. DroneXL had already reported in April 2024 on images of a People’s Armed Police Heilongjiang Corps unit training with DJI Mavic 3 drones fitted with release mechanisms for grenades. CSIS says Chinese outlets framed PLA training footage of strikes and evasion released in 2024, down to the capture nets and jamming guns, as drawn from Russia-Ukraine battlefield experience.

PLA Daily Prices a Strike Drone at Less Than 1% of a Fighter

The PLA Daily is the Central Military Commission’s newspaper. In March 2025 it stated as settled fact that a single reconnaissance-strike drone costs less than 1% of a modern fighter while achieving more than 90% of its battlefield coverage. CSIS calls the figures rough. The paper printed them without qualification.

A Chinese naval academy analyst described the more than one million small drones Ukraine and Russia bought in 2024 as two drones over every front-line soldier’s head. For Chinese planners, CSIS writes, mass is the economic structure of drone war rather than a wartime improvisation.

Speed is the second offensive lesson. China’s National Defense University credits Russian forces with striking a detected target within three to five minutes, and a PLA unit survey attributes that to Russia’s reconnaissance-strike complex, with Orlan-10 reconnaissance drones cueing Kub and Lancet loitering munitions. CSIS says the copying target is the connection between the drones and the artillery and command networks, not any one aircraft.

The defensive side of the analysis runs deepest, because Chinese analysts read Ukraine’s sea drones and airfield raids as previews of attacks on China. A team from the Naval University of Engineering, writing in the journal of the state shipbuilder’s underwater-warfare institute, counted more than 10 large Russian naval vessels damaged by Ukrainian sea drones. A Global Times analysis of Ukraine’s interceptor drones concluded that “the cost of procuring one man-portable air-defense missile buys several hundred air-defense FPV drones.” Chinese state radio has catalogued Russia’s protective fixes, from strategic bombers pulled back some 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) to the Chukotka Peninsula to retractable nets developed from the improvised cages on tanks in Ukraine.

Those defensive studies moved into hardware faster than anything else in the corpus. Counter-drone systems from CETC, NORINCO and CASIC dominated Chinese coverage of the November 2024 Zhuhai air show, where DroneXL covered the Jiu Tian drone mothership. In August 2025 the PLA Daily reported a missile-boat drill with an “enemy unmanned boats closing” inject, 35 months after the first Ukrainian sea drone washed ashore near Sevastopol. In late July 2026 CCTV aired an army drone crew putting a missile into a fast boat at sea, and in August the army flew armed KVD002 drones against sea drone targets.

China’s Own Analysts Say Swarms Produced “All Thunder and Little Rain”

Chinese military writing also records what the war did not settle. In October 2024, China National Defense News asked why swarm warfare had produced “all thunder and little rain.” Both sides committed huge numbers of drones, the paper wrote, and a swarm mode of operations never appeared on the battlefield.

The paper listed flight control, communications, onboard intelligence, energy and payload as the obstacles.

CSIS reads that as China buying what the war proved and experimenting on what it left open. The PLA runs its own swarm trials to supply the data the war did not, and one of them was the 200-drone swarm demonstration DroneXL covered in January.

The industrial lessons are the ones China least needs to learn. China’s youth press was explaining as early as November 2023 that Russia overcame its early drone disadvantage through the scale of its defense industry, and that a drone war is won by the side that builds more. A People’s Daily Online report put China’s share of global fiber and cable shipments at 60% for 2025, which is the raw material fiber-optic drones fly on. A 2022 study by the state rocket academy, a satellite launch center and a PLA unit traced how Ukrainian firing units depended on Starlink and concluded that China must build its own low-orbit constellation.

The authors name one limit. A military built on centralized approval cannot create decentralized improvisation by command, and Chinese analysts themselves acknowledge that many theoretical lessons have yet to become mature combat guidance. For the United States, CSIS writes, the same journals, training footage and procurement activity open a window into PLA priorities before they appear in doctrine.

DroneXL’s Take

The DJI tender is the line in this report I expect to travel, and it should be read exactly as CSIS wrote it: one unit’s tender, not a purchase, and no unit, date or document named. That is a contradiction in Chinese policy, and it is also what every army on earth does with the best commercial drone it can buy. Ukraine has flown Mavics with improvised bombs, and US Army soldiers dropped live grenades from a Skydio in 2025 tests.

I expect the tender to show up in the Pentagon’s defense of its Chinese military company label, which DJI is still appealing after a federal court upheld the designation in September 2025 while rejecting most of the government’s allegations. It will not change my view that the label and the FCC ban hurt American operators more than they hurt DJI. The lesson China drew from Ukraine is that the side that builds more drones wins, and China already builds more drones and 60% of the world’s fiber. A tender for off-the-shelf DJI hardware is evidence of that lead, and taking the same hardware away from American farmers and fire departments does nothing to close it. Building does.

Source: CSIS, “Learning Without Bleeding: China’s Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine Drone War”

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

Ukraine Flies Wounded Soldier Out of Kill Zone Under a Bomber Drone

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:21:00 GMT

Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade flew a wounded infantryman out of a front-line position hanging in a harness under a heavy hexacopter, and on Monday it called the flight the first aerial evacuation of a casualty from the line of contact anywhere. The soldier, from the 30th Mechanized Brigade, had been wounded at a position where mines and Russian drone activity had stopped the ground robots Ukraine normally sends into the kill zone. A 30th Brigade drone operator flew the aircraft. The brigade says the man is in treatment and rehabilitation and that his life is no longer in danger.

The aircraft was not built for the job. It was a bomber from Ukrainian maker Gurzuf Defence, lent to the unit for free, and the brigade did not say when or where it flew the mission.

The 92nd Modified a Gurzuf Defence Bomber So a Hanging Soldier Would Not Swing

The 92nd’s ground robot company worked with Gurzuf Defence on a fix that kept the bomber steady under a hanging person without tipping or swinging. They tested it on the maker’s sites and planned the flight with the 30th and 14th Brigades and the 10th Army Corps, the brigade said.

The brigade’s video, which the X account Special Kherson Cat reposted on Monday, shows no stretcher and no pod. The soldier sits in a climbing-style harness clipped to a line under the hexacopter’s center frame, holding the rigging with both hands as the drone crosses an open field. The aircraft itself is blurred in every shot, a step Defence Blog notes Ukrainian units take so Russian forces cannot study a system’s configuration and control gear. The video says he had been alone at the position the whole time, still carrying out tasks, while the unit flew him medicine and food, and the brigade’s account is the only word on his wound. “This is a historic event, at least for our unit for sure,” Napalm, a squad commander and programmer in the company, said in its post.

The drone's own camera watches the soldier in his harness, with the operators' command post inset. Video still: 92nd Assault Brigade

Neither the brigade nor Gurzuf Defence has named the airframe. Gurzuf’s best-known product is the Heavy Shot night bomber, rated for up to 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of munitions, which DroneXL covered in July when one delivered a KFC order to a front-line position. That is not enough to lift a man. In March the company showed Texty a six-motor platform called Ayudag-6, just under 220 pounds (100 kilograms), rated to carry 154 to 198 pounds (70 to 90 kilograms) up to 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) with a return, and said then that it might one day evacuate the wounded. It is the only Gurzuf aircraft shown in public that could lift a man, and the brigade has not said it was the one it flew.

A Harness Under a Bomber Carried a Real Casualty Before StarGate Did

SkyFall’s purpose-built StarGate medevac drone went to a combat brigade for evaluation last week. Its stretcher pod is rated for 330 pounds (150 kilograms), and the Associated Press watched a demonstration on October 14. The 92nd’s flight is the first such airlift any unit has reported.

Ukraine has been testing the idea since spring. In May, Militarnyi reported a heavy multicopter carrying a person playing a casualty, with no unit or maker named. Until this flight, the work of pulling wounded soldiers out of positions that vehicles cannot reach fell to ground robots, which ran more than 9,000 armed front-line missions in March alone. The 92nd knows their limits from its own missions. In September 2025 its ground robot crews drove three wounded soldiers of the 154th Brigade out through a mined sector after the men had spent more than 40 days at a forward position.

The brigade’s post does not give the distance flown, the altitude, or what covered the drone against Russian FPV attacks on the way in and out.

DroneXL’s Take

This is the result StarGate is still waiting for, and it came from a lent bomber and a climbing harness. A harness only works for a soldier who is conscious enough to clip in and hold on, so the man on the stretcher still needs SkyFall’s pod. In May a 93rd Brigade drone expert asked how long one of these would survive with a person on board, and one unit has now flown the mission and brought the man back. I’d trust Napalm’s version of the claim over the headline version: a first for his unit is documented, and a first for the world is not something one brigade can know. I said last week that SkyFall should publish its numbers, and I want the same from the 92nd, because the next unit that tries this needs the flight profile more than the announcement.

Sources: 92nd Assault Brigade, Defence Blog, Euromaidan Press, Militarnyi, Texty.

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

Zipline Flies Teriyaki Madness in Denton, the Chain's Only DFW Shop

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 21:11:00 GMT

Teriyaki Madness started drone delivery through Zipline on Thursday, October 15, from its shop at 3400 North Interstate 35 in Denton, Texas. Customers order in the Zipline app, a Platform 2 aircraft picks the bowl up, holds up to 300 feet (91 meters) over the address and lowers it on a tether, and the chain says most orders arrive in under five minutes.

The Denver-based franchise, which counts more than 200 shops in more than 40 states, says the service will spread “across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and Houston later this year,” and after Denton to “additional shops across the Lone Star State.”

Its own location finder lists 24 Texas cities with a Teriyaki Madness. One of them, Denton, is in the Metroplex.

The Denton Shop Sits 0.86 Miles From Zipline’s Rayzor Ranch Walmart

Zipline has flown from the Walmart Supercenter at 2750 West University Drive in Denton since March 26, its 20th Dallas-Fort Worth site by its count. The Teriyaki Madness shop is 0.86 miles (1.38 kilometers) away in the same Rayzor Ranch development, inside the 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius Zipline quoted at launch.

Community Impact reported in March that the Walmart site had about eight drones assigned to it and room for 20, carried up to 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) per order, and charged nothing for delivery at the start. Zipline’s community engagement lead, Zach Hill, told the outlet the free period was unlikely to last.

Neither company has said which site serves the teriyaki shop. The announcement went out through Teriyaki Madness’s PR agency on Thursday, names no hub and no service radius, and as of Sunday Zipline’s own newsroom has nothing on the deal. Its newest post is still the October 9 Austin launch.

Two Teriyaki Madness chicken bowls. Each order rides down to the customer in Zipline's tethered pod, which carried up to 5 pounds at the Denton Walmart in March. Photo credit: Teriyaki Madness

Jodi Boyce, the chain’s chief marketing officer, supplied the quote: “Zipline has more flight experience than anyone out there.” Emily Snyder, Zipline’s vice president of restaurant sales, said the company brings customers the food they are craving the fastest way possible. The release repeats Zipline’s standing numbers, more than 140 million autonomous miles since 2014 and a delivery somewhere in the world every 20 seconds.

Teriyaki Madness Has Eight Houston-Area Shops Where Zipline Already Flies

The chain’s finder lists eight Houston-area shops: Houston, Cypress, Humble, Kingwood, Conroe, Fulshear, Magnolia and Mont Belvieu. Zipline opened its Houston network in Cypress on April 29, and one of its aircraft landed under its parachute on Highway 6 there on September 4.

The FAA’s draft environmental assessment for Zipline’s Texas expansion, which DroneXL reported in September, would allow 65 Chargers and 65,000 deliveries a day across the Houston metro. The chain also has a shop in Round Rock, where Zipline started deliveries on October 9 for the first 5,000 residents who signed up.

Restaurants have been the filler between Zipline’s Walmart hubs since Chipotle’s Rowlett test in August 2025. By April, Zipline said 16 brands were available near Rowlett, Crumbl Cookies, Little Caesars, Popeyes and Hawaiian Bros among them. Wonder’s celebrity-chef kitchens join in January 2027, and Uber Eats is putting Zipline drones inside its app. None of those announcements named a single shop as a Metroplex rollout.

DroneXL’s Take

A franchise chain wrote “Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex” into a release about one shop, and the restaurant trade press ran it as written. The shop sits under a mile from a hub Zipline has run since March, so my guess is the same Rayzor Ranch drones carry the bowls and Zipline added a merchant without building anything. That is the right way to fill a hub, and I have no complaint about the deal itself. The Metroplex line is written for franchise buyers, because there is no second shop to expand to until someone opens one. Houston is the rollout to watch. Eight shops sit around a network Zipline already flies, and the chain says that service comes before the end of the year. If you live near the Rayzor Ranch Walmart, the Zipline app will tell you whether your address is in. Anywhere else in the Metroplex, nothing changed on Thursday.

Sources: Teriyaki Madness release via Restaurant News Release, Fast Casual, Community Impact, Denton Record-Chronicle, Zipline, April 20, 2026

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

Suspected DJI Shell Jovistar Kills Its Own FCC Drone Approval

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:25:00 GMT

Jovistar Inc., the California company DroneXL flagged as a suspected DJI shell in September 2025, has asked for its drone’s FCC approval to be thrown out. In a September 24 letter to TÜV Rheinland of North America, the certification body that issued the grant, CEO Haifeng Ding wrote that Jovistar never imported, marketed, sold or shipped the drone, inside or outside the United States.

The FCC’s correspondence file shows a “Dismissal By TCB Request” notice dated October 8. TÜV approved the drone on September 25, 2025, three months before the FCC added foreign-made drones to its Covered List, and Jovistar held the grant for just over a year. The letter gives no reason for dropping it.

Jovistar Asked TÜV To Dismiss Grants For The Drone And Its Controller

The request covers two FCC IDs: 2BRGW-FKAWZJO for the unmanned aircraft and 2BRGW-YZAWZJO for its remote controller. TÜV Rheinland’s Shenzhen lab tested both, and TÜV’s North American certification arm granted both on September 25, 2025. Jovistar sent a separate letter for each, identical except for the device named.

The aircraft letter is addressed to Andy Yan at TÜV’s office in Pleasanton, California. It says Jovistar “no longer intends to maintain the FCC certification” and asks TÜV to pass the notice to the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology. It replaces an earlier surrender request dated September 15, 2026, and cites no rule at all.

A year-old grant is not TÜV’s to cancel. Under 47 CFR 2.962(f), a certification body can set aside a grant at the applicant’s request only within 30 days. After that, only the FCC can revoke one, and the public file does not say which authority the agency applied here.

The Verge’s Sean Hollister reported the dismissal on October 16, writing that TÜV Rheinland asked the FCC to block Jovistar’s applications and that the FCC agreed. TÜV did file the notice, which is why the FCC logs it as a “TCB Request.” The exhibits posted for both FCC IDs, which DroneXL checked on fccid.io on October 17, show TÜV acting on Jovistar’s own written request.

Jovistar was not among the eight suspected front companies the FCC proposed fining $25,000 each in July, or among the nine companies whose existing approvals the FCC proposed cutting off in a July 17 notice. The FCC’s letters of inquiry are not public, so whether Jovistar received one is unknown.

The company’s paperwork has also moved. Jovistar’s 2025 filings list a Sacramento address and a compliance director named Ryan Hu, who signed the September 22, 2025 attestation that the drone was not covered equipment, three months before any drone was on the Covered List. The FCC grantee registration for code 2BRGW now shows an El Monte address with Ding as the contact.

Jovistar’s quick start guide, public since its 180-day confidentiality period ran out in March 2026, prints skyanydrone.com as the website under Jovistar’s name and Sacramento address. Its aircraft label exhibit is titled with FKABZFI, the model code of a drone certified by Fikaxo Technology, another suspected DJI front.

Skyany was selling the Skyany X1, a near-twin of the DJI Mini 4 Pro, on Amazon when DroneXL reported on it in October 2025.

The Fikaxo ties run deeper. Jovistar’s technical contact phone number on its FCC record is the same number Fikaxo lists for its own responsible party. Fikaxo’s FKABZFI drone went through the same TÜV Shenzhen lab and the same TÜV certification body, and was granted on September 19, 2025, six days before Jovistar’s. DroneXL reported Fikaxo as a suspected DJI proxy a day before the Jovistar story, and the FCC’s July 17 notice, which named Fikaxo among the nine, cited that reporting in its footnotes.

Security researcher Konrad Iturbe’s tracker of suspected DJI front companies lists both Jovistar IDs. His scanner flags FCC filings whose radio bands match the pattern of DJI’s proprietary OcuSync link, and that match is why Jovistar is on the list.

The photos also correct DroneXL’s own 2025 read. We called the filing a likely DJI Mini 5 Pro clone, based on the battery figures and a “Class 1 Consumer Laser Product” marking on the label exhibit. The external photos show a small folding drone with a gimbal camera marked “4K” and a 2,560 mAh, 7.3 V battery made by Shenzhen Xindong Energy Technology. To my eye that camera is far too small to be the Mini 5 Pro’s 1-inch-sensor unit.

The Jovistar drone's gimbal camera, marked "4K," in the FCC exhibit. Image credit: FCC

DroneXL’s Take

I’m glad this grant is gone, but no public enforcement action forced it out. My read is that grants like this one stopped being worth holding once the FCC gave itself a way to cut off sales of equipment it had already approved, proposed using it against nine suspected front companies, and opened a revocation case against Odyssey Robot over what it says was a false made-in-USA claim. If the drone never sold, as Jovistar says, the certificate was earning it nothing and could only draw a regulator’s questions. The FCC is already moving on Fikaxo, and Jovistar’s own manual points to Skyany next.

Sources: Jovistar dismissal request to TÜV Rheinland, FCC ID 2BRGW-FKAWZJO, FCC equipment authorization correspondence, 47 CFR 2.962, FCC Covered List fact sheet, The Verge

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

Skydio: Dominion Adds 100 Docked Drones and Turns Linemen Into Pilots

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:45:00 GMT

Skydio CEO Adam Bry said on X today that Dominion Energy has added 100 docked drones to its fleet. Bry wrote that the utility is moving linemen and substation electricians into remote drone pilot roles, flying to the inspection angles they used to climb for.

The Richmond, Virginia, utility’s Unmanned Systems Group ran 23 drone-in-a-box units in June, as DroneXL reported. The Dominion film Bry posted with today’s news counts two dedicated pilots in its transmission drone program.

Dominion Says Docked Drones Save 8 To 12 Hours Per Event

Dominion says in the film that checking a substation by docked drone before crews roll out saves 8 to 12 hours per event. The utility chose Skydio’s dock partly because it is US-made, and a Dominion voice in the film says the autonomy is what it pays for.

The same film says the program expects to grow from two dedicated pilots to six to eight within two to three years. Bry’s post on X names no dock model, no per-site count and no locations for the 100 units. The aircraft on screen is the Skydio X10, launching from Skydio docks.

Dominion says the drones can fly inside its ladder structures, which crews used to climb. Photo credit: Dominion Energy

Dominion Pitches Drone Pilot Jobs As A Career Path For Linemen

Matt Rogers, manager of electric transmission lines operation at Dominion, says the drone program opens new opportunities for the utility’s linemen and substation electricians, the workers who know the equipment best. He calls the remote pilot role “another path for them to grow their career.”

Dominion isn’t the only utility flying Skydio X10s on the grid. East Texas utility SWEPCO uses them along its power lines to find vegetation before it causes outages.

DroneXL’s Take

I like who Dominion is putting behind the controls. A lineman who has climbed a substation structure knows what a failing insulator looks like, and Dominion is turning that experience into a remote pilot job instead of replacing it. The numbers in Dominion’s own film tell me the bigger change is autonomy, though. Two dedicated pilots, growing to six to eight, will not hand-fly a fleet that just grew by 100, so the Skydio software does most of the flying and the linemen supervise it. If the 8 to 12 hours per event holds up through a storm season, I’d like Dominion to publish the outage numbers that prove it.

Source: Adam Bry on X, with Dominion Energy’s Electric Transmission UAS Program video.

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

Zipline Turns 10: The Bouncy Castle Years Behind 3 Million Deliveries

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 19:09:00 GMT

Zipline is marking 10 years of drone delivery in Rwanda today, October 16, the date it gives for its first flight there. The service began by dropping blood by parachute to rural hospitals. Zipline says it now counts more than 3 million deliveries and 140 million autonomous miles worldwide, and that Rwanda has the world’s first national drone delivery system.

To mark the date, Zipline released Origin Story, a four-minute film that opens its Stories from the Sky series. New episodes are dated through November 5. In the film, co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton says that in the first year everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Zipline’s anniversary page credits the Rwanda partnership with a 51% reduction in maternal mortality in Rwanda. The peer-reviewed study behind that number measured something narrower.

Zipline Launched Rwanda With 15 Zips And Launchers That Kept Breaking

President Paul Kagame opened the service in Muhanga District on October 14, 2016, according to Gavi’s launch release. Gavi and the UPS Foundation backed it. Zipline based 15 fixed-wing Zips there to air-drop blood to 21 transfusing clinics in western Rwanda, with up to 150 emergency flights a day.

Zipline’s anniversary material dates the first flight two days after that ceremony. Either way, the hardware was barely ready. “We had a bouncy castle. That’s how we were recovering the aircraft,” Rinaudo Cliffton says in the film. He told a longer version on First Round’s podcast. The team used deep-sea fishing poles bought at Walmart and paid a bouncy castle company to make inflatable pads, and the launcher destroyed itself about every third launch.

Caitlin Burton, Zipline’s Africa CEO, says in the film that Rwanda’s government never cared about autonomous drones. It wanted blood to reach women bleeding after childbirth. Emmanuel Nsengimana, a Zipline shift team lead, says getting blood used to take more than two hours, and Zipline now brings it within 40 minutes.

The 51% Figure Counts Hospital Deaths From Postpartum Hemorrhage

Behind Zipline’s 51% is a drop in in-hospital deaths among mothers with postpartum hemorrhage at hospitals the drones served, according to Wharton’s May 19 summary of the study. Wharton School researchers and Rwandan co-authors published it in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

The authors are Harriet Jeon, Hummy Song, Claudio Lucarelli, Jean Baptiste Mazarati and Donatien Ngabo. The same paper found a 30% drop in in-hospital deaths among trauma patients. Drone-served hospitals also cut the red blood cells they keep in stock by 63%, because a resupply is a flight away.

DroneXL’s February report on Rwanda’s nationwide deal put the reduction at 88%, crediting University of Pennsylvania researchers. The published paper says 51%. Zipline’s own companion page is also more careful than its anniversary page, limiting the 51% to “Zipline-serviced hospitals in Rwanda.”

Zipline’s Early film shows the patient that statistic is about. Theonile Mukankwiye, seven months pregnant and in labor, walked herself to the nearest hospital and delivered two months early. With her daughter in the NICU, she began losing blood from postpartum hemorrhage. Zipline says drone deliveries that arrived just in time helped save her life.

The anniversary page also credits Zipline with a 22% reduction in childhood deaths from severe acute malnutrition in Rwanda, and its companion page claims a 60% cut in medicine and vaccine stockouts where Zipline delivers. Neither anniversary page cites a study for those figures.

Côte d’Ivoire Is The Model Zipline Is Selling For Its Next Decade

Zipline says three years of flying from Daloa in Côte d’Ivoire have helped save more than 2,000 lives. The Ivorian health ministry has signed an eight-year public-private partnership with the company. Zipline’s Community film frames the deal as a move from traditional aid to long-term logistics contracts.

DroneXL covered that deal last month: 10 hubs serving 12 million people, with construction funded from the US State Department’s award of up to $150 million across five African countries and the operating bill paid by the Ivorian state.

In the film, Rinaudo Cliffton says Zipline serves fewer than 1% of the people on Earth. Burton says the next 10 years are about collapsing the timeline to reach a billion people and more. Investors are pricing that ambition: Zipline is seeking a $20 billion valuation.

DroneXL’s Take

Zipline has earned this anniversary. Rwanda bet on an untested startup in 2016 because it needed blood at rural hospitals, and a decade later a peer-reviewed paper shows fewer mothers dying of hemorrhage where the drones fly. I can’t think of a stronger case for drones being used for good.

That’s why the anniversary page bothers me. A 51% drop in hospital deaths from postpartum hemorrhage is an extraordinary result, and it doesn’t need to be stretched into “maternal mortality in Rwanda” as a whole. We printed an 88% figure in February, and the published paper came in at 51%, so I know how easily these numbers drift. Zipline now wants eight-year contracts from health ministries and trust from American neighbors who watch its aircraft overhead. The company should quote its best evidence exactly as the researchers wrote it.

Sources: Zipline, Stories from the Sky, Zipline, Origin Story video, Knowledge at Wharton, Gavi, First Round Review.

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

FAA Bans Drones Along Entire US-Mexico Border Until October 2027

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:55:00 GMT

Drones are banned within one nautical mile of the entire U.S.-Mexico border for the next year, from the Pacific coast to the Gulf coast, under three FAA NOTAMs published Friday. The Department of Transportation, the Department of War and the Department of Homeland Security announced the restriction together. It covers the surface to 400 feet (122 meters).

The departments called the temporary flight restriction effective Friday. The NOTAMs themselves, 6/9954, 6/9955 and 6/9956, take effect at 00:00 UTC on October 20, which is Monday evening along the border, and run through October 19, 2027. DroneXL pulled their full text from the FAA’s NOTAM Search on Friday afternoon.

Permission to fly inside the band now runs through U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the ban covers every drone, including recreational ones under 250 grams.

CBP’s Approval List Leaves Out Routine Commercial And Hobby Flights

The approval list in the NOTAMs has no category for routine commercial work or recreational flying. CBP can clear flights in direct support of national defense, homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, medevac, search and rescue or disaster response, plus event operations, which the NOTAMs don’t define.

Requests go to SWBDRONEZONEWAIVERS@CBP.DHS.GOV at least 48 hours before the flight, according to the FAA’s Domestic Notice. Each one needs the operator’s name, FAA certifications and phone number, the flight’s date, time and location, and the drone’s Remote ID, make, model and serial number. First responders working a disaster or other emergency may be eligible for expedited coordination by calling CBP at 951-570-4185.

One nautical mile is about 1.15 miles (1.85 kilometers). That takes in the downtowns of El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville in Texas, along with downtown Nogales, Arizona, and downtown Calexico, California. CBP’s detection figures, which DroneXL reported Thursday, count flights within 500 meters of the line. The no-fly band is more than three times as deep.

The FAA has closed a smaller stretch of border airspace to drones before. In August 2025, at DHS’s request, it banned drones across about 150 square miles north of Nogales through February 9, 2026, citing only “special security reasons,” AZFamily reported.

The FAA's consolidated map of the three border NOTAMs, which split the line at the boundaries of the Los Angeles (ZLA), Albuquerque (ZAB) and Houston (ZHU) air traffic control centers. Image credit: FAA

Violators Risk Criminal Charges And Losing Their Drone

The FAA classifies the band as National Defense Airspace under 49 U.S.C. 40103(b)(3). A pilot who flies in can be intercepted, detained, fined, stripped of an FAA certificate or charged under 49 U.S.C. 46307. The government can also use deadly force against an aircraft judged an imminent threat.

The NOTAMs also warn that the Defense Department (the name the NOTAMs use), DHS or the Justice Department may interfere with, seize, damage or destroy a drone judged a credible threat, under 10 U.S.C. 130i and 6 U.S.C. 124n. In the joint release, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the military is equipped with directed energy weapons and that “our warfighters will shoot down any cartel drone that threatens America’s sovereignty.”

Military officials have credited an Army laser with cutting cartel drone flights over the Rio Grande Valley by about 75%. In February, a Pentagon laser destroyed one of CBP’s own drones near Fort Hancock, Texas.

The Border Ban Was Missing From The FAA’s TFR Map And Drone Data On Friday

As of 2:55 p.m. Eastern on Friday, none of the three NOTAMs appeared on the FAA’s graphic TFR list at tfr.faa.gov or in its UAS Data Delivery System, the agency’s public data feed for drone airspace. The FAA’s Domestic Notice does carry a map of the full line.

The restriction starts Monday evening, so the FAA has the weekend to load it. In January, NOTAM FDC 6/4375 banned drones near federal mobile assets, and no flight planning app could show those zones because they moved with the convoys. The border band follows a fixed line that apps can draw.

DroneXL’s Take

The military counted 378 drone incursions on the border between late August and late September. I have no argument with CBP watching the line or with the Army shooting down drones that cross it. I object to the scope. This restriction runs a year and covers downtown El Paso and Laredo. As written, its approval list has no category a roof inspector or a real estate photographer in either city could apply under. A clean no-drone band does make every aircraft inside it easier to treat as hostile, which is the “decision space” Hegseth is talking about. That argument survives a commercial category with CBP vetting each request, and a cartel operator launching from the Mexican side was never going to email CBP for a waiver anyway. The pilots this rule grounds are the ones who follow it. CBP should define event ops and add a category for routine Part 107 work. Anyone flying within a nautical mile of the line should read the three NOTAMs before Monday evening.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, FAA NOTAMs 6/9954, 6/9955 and 6/9956 (FAA NOTAM Search), FAA Domestic Notice, AZFamily

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

Starshield Cap Hit Ukraine's Interceptors, Not Its Refinery Strikes

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:09:00 GMT

Ukrainian drone units lost dependable Starshield service on Wednesday, October 14, when SpaceX’s military-grade Starlink terminals stopped working on fast-moving drones and vehicles. Defense ministry sources told Business Insider speeds were restricted above 100 mph (160 km/h), and some units lost the link at speeds as low as 45 mph (72 km/h). The same sources say the cut complicated interceptor and mid-range strike missions. Service began returning Wednesday evening and was at least partly restored by Thursday.

Reuters reported Thursday, citing anonymous officials, that the order to slow the service came from inside the White House. A senior US official says the president never asked for it.

Starshield’s Cap Landed on the Drones Ukraine Flies Over Its Own Ground

Ukraine relies heavily on Starshield, alongside commercial Starlink, for the drones it flies over its own territory and Russian-occupied land. The satellite link lets an operator control a drone and pull live video beyond radio range. It also cuts exposure to the jamming that breaks ordinary control links.

Yuriy, an officer with Ukraine’s National Guard, told Business Insider that his units use Starshield for drone operations and that several missions were spoiled during the disruption. He asked to be identified by his first name only. Ukrainian officials said the cap slowed the interceptor drones Ukraine sends up against incoming Russian Shaheds, Reuters reported.

The 100 mph ceiling stayed. A person in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry told Reuters on Thursday that the terminals worked in motion again, but only up to that speed. A drone-industry source told the Kyiv Independent that “in some cases, it works perfectly, in some places it does not.”

Speed gating is not new to this war. In late January, DroneXL reported that SpaceX had cut Starlink service on terminals moving faster than about 47 to 56 mph (75 to 90 km/h) to stop Russian strike drones, while terminals registered to Ukrainian brigades could have the limit lifted. A February 5 whitelist then cut off unregistered Russian terminals.

Ukraine’s Refinery Strikes Can’t Use Starlink

Ukraine can’t use Starlink for the long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites that Washington wants stopped, because the system does not work inside Russia. Reuters reports the cap came as President Donald Trump pressed Kyiv to end those refinery attacks before the November midterms.

Trump blames the strikes for soaring energy prices. Experts cited by Reuters say the surge comes mainly from the US-Israeli war with Iran. According to Reuters, two US officials and a Western official said Pentagon leaders received a message that Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed. None of them said who in the White House made the decision. The Pentagon is Starshield’s biggest customer.

Elon Musk had already pointed at Washington. Replying on X to Mykhailo Fedorov, the former defense minister who thanked him Wednesday evening as service up to 160 km/h was being restored, Musk wrote that Starshield is owned and controlled by the US government and that “limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” He added that commercial Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive use and cannot be used for offensive military action, according to Meduza and the Kyiv Independent.

The senior US official’s answer to Reuters was “No such request was ever made by the president.” The White House did not respond when Reuters asked whether other administration officials made the request. SpaceX did not respond to Reuters or Business Insider, and the Defense Department did not respond to Reuters.

Wild Hornets and SkyFall Built Their Own Links Before the Cap

Wild Hornets, which builds the Sting interceptor, told Business Insider its setup is built around its own communications technology, and SkyFall, maker of the P1-SUN interceptor, said it developed its own links or uses alternatives so no system outside Ukrainian control becomes a single point of failure.

A Wild Hornets spokesperson, who said the company stays open to other internet options, put it bluntly: “Depending on a single solution is very risky.” Radio Free Europe filmed Ukrainian crews trading $2,000 Sting drones for Russian Shaheds in May. SkyFall’s new StarGate medevac drone, which DroneXL covered this morning, flies over both Starlink and SkyFall’s own L-Link system.

BlueBird Tech, which builds drones and robots, uses Starlink but is trying not to tie its products entirely to it. Its head of hardware research and development, speaking anonymously for security reasons, said the company is exploring ways to add redundancy and named LTE or 5G, mesh networks with relay points, and laser communications as potential workarounds. None is a universal replacement for Starlink, they said.

Ukrainians told Business Insider nothing else quite matches it. “There is no working alternative to Starlink,” said Dimko Zhluktenko of Ukraine’s 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment, who added that Europe has nothing comparable at this level of battlefield readiness. French operator Eutelsat’s shares surged after the disruption. Yehor Cherniev, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s national security, defense and intelligence committee, said Kyiv is working to diversify its sources, but he would not say how.

DroneXL’s Take

If Reuters’ sources are right, one message from the White House to the Pentagon slowed the interceptors Ukraine flies against Shaheds, and the 100 mph ceiling still held on Thursday. Reuters, Business Insider and the Kyiv Independent don’t name who sent that message, and every US official quoted spoke anonymously.

Zhluktenko is right that nothing matches Starlink today. I still think Wild Hornets has the better answer. A drone force whose air defense rides on a link another government can slow without warning has a single point of failure, and Wild Hornets and SkyFall, which built their own links, are better placed for the next time it happens. Kyiv should fund that work as seriously as it funds the drones themselves.

Sources: Business Insider, Reuters, Kyiv Independent, Meduza, Elon Musk 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.

SkyFall Sends Its $50,000 StarGate Medevac Drone to the Front Line

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:15:00 GMT

Ukrainian drone maker SkyFall has handed StarGate, a six-rotor drone built to carry a wounded soldier on a stretcher, to a combat brigade for evaluation under front-line conditions. The Associated Press watched a field demonstration on October 14, at a test site in Ukraine it was not allowed to disclose. SkyFall says StarGate lifts up to 330 pounds (150 kilograms), enough for a soldier in body armor with combat gear.

SkyFall builds the P1-SUN interceptors DroneXL covered in June and the Vampire heavy-lift drone that Russian troops call “Baba Yaga.” On the test field, StarGate flew through active jamming and fired a net that knocked an attacking FPV drone off course. SkyFall also says the drone kept flying after losing one of its arms. AP notes the company has not provided data on how reliably it survives damage in combat.

Code 9.2 Asked for StarGate Because Ground Robots Take Hours

StarGate grew out of a request from Flint, commander of the 475th Separate Assault Regiment, known as Code 9.2. For his troops, reaching a wounded soldier can mean going in on foot. KVN, another Code 9.2 commander, says ground robots need two to three hours to reach a position.

In some sectors the kill zone, the strip under constant drone and artillery threat, runs 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) or farther. The Financial Times mapped that zone in February and found that an unmanned ground vehicle is sometimes the only way to get a wounded soldier out. Ground robots struggle through mud and craters, and rivers, mines and drones can stop them outright. KVN told the Associated Press that same-day retrieval is not always possible in his unit’s area. “Covering 10 kilometers in minutes would be a drastic change on the front line,” he said. Both commanders are identified only by call sign, in line with Ukrainian military protocol.

SkyFall Built StarGate to Fly on Starlink and AI When GPS Is Jammed

SkyFall rates StarGate at a 40 mph (65 kph) cruise and a 65 mph (105 kph) top speed. A pilot flies it by hand over Starlink and SkyFall’s own L-Link system, and SkyFall says AI functions keep it navigating when GPS is jammed, spoofed or unavailable.

If both links drop, SkyFall says the drone plots its own route back to a safe area. It carries thermal cameras for night missions and is built to fly in rain and snow. Preparing it for flight takes about 10 minutes. The range is about 9 miles (15 kilometers) one way, and SkyFall gave AP no round-trip figure.

The enclosed stretcher pod sits under StarGate's center frame. Photo credit: SkyFall

The design changed several times over the year of development. The arms now detach for transport, and the cabin is built around a medical-grade stretcher. A Western comparison is the gas-hydraulic Flowcopter FC-100, which U.S. soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment tested with a full-weight dummy at Sabre Strike 2026 in Poland in May. That test was an exercise, while StarGate goes to a unit in combat.

KVN says his unit needs at least a month flying StarGate before it can produce meaningful numbers on its success rate. He calls it a completely new method of evacuation and says it is too early to judge. SkyFall confirmed the evaluation but declined to disclose results.

SkyFall estimates each system will cost at least $50,000, depending on configuration, and wants to build up to 1,000 a month by the end of 2026, about 11 weeks from now.

AP’s headline, as syndicated to member papers, called StarGate Ukraine’s first aerial drone to evacuate wounded soldiers. In May, Militarnyi reported that Ukrainian forces were testing an unnamed heavy multicopter carrying a person playing a casualty, and neither the unit nor the maker was identified. Soldiers who spoke to Euromaidan Press about that test called aerial evacuation a niche option that would need heavy cover from FPV attacks. “How long will this thing survive, with a person on board?” asked Electric, a drone expert with the 93rd Brigade.

DroneXL’s Take

I want this drone built even if the first month goes badly. A wounded soldier in the kill zone can wait weeks for a ride out, and a $50,000 aircraft that brings back even a handful of them has earned its price. But the bar for StarGate is higher than for anything else SkyFall makes, because a shot-down StarGate takes the soldier on the stretcher down with it. In May, Electric put the working life of SkyFall’s own Vampire at about 10 flights. So far StarGate has netted one FPV on a test field with a weighted stretcher aboard, and the lost-arm flight is SkyFall’s own account. KVN’s month of data will be the first combat evidence either way. SkyFall should publish it, good or bad, before it starts building 1,000 of these a month.

Sources: Associated Press, Militarnyi, Euromaidan Press.

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

FCC Moves to Shut Out Chinese Labs, DroneSense Adds LAANC, DJI Dock 4

Greg Reverdiau — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 13:07:00 GMT

Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have three stories for you this week. The FCC is moving to shut out Chinese test labs, Versaterm is bringing LAANC into DroneSense, and DJI has launched the Dock 4 with automatic battery swaps. Let’s get to it.

The FCC Votes October 29 on Cutting Off Every Lab in Mainland China

First up, the FCC will vote on October 29 on an order that ends recognition of every test lab in mainland China. The cutoff date is December 1, 2028. Every phone, camera, router and other electronic device needs FCC authorization before it can be imported into the US.

Private labs do that testing, and interestingly, Chinese labs tested 82% of the devices that applied in 2025, according to the FCC’s draft order. US labs tested less than 4%. That means out of the 46,402 devices that applied, 38,491 were tested in mainland China.

Now, this doesn’t change the Chinese drone ban. Foreign-made drones went on the Covered List back in December 2025, and no new grants are possible, no matter who tests them. But this is going to hit products that can still get approval, like the DJI Osmo series, chargers, accessories, and really any other brand’s device that performs its testing in China. DroneXL broke down the full draft order when the FCC published it.

DroneSense Users Can Request LAANC Approval Without Leaving the App

Next, Versaterm has built LAANC authorization directly into DroneSense, so public safety agencies can now request airspace approval through the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability without ever leaving the app they already use to manage and dispatch drones. That connection runs through Aloft, which Versaterm acquired back in February.

So, DroneSense is now an FAA-approved Supplemental Data Service Provider (SDSP). The goal here is speed for drone as first responder programs, and that matters in search and rescue and on calls near airports.

Now, it doesn’t appear at this time that this is Special Governmental Interest (SGI) approval through LAANC, just LAANC approval. And as a reminder for those of you in public safety, the integrated workflow does not mean guaranteed approval. You still have to meet the FAA requirements, and you still have to actually get the approval.

Currently, there’s no rollout date for this. So, for those of you using DroneSense, you may need to reach out to see when this is going to go live.

DJI Dock 4 Swaps Batteries in 25 Seconds, but It Won’t Reach the US

On the hardware side, DJI has launched the Dock 4 and the Matrice 5TD. The Dock 4 is the first DJI dock with automatic battery swaps, where earlier docks only charged the pack inside the drone. DJI says the swap takes 25 seconds, and landing to takeoff takes 45 seconds.

So, that’s less than a minute on the ground. The Matrice 5TD flies up to 59 minutes per battery. It has three 50-megapixel cameras, a thermal camera, lidar, and millimeter-wave radar. The dock holds three spare batteries and charges up to two at a time.

With the Covered List in place, though, there’s no path to US sale or use. So, while this may be a great upgrade for some folks who use the Dock 3 or Dock 2, it’s not going to be available in the US.

And the conversation continues on Post Flight, where we’ll discuss these stories uncensored in the premium community. The link’s in the description, and we’ll see you on Monday for the live Q&A. Have a great weekend.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Greg Reverdiau. Watch the full weekly UAS news update on the Pilot Institute YouTube channel, and find more of Greg’s work on his DroneXL author page.

Portland Votes 11-0 Toward Drone Hub Pause as Amazon Cancels Meeting

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:46:00 GMT

Portland City Council voted 11-0 on Wednesday, October 14, to start the state process for a possible moratorium on facilities that support commercial delivery drones. The resolution tells the city attorney to notify Oregon’s land-use agency that the council may consider a pause. Councilor Loretta Smith was absent. The resolution names no company, but the project behind the resident outcry it cites is Amazon’s planned Prime Air drone center at its North Schmeer Road warehouse in North Portland, which DroneXL reported in September.

Amazon’s first scheduled meeting with city planners, an October 20 pre-application conference, was canceled at Amazon’s request and has not been rescheduled, Portland Permitting & Development spokesperson Ken Ray confirmed Thursday. In September, Amazon told the Portland Business Journal it planned to start flying in Portland in early 2027. DroneXL’s Portland drone delivery guide has the filings so far.

The city may already have a process that fits. Hoodline reported this week that the permitting office treats Amazon’s drones as helicopters under the zoning code, which would mean a public hearing and a noise board review. Planner correspondence quoted in the council’s own testimony file says the conditional use criteria may not work for a drone facility.

Portland’s Vote Authorizes a 45-Day State Notice and Pauses Nothing Yet

Resolution 37754 authorizes notice to the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development under ORS 197.520. The notice must reach the state at least 45 days before the council’s final moratorium hearing. The resolution says the notice starts that clock but adopts no moratorium.

DroneXL has not confirmed when the notice was sent. If it went out October 15, the day after the vote, the 45th day is Sunday, November 29 (16 days left in October plus 29 in November), the earliest a final hearing could be held. Only the full council can adopt a moratorium.

District 2 Councilors Sameer Kanal and Elana Pirtle-Guiney introduced the resolution, and Pirtle-Guiney described it as a “step back from a pause,” OregonLive reported.

The later vote has a high bar. ORS 197.520 lets a city pause land development for reasons other than a shortage of public facilities only on a “demonstration of compelling need.” For urban land, the council must find in writing that existing development rules are “inadequate to prevent irrevocable public harm,” and say why other methods won’t work. A moratorium on those grounds lasts at most 120 days. Each extension needs another hearing and its own findings, and no extension can run longer than six months.

Land use is the route Oregon leaves open. ORS 837.385 reserves the regulation of drone ownership and operation to the Legislative Assembly unless a state statute says otherwise, and bars cities from making their own rules on it. Portland can’t regulate the flights, so it is working on the ground they start from.

Every Written Comment in the Council File Backs the Pause

The council’s written testimony file holds 16 entries from 15 people in Kenton, Arbor Lodge, Roseway, Cathedral Park and other neighborhoods. Every one backs the resolution or a moratorium, including one that leaves the position box blank and ends “Yes on the moratorium.”

They keep returning to noise, privacy and wildlife. Cathedral Park’s neighborhood association adds migrating birds along the Columbia and Willamette rivers. Messages about these facilities have been the single most common topic reaching the District 2 councilors since September 28, the resolution’s impact statement says.

Jessica Marquez, a Kenton resident who testified Wednesday, told the council the facilities are “a new kind of land use,” “closer to a small airport than a warehouse,” according to OregonLive. Kenton’s boundaries reach right up to the Amazon site, the paper noted. Marquez cited reports of “immediate deterioration in livability” where Amazon has started deliveries, without naming a town. The best-documented case DroneXL has covered is Richardson, Texas, where a resident’s tracker logged 52 drones over one yard in a day in September. The FAA’s environmental decision covering that hub analyzed up to 1,000 flights a day.

Amazon has characterized customer response as “overwhelmingly positive,” OregonLive reported, and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment from OPB. On the federal side the public record is empty. The FAA’s drone environmental review page, last updated October 14, listed no Portland document when DroneXL checked it on October 16. Under the FAA’s July national assessment a site may never get one, and Amazon’s operating authorization requests are not public. Its only Oregon entries cover Amazon’s Pendleton test range. Oregon is also one of the 15 states suing the FAA over that national clearance.

An Amazon MK30 over a residential neighborhood in Arizona. Residents who wrote to Portland's council asked what repeated flights like this would mean for North Portland. Photo credit: Amazon

Hoodline Reports Portland Treats Amazon’s Drones as Helicopters

Portland Permitting & Development has determined that Amazon’s drones must be treated as helicopters under city zoning rules, Hoodline reported on October 14. The outlet did not name its source. OPB, KATU and OregonLive did not report it, and DroneXL has not seen a city document stating it.

The Cathedral Park Neighborhood Association’s letter in the council file, which opposes the Amazon facility, describes the same classification under Chapter 33.243 and asks planners to keep it there.

That chapter sets a high bar of its own. In Portland’s industrial zones, a helicopter landing facility is a conditional use, and a new one goes through a Type III land-use review, the city’s hearing process. Before the applicant can even file, the chapter requires approval from the city’s Noise Review Board and provisional approval from the state’s aeronautics division.

The planners themselves are not sure the fit is good. Roseway resident Evan Livingston’s testimony quotes correspondence obtained through a public records request in which staff, reviewing a drone delivery proposal this year, wrote: “We aren’t sure that the conditional use approval criteria work well for a drone type of facility.” Kanal made the same point on Wednesday. “There is no specific land-use structure with this type of facility in mind,” he said, according to OregonLive, adding that a moratorium would keep current code from being applied “in an imperfect way, and a way that may be really hard to undo.”

Amazon asked for the October 20 conference to be canceled on Tuesday, the day before the vote, OPB reported. None of the four outlets that reported the cancellation (OPB, OregonLive, KATU and Hoodline) carried a reason from Amazon when DroneXL reviewed them on October 16.

Residents who want to raise a concern with Amazon directly can call 1-888-280-4331 or use Amazon’s customer-service chat, choosing “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide to what residents can do about Amazon drones covers the rest, and the Amazon Prime Air tracker lists the hubs and incidents DroneXL has documented.

DroneXL’s Take

Portland is right to treat a drone hub as an aviation facility and not a warehouse. An MK30 weighs up to 83 pounds at takeoff, flies on six motors and carries no parachute in any of Amazon’s FAA filings. Marquez’s small-airport comparison is closer to the truth than anything in a warehouse permit.

DroneXL supports drone delivery where the payload justifies the flight, like medication or a defibrillator. A phone charger to a backyard in Kenton is a harder sell, and the crane strikes in Tolleson showed what happens when an MK30 without a parachute stops flying.

I think the moratorium is the weaker of Portland’s two tools. ORS 197.520 makes the council prove in writing that its existing rules can’t prevent irrevocable public harm, and if Hoodline’s report holds, the helicopter chapter already puts a hearing and a noise review in front of Amazon. That makes the finding harder to write. I’d spend the next 45 days on a drone section built on the helicopter chapter, one that asks for the flight counts, the noise data and the routes a hearings officer would need to see.

Sources: City of Portland, Resolution 37754, Portland City Council written testimony, Document 2026-374, Portland City Code Chapter 33.243, ORS 197.520, ORS 837.385, OregonLive, OPB, KATU, Hoodline, FAA.

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

FCC Files Pentagon's Sealed DJI Letters, Says Ban Didn't Rely on Them

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:28:00 GMT

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday placed eight letters from the Pentagon to Congress into the record of DJI’s Covered List proceeding, and the only part anyone outside the government can read is three paragraphs that name DJI and identify no specific threat from it. The classified annex, which the Pentagon says holds its analysis, went in under seal. The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau also wrote that it did not rely on these letters when it added DJI to the Covered List.

Sean Hollister at The Verge spotted the filing on Thursday and wrote that it “sure would be nice if these congresspeople would say why DJI is a threat.” I read all eight pages. They are the same letter eight times, signed by Michael P. Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, and the Pentagon told the FCC in an April 6 memo that the report and its classified annex were submitted to Congress on April 3, 2026. The FCC’s notice points to that memo as the filing in which the Pentagon referenced these letters. The FCC had added DJI to the Covered List on December 22, 2025.

The Public Pages Name DJI And Describe No Specific Threat

Each letter runs three paragraphs. The first paraphrases Section 1709 and names DJI. The second says the government has clear national security concerns that foreign drone producers could harm U.S. persons, and announces a classified annex. The third says identical letters went to the other committees.

The letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, as filed in ET Docket 26-22. The block above the letterhead and the signature are redacted on all eight pages. Image credit: Department of War, via FCC ECFS

The second paragraph carries the whole public case. The letter calls itself “a national security agency determination and response,” and the filing offers nothing after that beyond the concern that foreign producers of drones or drone components could do harm, plus a promise that the annex “will be transmitted over secure communications systems.” The public version shows no date. The signature is blacked out, and so is the block above the letterhead.

That one sentence of substance is not new. The December 21 determination that the FCC published as Appendix B to its listing notice contains the same sentence, almost word for word: the government “has clear national security concerns that entities subject to the jurisdiction of foreign countries, including those listed in Sec. 1709 of the FY25 NDAA, could leverage their roles as the producer of a UAS or UAS critical component to directly harm U.S. persons.” The Pentagon’s Section 1709 report repeats it, swaps in the full title of the act, and adds the annex.

The chairs are Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker, Tom Cotton and Rand Paul in the Senate, and Mike Rogers, Rick Crawford, Andrew Garbarino and Brett Guthrie in the House, with Maria Cantwell, Jack Reed, Mark Warner, Gary Peters, Adam Smith, Jim Himes, Bennie Thompson and Frank Pallone copied as ranking members. That is where Hollister’s count of 16 lawmakers comes from. Section 1709 names Autel Robotics in the subparagraph right after DJI. The letters never name Autel, though their second paragraph covers entities “listed in section 1709,” a list that includes Autel, and the FCC filed them in Autel’s docket (ET Docket 26-23) as well as DJI’s (ET Docket 26-22).

Both sides let typos through. Each page spells it “Unties States,” the Crawford letter goes to the “Permenent Select Committee on Intelligence,” and the FCC’s own notice describes Cadenazzi as the “Assistant Security of War.” The PDF’s metadata says it came off a Xerox office copier on October 7, the day the FCC’s system logged it as received from the department.

The Pentagon’s Letters Went To Congress 102 Days After The Ban

Section 1709 gave national security agencies until December 23, 2025 to decide whether DJI and Autel pose an unacceptable risk, then 30 days to report to Congress. The FCC listed DJI on December 22 on a White House interagency determination. The Pentagon says it sent the letters April 3, 2026.

The December 22 public notice rests the listing on a National Security Determination the FCC received on December 21 from “an Executive Branch interagency body” convened by the White House. A footnote says the statute asks for a determination by an appropriate national security agency rather than an interagency body, and that the law is satisfied because several such agencies concurred. The determination’s public summary is about securing the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics and about building a domestic industrial base. It makes no finding about DJI by name and reaches DJI through one sentence that folds in everything Section 1709(a)(1) lists.

The Department of War’s one-page opposition memo of April 6, which DroneXL covered at the time, said the department gave full weight to classified and unclassified information during the determination process, and that this information, including a classified annex, went to the committees under Section 1709(b)(1)(B). That memo is the source of the April 3 date, which is 102 days after the FCC’s listing. If the December 21 interagency paper is the determination Section 1709 describes, the 30-day reporting window closed on January 20, 2026, and the letters arrived 73 days after that. If the Pentagon’s own letter is the determination, as its text says, the determination postdates the ban by more than three months.

The bureau filed the letters on October 14 under Public Notice DA 26-1106 and wrote that it “did not rely upon these materials” when it made the related additions to the Covered List. DJI’s Ninth Circuit petition and its January 21 petition for reconsideration both argue that no appropriate national security agency ever made the specific determination the statute requires. The Ninth Circuit denied the FCC’s motion to dismiss on May 28 and paused the case while the Commission acts on that petition, with DJI’s opening brief due November 2 and the FCC’s answer a month later.

Rick Scott Says He Read The Classified Report And It Covers Autel

Senator Rick Scott told Chairman Carr on October 14 that he objects to DJI’s petition and Autel’s application for review, and the FCC filed the letter Thursday. Scott, who sponsored the bill behind Section 1709, says he has read the classified report and it finds both companies an unacceptable risk.

The four-page letter says Congress spent years on DJI through classified briefings from the intelligence community and the Department of War, plus public hearings, and it walks through the record: a 2017 Immigration and Customs Enforcement bulletin, DJI’s 2020 addition to the Commerce Department’s Entity List, Treasury’s December 2021 listing, the Pentagon’s Section 1260H list from October 2022, and Autel’s Entity List and 1260H designations in 2024 and 2025. Scott also argues that Chinese subsidies since 2015 have driven American drone makers out of business.

On the report itself, Scott confirms the sequence the dates already show. The Department of War transmitted the classified report to the committees after DJI and Autel were added to the Covered List, he writes, and it details the threats posed by both companies. “I have read and agree with the analysis detailed in the classified report,” he adds. The public cover letters name only DJI, and Scott’s letter says in plain words that the sealed material addresses Autel. Autel told the FCC in May that it was listed on classified material it never saw and on complaints originally aimed at DJI.

The FCC entered Scott’s letter in both dockets on October 15 under Public Notice DA 26-1112, one day after the Pentagon’s.

DroneXL’s Take

The FCC’s sentence that it did not rely on these letters is the most useful line the government has put in this docket, because as I read it, it settles what the ban rests on. The ban rests on the December paper, which argues from World Cup and Olympic security, cartel and battlefield drone use, and the domestic industrial base, and which reaches DJI only through Section 1709’s list. The letter the Pentagon calls its Section 1709 determination went to Congress in April, after the fact, and its one public sentence of substance was copied out of that December paper. Nine years after the ICE bulletin Scott cites, a recycled sentence is everything the Pentagon’s Section 1709 report says in public.

The Pentagon says it weighed the same classified material during the December determination, and Scott says he has read the classified report and agrees with it. But the D.C. Circuit ruled in August that the Pentagon’s central blacklist finding against DJI, that it contributes to China’s defense industrial base, has no publicly stated rationale at all, and a listing that blocks every new DJI model from U.S. authorization, Mini and Matrice alike, cannot run on “trust us” indefinitely. If the annex holds something specific, the government has had since April to say so in a sentence that survives declassification, and so far it has published a redaction bar instead.

My read is that the FCC filed the Pentagon’s letters and Scott’s within a day of each other because it is tidying the record before it rules on DJI’s petition, with DJI’s opening brief due in the Ninth Circuit on November 2. Watch whether the Commission rules before that brief lands, and whether DJI’s lawyers put the FCC’s own sentence on the first page of their filing, which is where I would put it.

Sources: FCC ECFS filing 26110081553, Department of War letters to Congress, FCC Public Notice DA 26-1106, FCC Public Notice DA 26-1112, Sen. Rick Scott letter to Chairman Carr, October 14, 2026, Department of War opposition memorandum, April 6, 2026, FCC Public Notice DA 25-1086, Public Law 118-159, Section 1709, The Verge

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

nuWay Ag's Yoder Takes FAA Drone Suspension Over Deer and Sled Lifts

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:16:00 GMT

Mike Yoder, co-owner of Ohio agricultural drone company nuWay Ag, says he has agreed to a 180-day FAA suspension of his remote pilot certificate. He announced the settlement in a video posted October 13 that passed 300,000 views in two days. Yoder also founded Drone Deer Recovery, which lost its 2025 First Amendment challenge to Michigan’s drone hunting law.

The case grew out of three of his own YouTube videos: a heavy-lift drone hauling a deer carcass out of the woods, a drone lifting logs off a tree job, and one pulling a person on a sled. Yoder expects his certificate back around April 2027. Until then he cannot act as remote pilot in command, which rules out flying anything over 55 pounds.

He says he spent about a year asking the FAA for a legal way to fly those lifts before the case turned into enforcement. The FAA inspector who first contacted him in September 2024 said the deer work did not look like agriculture under his exemption, and could not say what would cover it.

Part 137 Covers Dispensing, and the FAA Says Deer and Tree Lifts Don’t Qualify

Drones over 55 pounds can’t fly under Part 107, so ag operators like nuWay fly them under an FAA exemption plus a Part 137 certificate, which covers dispensing pesticides, fertilizer, seed and similar substances. Hauling a deer carcass or a log dispenses nothing.

That is the definition in 14 CFR 137.3, and Yoder plays an FAA official reading it aloud in the video. At a later informal meeting, Yoder’s side argued that moving a generator or cutting a tree can be farm work, pointing to growers who raise Christmas trees. The FAA held to the definition.

The 2024 call was informal. Yoder plays a recording in which the inspector says he found the nuWay channel while looking into a complaint about someone else, and that he would be watching it. Asked what exemption would cover deer lifts, the inspector answered: “I just don’t know what it would land under.”

Yoder’s team then petitioned the FAA for heavy-lift work. Each round took about three months to come back, he says, and each asked for more information about the operation. About a year after the call, Yoder told his partners they would keep moving forward and posted a tree-removal job (he used to work as an arborist). He believes the inspector was still watching, because the formal investigation followed.

Yoder Says FAA Letter Named Him, His Cousin and Both Companies

According to Yoder, a certified FAA letter cited all three videos. It pursued four parties: Yoder, his cousin and business partner Jason Miller, nuWay Ag and Drone Deer Recovery. He recalls proposed civil penalties of around $70,000, and the FAA also proposed suspending his private pilot certificate.

The FAA’s initial proposal targeted that airplane certificate rather than his remote pilot certificate, Yoder says, treating the flights as Part 91 operations and alleging careless or reckless operation. He disputes that, saying every flight was on private land with nobody present who was not part of the job. The sled video, he says, tested whether a large drone could tow a big-wave surfer in a rescue, for a professional lifeguard he was working with.

The informal conference the letter offered stopped before it reached the substance. Yoder was recording the video call, and the FAA’s principal operations inspector said the agency would not accept a recorded meeting, that a response could only come in writing, and that he needed to seek further guidance. The FAA later asked to meet in person at the Cleveland Flight Standards District Office. Yoder hired attorneys, and an informal meeting did take place, which he says didn’t get far.

Yoder Says He Took a Drone Suspension To Protect His Airplane Certificate

Yoder says he accepted the 180-day remote suspension to keep a reckless-operation finding off his private pilot certificate, because he may want a commercial pilot certificate in the future. The FAA had already cut its proposed private certificate suspension from 275 days to 180, he says.

He also says he offered to pay double the proposed penalty against Miller if the FAA left his remote certificate alone, and the FAA declined. The video does not say what became of the proposed penalties against Miller, nuWay Ag or Drone Deer Recovery.

Yoder can still fly smaller drones under 14 CFR 107.12(a)(2), which lets a person without a valid certificate manipulate the controls of a small drone under the direct supervision of a remote pilot in command who can immediately take over. Heavy-lift spraying and demos are out. Yoder says the FAA has 20 days from the video’s posting to show the suspension on his record, and that the video’s release is part of the deal.

nuWay sells a Part 137 Fast Pass program at $800 a month for 55-pound-plus spray drones. It lets qualified custom applicators spray as contractors under nuWay Ag’s existing Part 137 certificate while their own application is processed. The video does not say whether the settlement affects that company certificate.

Yoder says he has hired attorneys to write new exemption petitions for practical farm lifts, such as flying an irrigation pump to a center pivot or a tire to a tractor. Between those petitions and fighting the FAA, he puts his attorney costs at tens of thousands of dollars. “We are nowhere further than we were when we started,” he says.

Rescue Crews Hit the Same 55-Pound Line Unless They Fly as Government

A search and rescue crew flying a heavy-lift drone to a team in the field or a stranded person runs into Yoder’s problem unless it flies as a government agency. Above 55 pounds, a civilian operator needs an exemption written for that operation, and an ag exemption is not one.

Government agencies have the cleanest path. A sheriff’s office, fire department or state agency can fly as a public aircraft operation under an FAA Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA), and 49 U.S.C. 40125 lists search and rescue as a governmental function. The agency certifies its own pilots and aircraft, so a DJI FlyCart 30, rated at 209 pounds (95 kg) maximum takeoff weight, can carry rope, radios or a medical kit to a team if the COA covers it. That status belongs to the operator, not the mission, so a volunteer nonprofit doesn’t get it for doing rescue work.

Civilian teams can fly under Part 107 as long as drone and payload together stay under 55 pounds. Dropping gear is legal if it creates no undue hazard to people or property under 14 CFR 107.23(b), but 107.36 bars hazardous material, which takes in signal flares and compressed-gas cylinders. The Ocean County M300 that dropped a rescue tube into a rip current in July worked inside that weight class.

A civilian spray operator who flies an ag drone over 55 pounds to a rescue is outside Part 137, the same way Yoder’s deer lift was. The FAA’s emergency Special Governmental Interest process can approve search and rescue flights within minutes for operations in visual line of sight, but the FAA describes each approval as an amendment to an existing COA or remote pilot certificate. Its page, checked October 15, says nothing about widening a Section 44807 exemption.

DroneXL’s Take

The FAA read its own rule correctly. Part 137 is a dispensing rule, a deer carcass is not a dispensing load, and Yoder posted the tree job after an inspector had told him his deer lifts didn’t look like agriculture under his exemption. I can’t defend how the FAA handled the year between that 2024 call and the letter, though. A farmer who asks the regulator how to legally fly an irrigation pump to a center pivot should get a process, and by his account Yoder got an inspector who didn’t know and a petition queue that came back roughly every three months with more questions. When the only answer to “how do I do this legally” is “I don’t know,” enforcement becomes the policy. Looking at the FAA’s 2025 enforcement report and DETER, its fast track from violation to penalty, I can see which half of that the agency is putting its effort into. If you fly a 55-pound-plus ag drone, read what your exemption actually authorizes before it lifts anything that isn’t being dispensed, a rescue load included, until the FAA writes the rule its inspector couldn’t name in 2024.

Sources: nuWay Ag on YouTube, 14 CFR 137.3, 14 CFR 107.12, 49 U.S.C. 40125, FAA Emergency Situations, DJI FlyCart 30 specs, nuWay Ag Part 137 Fast Pass

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

Missouri Fire Drone Caught a 200-Acre Blaze Jumping Its Line

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:42:00 GMT

A drone from the Logan-Rogersville Fire Protection District showed Highlandville firefighters on Monday, October 12, that a 200-acre fire in Stone County, Missouri, had jumped across a river. The fire was burning along Curbow Road, and the wind had picked up to 30 mph.

Highlandville Fire Chief Stephens had never seen a drone at a fire before Monday. The aircraft that impressed him is a DJI Matrice, the airframe visible in KY3’s footage, and Logan-Rogersville now wants a second drone with a longer flight time at an estimated $60,000. Highlandville is looking into getting one of its own.

Logan-Rogersville’s Drone Spotted the River Crossing First

Chris Wescoat, one of the district’s certified pilots, flew the drone over the Curbow Road fire. It found hotspots and tracked the flames on the far bank, which became a second fire for Highlandville and other departments to fight. Stephens says the cause of the original fire is still unknown.

Assistant Fire Chief Grant Peters told KY3 the crew saw quickly that “they had a fire that had jumped their line.” Stephens said the aerial view showed where his structures were and which direction to send engines. “It let us know where we needed to send resources quicker,” he said.

A Water Rescue Drone Now Flies Every Week

KY3 now puts the Logan-Rogersville drone at $30,000, bought with grant money for water rescues. It has flown at least once a week since, adding fires and crash scenes to the job. At the September 2025 launch, Peters priced the full kit at $32,000 to $33,000.

KY3’s launch report listed a 200x zoom camera, night vision, radar, a spotlight, a rangefinder and a drop mechanism that can release a flotation device to a swimmer. The first search went to the Finley River, where Ozark Fire asked for help finding a missing kayaker and the drone located the paddler within minutes. The district shares the drone with mutual aid partners including Ozark, Battlefield, Nixa and Strafford, and every pilot holds an FAA Part 107 certificate. It expects six certified pilots by the end of 2026, up from five at launch.

The DJI controller screen during a Logan-Rogersville flight, showing two battery readouts at 75 and 76 percent. Photo credit: KY3

None of KY3’s three reports names the model, but the footage shows a DJI Matrice 300-series airframe with a cylindrical radar unit on top and a Zenmuse H20-series camera underneath. The 200x zoom and night vision KY3 listed fit the H20T, the version of that camera with a thermal sensor. The controller screen shows two battery readouts, 75 and 76 percent, from the dual-battery setup the airframe uses.

The FCC Wants to Stop Sales of Foreign Thermal Drones

New DJI models have had no path to US sale since the FCC added foreign-made drones to its Covered List on December 22, 2025. Older authorized models can still be sold, and a July 21 notice in FCC Docket 26-189 proposes ending that for “military-grade” drones, including thermal models.

The notice lists seven capabilities that would earn the label, and LiDAR and docking stations are two more of them. Pilot Institute’s Greg Reverdiau walked through all seven for DroneXL in August; Pilot Institute is a DroneXL partner. DJI asked the two FCC bureaus to rescind the notice on September 2, the day comments closed, and the bureaus have not finalized it. KY3’s report does not say which drone the district wants next.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d like the bureaus writing Docket 26-189 to watch KY3’s clip. Finding hotspots on a brush fire is about the most civilian job a thermal camera does, and their definition files that camera under “military-grade.” Logan-Rogersville’s current drone keeps flying whatever they decide, because the notice covers sales and not aircraft already in service. The rule would hit the next purchase instead, the $60,000 drone Logan-Rogersville is waiting to fund and the first one Highlandville is looking into. Rural districts buy on grants and budget lines, and taking foreign thermal drones off the shelf shrinks what that money can buy. The FCC should drop thermal imaging from its list.

Source: KY3

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

CBP Logged 37,000 Border Drone Flights In FY2026, Down From 42,000

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:32:00 GMT

U.S. Customs and Border Protection detected more than 37,000 drone flights near the border in fiscal 2026, down from more than 42,000 the year before, a CBP spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement published Wednesday. CBP presented both numbers as the scale of a cartel threat that includes monitoring law enforcement, scouting crossing points and coordinating smuggling.

The military describes a rising trend. Joint Task Force-Southern Border counted 378 drone incursions in 30 days between August and September and said the number was climbing. CBP’s statement doesn’t say which border its flight counts cover. In February, a CBP official put the fiscal 2025 count for the US-Mexico border alone at 34,682.

Cartels Fly Commercial Drones To Learn Border Agents’ Routines

Most cartels rely on off-the-shelf commercial drones, and at the border their main jobs are surveillance and logistics, says Austin Doctor, who directs strategic initiatives at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Armed attacks are documented more often in Mexico.

Doctor told Fox News Digital that cartels “look to establish a pattern of life for U.S. security personnel.” He said larger agricultural drones are starting to appear, and that cartels keep changing their designs for bigger payloads and better resistance to countermeasures. NCITE research identifies the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) as a major driver of drone adoption, though use has spread across cartels. NCITE’s February report counted 221 weaponized drone incidents in Mexico from 2021 to 2025, with CJNG holding the largest attributed share.

Doctor said Tijuana is among the exceptions to the pattern of attacks farther inside Mexico. A year ago tonight, on October 15, 2025, drones dropped homemade explosives packed with nails and metal fragments on the Baja California attorney general’s anti-kidnapping unit there. Attorney General María Elena Andrade said the blasts damaged vehicles in the courtyard and injured no one.

Mexico Detained An Alleged Tijuana Drone Operator After A CBP Tip

Mexico’s Defense Secretariat says soldiers used CBP information to detect a drone that flew into Tijuana from the United States on September 14. Patrols detained a man the ministry calls its presumed operator in the Nido de las Águilas neighborhood. They seized a handgun, ammunition and the drone’s controller.

He was handed to authorities to determine his legal status, according to the Defense Secretariat’s account, which says the drone was watching routes used to smuggle people into the US. The detection came during Águila Alta, a binational counter-drone operation on the Tijuana-San Diego line, with each country’s forces working its own side, scheduled for September 7 to 21. On September 18, Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla said four drones had been disabled so far, all on the Mexican side, and that none carried weapons or explosives, Uno TV reported. Fox News Digital, citing the ministry, puts the operation’s total at five.

Mexico has since moved counter-drone gear east. On September 26, Coast Guard personnel exchanged gunfire with people on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande near Garceno, Texas, the service said. President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican forces recorded no shots from Mexican territory. About a week later, the Army and National Guard sent 500 troops to five Tamaulipas border towns, backed by UH-60 helicopters and mobile and semi-fixed counter-drone systems, Ruptura 360 reported. Separately, the Navy said on October 3 that its Operation Sable had 159 personnel, 11 vehicles and two drones out of Matamoros.

CBP’s February Numbers Put 7,678 Of 42,360 Flights On The Canadian Border

The 42,000 figure matches the sum of two counts CBP gave for fiscal 2025. A CBP official told Cronkite News in February that the agency detected 34,682 drone flights within 500 meters of the US-Mexico border from October 2024 through September 2025, and 7,678 along the Canadian border, 42,360 combined.

CBP’s statement to Fox doesn’t say whether its “over 42,000” includes the Canadian border, and it gives no split for fiscal 2026. Fox ran both totals in a story about cartels on the southern border, and the same story notes that the number of cartel-operated drones is unknown. Neither CBP’s statement to Fox nor the February figures, as published, say how many of the flights CBP ties to criminal groups. The Mexican-border figure counts flights within 500 meters of the line, a band that takes in parts of El Paso and San Diego.

DroneXL’s Take

When I reported the military’s 378 count on October 6, I said Joint Task Force-Southern Border should publish its numbers monthly and by sector. CBP should do the same. In February a CBP official gave Cronkite News a Mexican-border figure for fiscal 2025, so the agency can release fiscal 2026’s the same way, split by border, with the share it attributes to cartels. A near-border flight count isn’t a cartel drone count. I’d expect a 500-meter band through El Paso to catch hobbyists and real estate shoots along with the drones scouting Border Patrol positions, and CBP’s published figures don’t separate them. By CBP’s own February numbers, the 42,000 it gave Fox appears to include 7,678 flights on the Canadian border. In my view, putting that number in a statement about Mexican cartels blurs the threat it is meant to measure. The 5,000-flight drop could have come from either border or from a change in how CBP counts, and I’d want to know which before anyone sets it next to the 75% decline military officials credited to the Army’s laser in the Rio Grande Valley.

Sources: Fox News Digital, Cronkite News, Mexico’s Defense Secretariat via Zeta Tijuana, Uno TV, Stars and Stripes, Ruptura 360, La Crónica de Hoy, Expansión

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

DJI Osmo Pocket 4P In Pearl White Launches October 20, US Gets A 404

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:25:00 GMT

DJI will launch the Osmo Pocket 4P in Pearl White on October 20, 2026, at 12 PM GMT (8 AM EDT). The company posted a 14-second teaser to its main YouTube channel this morning, titled “See More. Tell More.”, that calls the camera a “Dual-Lens Cinematic Pocket Gimbal Camera” and says the white model is “coming soon.” The clip shows a woman holding the white 4P out toward the lens on a city street.

The color is not new. DJI named Pearl White alongside classic black when the 4P launched worldwide on July 30, and outside China, October 20 puts the white model’s launch 82 days behind the black one. The teaser’s “Notify me” link points at DJI’s global teaser page. Opened from the United States this morning, that link redirected to DJI’s US site and stopped on a page reading “Sorry, the page was not found.”

Pearl White Went On Sale In China On September 16 With A Mica Coating

China got the white 4P first. IT Home reported DJI opened Pearl White sales there at 8 PM on September 16, at 3,799 yuan for the Standard Combo, the price DJI set for black in June. The grip and gimbal shell carry a custom pearlescent coating built on mica pigment.

IT Home says it goes on in several coats and bakes, shows no metallic sparkle, and shifts tone with the light and the viewing angle instead of reading as flat white. It also resists fingerprints and stains, according to the same report. Nothing inside changes. The white 4P keeps the 1-inch 20mm wide camera, the 60mm telephoto, the 4K/240fps slow motion and the 103GB of built-in storage DroneXL documented at the China launch on June 15.

The white unit had been in public for months before any of this. Notebookcheck reported it on June 2 from DJI’s “Light and Shadow 12 Years” event in Beijing. On July 30, CineD reported that “only the black version is available from day one,” with Pearl White to follow later. Today’s video is the first global date DJI has given. It carries no price, and the black Standard Combo launched at £529 / €599, with the Vlog Combo at £605 / €689.

DJI’s Notify Me Link Ends On A 404 Page In The United States

The teaser link’s dead end matches the rest of DJI’s US site, which returns the same 404 for the Osmo Pocket 4P and Pocket 4 product pages. The Pocket 3 page loads normally, because that camera kept the FCC authorization it held before DJI landed on the Covered List.

The link in the teaser’s description is tagged for DJI’s global campaign, and DroneXL followed it with a plain request and a full browser this morning. Both ended on the same US error page.

DJI has been on that list since December 22, 2025, which keeps new DJI hardware from the equipment authorization it needs for legal US sale. The Osmo Pocket 4 launched in April with no US price, and the 4P skipped the US again in July. Americans who want either camera have been buying through third-party sellers on Amazon. On July 29 DroneXL found the black 4P listed there at $980 from an importer, with a brand field that read SECUREX and a note that the unit had been activated before export.

DroneXL’s Take

I expect the white Pocket 4P to reach American buyers the way the black one did, through an importer charging a premium with no DJI warranty behind it. Both Pocket 4 models went that route this year, and a new color does nothing to the Covered List math. DJI is also in a Texas courtroom over the same US market. It sued Insta360 on June 11, claiming the Luna Pro and Luna Ultra copy the Osmo Pocket, and the Luna Ultra is the dual-lens pocket gimbal Americans can buy from a US retailer. DJI is paying lawyers to protect a US market it cannot sell its new Pockets into, and the Covered List is the reason.

Sources: DJI on YouTube, IT Home via ifeng, CineD, Notebookcheck

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

DeLorean Joins Flying-Car Racing in a Series That Says 'Remote Today'

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:05:00 GMT

DeLorean Motor Company will field the United States team in the Airspeeder International Series, an electric flying-car racing championship, when its 2026-27 season opens in November. The company announced the DeLorean Airspeeder Team on Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco and calls itself the first American constructor in flying-car racing.

In its first season the team races the Airspeeder Mk3C in DeLorean colors. A DeLorean aircraft for 2027-28 is to be designed with student engineering teams, including groups at UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech.

The pilot line-up will be named before the opener, the companies say. Airspeeder’s own homepage still describes its racing as “remote today, piloted tomorrow.”

DeLorean’s First Season Puts Its Name on Airspeeder’s Standard Racer

For 2026-27, DeLorean’s constructor role means “leading the design identity” of the Mk3C, the aircraft Airspeeder’s Adelaide-based sister company, Alauda Aeronautics, supplies to its teams. The announcement does not define the phrase or say who builds, owns or maintains the aircraft.

Autoweek describes the Mk3C as standardized and set apart by DeLorean-designed styling and branding. The launch photos show a silver body with the DeLorean and DMC logos, blue stripes and a USA flag behind the canopy. Airspeeder’s race series page says teams get their hardware from Alauda “as a turn-key solution” and are free to set strategy and draft pilots.

A DeLorean DMC-12 beside the team's Mk3C. Photo credit: DeLorean Airspeeder Team / Airspeeder

DeLorean chief brand officer Cameron Wynne pitched the deal as a long game. “People have pictured a DeLorean in the sky for forty years,” he said. In the full release he says DeLorean wants a hand in the regulatory, safety and compliance frameworks flying vehicles will need, and he says widespread use “remains over the horizon.” The release names no rival teams, no venue and no exact date. Airspeeder’s teams page lists Australia and Italia, a September release adds a New Zealand team, and Team Australia’s page says it races in South Australia in October 2026, a month before DeLorean’s November opener.

The Mk3C Comes From a Line Airspeeder Built to Fly With Nobody Aboard

Airspeeder unveiled the Mk3 in February 2021 as a remotely operated eVTOL. It is a 220-pound (100 kg) octocopter with a 96 kW powertrain, rated above 120 km/h (75 mph) and flown by a pilot on the ground. DeLorean’s release does not say whether anyone sits in the Mk3C.

In FAA terms, the 2021 Mk3 weighed four times the 55-pound ceiling of Part 107.

The same 2021 release promised “manned races scheduled in 2022,” and the race series page still promises 10 crewed teams by 2025. The crewed aircraft is the Mk4. Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority gave it an experimental flight certificate in September 2025, and Airspeeder showed it at The Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia in April 2026, where Team Australia and Team Italia flew Mk3C demonstrations, eVTOL Insights reported.

The DeLorean Airspeeder Team crew around the Mk3C. Photo credit: DeLorean Airspeeder Team / Airspeeder

DroneXL first covered Airspeeder in February 2021, when the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch reported on the crash of its Mk II scale model in West Sussex, England, on July 4, 2019. The remote pilot lost control of the 210-pound (95 kg) aircraft, and the kill switch had no effect. It climbed to about 8,000 feet into controlled airspace used by Gatwick arrivals and came down in a field about 130 feet (40 meters) from homes when the battery ran out. The AAIB found it had not been designed, built or tested to recognized standards.

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that DeLorean has put its name on a large racing drone for its first season, and drone pilots should take that as a compliment. Flying a fast multirotor through a course from the ground is our skill set, and the collision avoidance and 55-second battery swaps Airspeeder races with are drone technology. If you want to see a person sitting in a single-seat eVTOL today, look at the Jetson ONE flight along the California coast we covered in March, or the Pivotal BlackFly, with more than 1,000 crewed flights under the FAA’s Part 103 ultralight rules. Airspeeder promised crewed racing for 2022, and four years later its homepage still says remote today. The pilot line-up due before the November opener will show whether DeLorean’s flying car has anyone inside it.

Sources: Airspeeder (DeLorean Airspeeder Team announcement, Mk3 announcement, CASA certificate announcement), Autoweek, eVTOL Insights.

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

Skydio Says ISR Command Can Send X10D Target Grids to F-16s

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:26:00 GMT

Skydio launched ISR Command on October 13, software that lets one soldier fly two X10D drones from a single controller and share target tracks across the Army’s tactical networks. Skydio says it also lets the X10D pass target locations to platforms ranging from one-way attack drones to F-16s. The company announced it the same day it livestreamed from the Association of the U.S. Army’s AUSA 2026 meeting in Washington, and says it is available now. Neither the launch post nor the product page listed a price as of October 14.

CEO Adam Bry wrote on X the next day that the launch was a big step toward one of two national security objectives he set out for Skydio. He also wrote that ISR Command “breaks the 1:1 pilot:drone ratio to enable scalable 1:many operations.” Skydio’s own launch post puts the number at two aircraft per operator.

Skydio’s Documents Describe One Operator, Two Drones and a Battery Relay

Skydio’s launch post and product page describe one multi-drone workflow step by step: a two-aircraft relay. When the first X10D runs low on battery, ISR Command tells the operator to ready a second one. That drone flies itself out and takes over once both aircraft see the target.

The operator confirms the handoff with one tap on the same controller, and the first X10D flies home. Skydio’s launch post sums it up as “One controller. Two aircraft. Continuous eyes on the objective.” The ISR Command product page says autonomy lets each operator fly more aircraft but gives no number. Both pages say ISR Command orchestrates fleets of X10Ds, and as of October 14 neither describes one operator flying more than two.

The rest of the workflow is built to take work off that soldier. Objectives arrive as TAK markers before the drone is powered on, so the operator can review terrain and assign each aircraft a role without spending battery. The X10D launches in under 40 seconds and navigates with its onboard cameras when GNSS is jammed or spoofed. Subject tracking then locks onto a vehicle or a person, and the clip on Bry’s post shows an X10D following a vehicle down a dirt road with a feature Skydio calls Shadow.

The Army has named a related bottleneck. Col. Gregory Merkl, the Army’s Drone Dominance director, said in September that hardware is no longer the gap between the Army and squad-level drone warfare and that trained pilots are, as DroneXL reported at the time.

ISR Command shows two aircraft, Alpha and Bravo, on the same objective. Image credit: Skydio

Skydio Says ISR Command Lets the X10D Pass Target Locations to Strike Platforms

ISR Command embeds the X10D’s target location in live video, using MISB ST 0601 (STANAG 4609) for static targets and MISB ST 0903 for moving ones. Skydio says that makes the 4.72-pound (2.14 kg) X10D the smallest UAS on the market capable of delivering precise target locations to strike platforms.

Once a target is confirmed, the operator passes the grid and the camera stays on the target for battle damage assessment. The product page puts terrain-corrected crosshair coordinates on live video out to 3.1 miles (5 km).

The software is TAK-native and runs on the Skydio Controller, so markers and chat sync with other TAK users without a second device. Skydio also says it shares tracks with the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control system, NGC2. In June the Army picked Anduril to lead the NGC2 common data layer baseline on Anduril’s Lattice and Palantir’s Foundry, Breaking Defense reported. Skydio’s AUSA livestream listing promised one operator managing multiple aircraft while sharing data across TAK and Lattice.

Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told senators in May that Ukraine’s Delta puts every drone and shooting platform on one network and that the Army’s does not, as DroneXL reported in August. I read Skydio’s TAK, NGC2 and Lattice language as a pitch aimed at that gap, and Army testing will show how much of it the software closes.

The X10D is the drone the Army ordered more than 2,500 of in March, in a $52 million-plus order Skydio called the largest single-vendor tactical sUAS order in Army history. Bry described the X10D then as a “hunter” that finds targets for one-way attack munitions. ISR Command is the fourth product in Skydio’s Command software line, after DFR Command and the Asset and Security Commands it launched at Ascend on September 23, where it also unveiled the F10 Lightrunner.

DroneXL’s Take

I think ISR Command is a useful product for the Army, and Skydio’s launch post is plain about what it does: it names one-way attack drones and F-16s as the receivers of the X10D’s target data. A small drone that holds a target and puts a precise grid on it is half of any strike, and I’d rather American units get that from an American drone.

Skydio’s principles page is less plain. Its Engagement and Responsible Use Principles, dated July 13, 2020, are still on its website as of October 14 and still say “We will not put weapons on our drones,” alongside a pledge to oppose fully autonomous lethal weapons. Nothing in the ISR Command materials puts a weapon on the X10D, though Army soldiers dropped live grenades from one in 2025 tests. In June Bry told The Verge he had gotten some things wrong on weapons. A company that markets its drone as the targeting half of a strike, with a CEO who says he got that question wrong, should update a 2020 page that still says it will not put weapons on its drones.

Sources: Skydio, Skydio ISR Command product page, Adam Bry on X, Skydio AUSA livestream, Breaking Defense.

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

Amazon's Westborough Drones Need Own FAA Review, Markey and Warren Say

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:46:00 GMT

Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Jim McGovern and Lori Trahan asked Amazon and the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday, October 14, to put Prime Air’s proposed drone hub in Westborough, Massachusetts, through its own environmental assessment, with a public comment period, before any drone flies from it. One letter went to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and one to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, and both ask for a written answer by October 29.

The letters come 16 days after state lawmakers who represent the area wrote to Amazon. State Sen. Michael Moore and Reps. Hannah Kane and Kate Donaghue asked the company to pause on September 28, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA. By then, Westborough residents were circulating a phone script that named both senators and McGovern, as DroneXL reported the same day in its story on the resident survey.

The letters say Amazon is moving ahead without a site-specific environmental assessment. Amazon’s own airspace team told a Westborough room on September 23 that the FAA was already reviewing a site-level environmental filing for the hub.

Lawmakers Say No Earlier Drone Review Looked at New England

The lawmakers argue that the FAA’s July 28 nationwide finding rests on 23 earlier site reviews in 11 states, none of them in New England. Westborough’s historic town center, its forests and wetlands, and Massachusetts weather and daylight differ from the places those reviews covered, they write.

Both letters take the 23 from Section 3.9 of the FAA’s December 2025 draft, and the final assessment counts more than 20. The letter to Bedford asks the FAA to require the review, and the letter to Jassy asks Amazon to work with the FAA on one.

The second argument is local opposition. The letters cite the Moore letter, a resident survey with more than 1,200 responses and 92% opposed as of early October (a self-selected count, which DroneXL put at 853 responses on September 28), and Massachusetts’ place among the 15 states that sued the FAA in the Second Circuit on September 28.

For the community meeting on September 23, the letters cite DroneXL’s September 29 article and describe the event as one held “to authorize the zoning changes needed” for Amazon’s drones. The town’s Prime Air page says Amazon hosted it “to present the project, answer questions, and hear from residents,” and I was in that room for Amazon’s community meeting at the DoubleTree. No town board presided and nothing was put to a vote, though the letters are right that residents packed it. No zoning amendment for the pad is before the town. Westborough’s building commissioner ruled on August 26 that the drone operation is an accessory use of the fulfillment center, which sent the pad to the Planning Board for site-plan approval, and that ruling is what residents appealed, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Drone Pad Appeal Set for Nov. 2 as Westborough Drafts Bylaw.

The third argument is fire. The FAA’s final assessment lists hazardous materials among the categories it did not analyze in detail, because the operations are “not expected to include any activities that would use hazardous materials.” The letters answer that drone package delivery depends on lithium-ion batteries and cite the October 2025 collision in Tolleson, Arizona, where two MK30s hit a crane and one caught fire on the ground.

Markey, in a statement to MassLive and Boston.com, said Amazon cannot be allowed to “treat our skies like a testing ground.”

The FAA Is Already Reviewing Westborough Against Its National Study

Amazon files a separate environmental review for every new site, a member of its airspace team told the September 23 meeting. The FAA was reviewing Westborough’s. That review checks a hub’s noise data, delivery count and setbacks against the July 28 study, with no site-specific comment period.

The national analysis covers up to 1,150 average daily deliveries from one hub, with a 600-foot (183-meter) setback from noise-sensitive land at that volume and shorter setbacks for smaller hubs, as DroneXL reported when the FAA signed the nationwide finding. A hub past either limit, or one sharing airspace with hubs whose combined deliveries would pass 1,150, needs a more detailed noise analysis. The setback table counts each delivery between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. as ten. Amazon’s FAA approval allows up to 1,000 flights a day per site, and Tareq Wafaie, who presented the plan, called that ceiling aspirational for Westborough, where Amazon would start with about six drones and several hundred deliveries a day. The letter to Bedford asks for a full review even where a hub stays under those thresholds.

Two site-level consultations survive in the national assessment, and neither letter mentions them. Historic properties still get an individual Section 106 consultation in any state without a signed Programmatic Agreement, and Massachusetts is not among the eight states where the FAA has started negotiating one. Wildlife consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stay site by site until a national agreement is signed.

The FAA’s drone environmental review page listed no Massachusetts or Westborough document when DroneXL checked it on October 14. The town’s Prime Air page says Amazon is seeking the site-specific FAA approvals it needs to fly from 64 Otis Street. Amazon did not immediately respond to Boston.com or MassLive, and none of Wednesday’s reports from Boston.com, MassLive, WBUR or the Telegram & Gazette carried an FAA response.

The local dates come first: Town Meeting votes on a drone bylaw on October 19, the Zoning Board of Appeals hears the appeal on November 2, and the Planning Board resumes on November 10. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the hub as in review. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery,” and DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed.

DroneXL’s Take

The most useful answer Bedford could send by October 29, in my view, is the Westborough review the FAA already has open. Amazon’s team described it to a packed room in September, and nobody in Westborough can read it. The lawmakers asked for a new assessment with public comment, and I’d settle for the FAA publishing the noise data, delivery count and setback figures it is checking now, so the town can see whether the hub fits the national study.

The fire argument is narrower than the letters make it. As I read the assessment, its hazardous-materials category is about handling, disposal and contaminated ground, and battery safety on a flying aircraft is a Part 135 question. It is still a fair one. DroneXL’s position is that the MK30 is too heavy to fly consumer orders over homes without a parachute, and Tolleson is the record of what a collision does to one. Drones that carry medicine and lower it on a tether, the way Zipline’s P2 does, make the case for this technology. Five-pound consumer orders across a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle that takes in Westborough’s historic town center make the case against it.

Sources: Letter to Andy Jassy, October 14, 2026, Letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, October 14, 2026, FAA Final PEA and FONSI/ROD, July 28, 2026, Town of Westborough, Prime Air page, Boston.com, MassLive, Telegram & Gazette, WBUR.

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

Ørsted's Turbine Drone Looks Like a DJI Heavy Lifter the US Taxes 100%

Ørsted’s 2025 Flights Dropped Boxes Off, While Hornsea 2 Ran Round Trips

The Trial’s First BVLOS Delivery Ran 2.5 Miles Inside Hornsea 2

Ørsted’s Photo Matches DJI’s FlyCart 100, the Only FlyCart Sized for the Load

DroneXL’s Take

DJI Neo 2 Reads 492 Feet Below Takeoff, Nears Auto-Return at 71%

Pairing the RC 2 at the Canyon Rim Took a Phone Hotspot

The Neo 2 Read 492 Feet Below Takeoff When It Neared Auto-Return

DroneXL’s Take

Red Cat Bids €205M for Its Drone Boat Engine Maker After Walking Away

Red Cat Needs Half of Steyr’s Shares, and B&C Brings 15%

Steyr Cut Its 2026 Forecast Three Weeks After Red Cat Withdrew

Blue Ops Added Volvo Penta So V7 Output Wouldn’t Hinge on One Engine Maker

DroneXL’s Take

China Puts Big Drone Motors and Props on Its Export License List

China’s Parts List Targets 48-Volt Motors and Big Carbon Props

China Measures Whole Drones by Endurance and a 25-Knot Gust Test

Chinese Customs Queries Now Reach Parcels and Passenger Luggage

US-Bound Drone Items Get Case-by-Case Review and No Fast Lane

DroneXL’s Take

Archer Flies Midnight Over San Francisco Bay, Runway to Runway

Archer Flew the Bay Tour in Airplane Mode

Archer Still Owes Its First Piloted Transition

DroneXL’s Take

29 Governors Ask DOJ for a Prison Drone Course Its Rule Already Offers

The Federal Rule Already Offers a Prison Course and Allows New Sites

Mitigation Training Runs Through One FBI School in Huntsville

The National Guard Request Reaches Past the Safer Skies Act

DroneXL’s Take

Wing Demos Walmart Drones in New Jersey Before Naming Philly Stores

Wing’s Walmart Page Still Lists Philadelphia as Coming Soon

West Deptford Said in Late August That Amazon Lacked FAA Approval to Fly There

DroneXL’s Take

Anduril's Ghost Shark Drone Sub Gets 12 Sea Mines and Altius Swarms

Ghost Shark Lays 12 Mines a Sortie and Launches Altius From Its Payload Bays

The Payloads Go to a U.S. Navy Exercise Under AUKUS Pillar II

Anduril Delivered the First Ghost Shark Three Months After Signing

DroneXL’s Take

US Army's Own Enemy Force Now Flies Ukrainian-Designed Stork Drone

The Stork Reached the Enemy Force Five Months After the Contract

Stork Is the Leleka, Built in Kolín at About 300 Drones a Month

Raybird and Magura Boats Make It Three Ukrainian Designs in Army Hands This Fall

DroneXL’s Take

Foldable DJI Matrice 5 Slips Into a Polish Dealer's Dock 4 Post

The Image Shows Matrice 4 Folding Arms on a Matrice 5 Body

Igor Bogdanov Photographed the Same Airframe in July

The Foldable Matrice 5 Has No FCC Path Into the US

DroneXL’s Take

Ukraine's Fourth Law: Jamming Fails Once a Drone Picks Its Own Target

Jamming Has Nothing to Cut Once the Drone Stops Needing a Pilot

Russia Trains Its Drones to Hit Anything That Moves, and Decoys Only Go So Far

Western Firms Took Two Years to React and Savanevskyi Expects the Gap to Grow

DroneXL’s Take

China Reads Ukraine's Drone War in 4 Months and Shops DJI, CSIS Finds

Fiber-Optic FPVs Took China 6 Days to Notice and 410 to Train On

PLA Daily Prices a Strike Drone at Less Than 1% of a Fighter

China’s Own Analysts Say Swarms Produced “All Thunder and Little Rain”

DroneXL’s Take

Ukraine Flies Wounded Soldier Out of Kill Zone Under a Bomber Drone

The 92nd Modified a Gurzuf Defence Bomber So a Hanging Soldier Would Not Swing

A Harness Under a Bomber Carried a Real Casualty Before StarGate Did

DroneXL’s Take

Zipline Flies Teriyaki Madness in Denton, the Chain's Only DFW Shop

The Denton Shop Sits 0.86 Miles From Zipline’s Rayzor Ranch Walmart

Teriyaki Madness Has Eight Houston-Area Shops Where Zipline Already Flies

DroneXL’s Take

Suspected DJI Shell Jovistar Kills Its Own FCC Drone Approval

Jovistar Asked TÜV To Dismiss Grants For The Drone And Its Controller

Jovistar’s FCC Files Share Details With Skyany And Fikaxo

DroneXL’s Take

Skydio: Dominion Adds 100 Docked Drones and Turns Linemen Into Pilots

Dominion Says Docked Drones Save 8 To 12 Hours Per Event

Dominion Pitches Drone Pilot Jobs As A Career Path For Linemen

DroneXL’s Take

Zipline Turns 10: The Bouncy Castle Years Behind 3 Million Deliveries

Zipline Launched Rwanda With 15 Zips And Launchers That Kept Breaking

The 51% Figure Counts Hospital Deaths From Postpartum Hemorrhage

Côte d’Ivoire Is The Model Zipline Is Selling For Its Next Decade

DroneXL’s Take