Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have four stories for you this week. The FCC finds eight alleged DJI front companies — that’s an interesting story. A police department drone feed was also exposed live on the internet for six months. BRINC raises $125 million. And then lastly, Duke Health has drones that now fly defibrillators to real calls in the wild. So, let’s get to it.
FCC Proposes $25,000 Fines Against Eight Alleged DJI Front Companies
First up this week, the FCC has proposed $25,000 fines against eight different companies that it suspects of selling rebranded DJI hardware in the United States. These brands include SkyRover and Xtra Technology. Here’s the important nuance: those fines are not actually for the hardware itself, at least not yet. They’re straight-up for just ignoring the FCC’s official letters of inquiry that were sent back in May, asking whether the companies are marketing equipment that is tied to DJI — because DJI is on the Covered List.
None of them have responded. So, all eight of them have until July 20 to finally answer. And if they don’t, then the FCC has already given itself the authority to revoke existing equipment authorizations entirely, which would mean that import and marketing bans would apply. We’re going to be watching this one closely because we know some of you might be flying some of these brands.
SFPD Drone Feeds Exposed On The Open Internet For Six Months
Next up, the San Francisco Police Department left live video from five of its Skydio surveillance drones fully exposed to the open internet for about six months. Two outside security researchers stumbled upon the feed last month, reported it, and then it came down within days. But by then, they had already archived over 48 hours of real operations. We’re talking about color and thermal videos here, live GPS tracking, and even the names and emails of six of the SFPD drone pilots.
The cause here was a Skydio sharing link that was created with no password and a one-year expiration. Later, this was picked up by a public archive that usually just scrubs web addresses. The footage showed full missions from takeoff to landing, including officers filming through apartment windows and a drone tailing two guys who turned out to be just basically going to play basketball. This appears to be a direct contradiction with SFPD’s own policy, which requires minimizing incidental recording.
When the entire UAS industry seems to be hyper-focused on our foreign adversaries, it looks like a simple misconfigured link right here is exposing all of the data that those foreign adversaries are allegedly trying to collect themselves. It’s going to be very interesting to see what comes out of this one next, but yeah, not good.
BRINC Raises $125 Million In Motorola-Led Round
Speaking of drones responding to 911 calls, BRINC has raised $125 million in a round that was led by Motorola Solutions, pushing its total funding past a quarter billion dollars. The goal here is a drone as a first responder on the roof of every single one of the roughly 80,000 police and fire stations that are in the country.
Motorola invested in BRINC back in 2025, and that relationship lets an officer basically launch a BRINC drone from a button that is on the Motorola radio, or one that is being dispatched automatically the second that the 911 call comes in. BRINC says revenue tripled last year and that contract signings are up nearly four times.
Duke Health Drones Now Fly Defibrillators To Real 911 Calls
On a similar topic, Duke Health researchers are now flying drones with defibrillators to real 911 calls in Clemmons, North Carolina. When a 911 dispatcher takes a cardiac arrest call, the drone launches alongside the ambulance, cruises at about 200 feet, drops to 100 feet over the scene, and then winches down an AED — all while the dispatcher coaches the bystander on the phone to actually use the AED.
The math here is actually pretty brutal. An AED that is used within the first two to three minutes of collapse is going to push survival rates towards 70%, but ambulances typically take 8 to 10 minutes to arrive. So, that gap is actually the perfect opportunity for a drone.
The program actually delivered its first real-world AED back in November of 2025 — I think we actually talked about this in a news update — and it’s now running as standard procedure on live calls. If the results hold up here, this could become really normal across the country, and I hope it does. This is a great, great, great way to use drone delivery, quite frankly.
The conversation is going to continue on post flight, where we’re going to talk about the stories uncensored in the premium community. Your link is in the description. We’ll see you in the live Q&A on Monday. Actually, I’m not going to be there — we’ll be in Oshkosh. Vic will be in the live Q&A, and then I think Ben is going to be doing a news update next week. So, we’ll see you when we come back. You have a great weekend and again, don’t be that guy.
This article is based on the weekly UAS news update from the Pilot Institute YouTube channel. You can find more of Greg’s articles on his DroneXL author page.
