Welcome to your weekly US news update. We have three stories for you this week: DARPA hands out half prizes at the Lift Challenge, we have a drone that saves a life during a really cool delivery, and we also have the FCC weighing in on banning more DJI drones and more foreign drones. So, let’s get to that.

DARPA Hands Out Half Prizes At The Lift Challenge

DARPA’s Lift Challenge wrapped up in Dayton, Ohio, this weekend, and the winner wasn’t some futuristic multi-rotor. It was actually a very basic single-rotor helicopter called the Katana. It carried 3.84 times its weight, the best ratio of the week.

The target for the challenge was a 4:1 ratio, but nobody hit that. So, under the contest rules, every prize was cut in half. First place took home $1.25 million, which, you know, is nothing to sneeze at, instead of the $2.5 million.

Every team that pushed harder for the full 4:1 ratio actually failed. Some of them ran out of batteries mid-course, others had structural issues. And the basic takeaway here is that lift is not really the problem for heavy drones anymore. The battery energy really is.

If you get a chance to see some of the footage, it’s actually really cool. Failure is part of this whole process, but it’s cool to see that they get pretty close, although not to the end.

A Drone Beats The Ambulance And Saves A Life In Sweden

The next story is in Sweden, actually. A man in his 60s survived a cardiac arrest after a drone beat the ambulance to the scene. The autonomous aircraft was airborne just 15 seconds — 15 seconds, think about that — after the emergency call came in. It flew to the address and lowered a defibrillator on a winch line.

The bystander that was there grabbed it, followed the instructions from the dispatcher on the phone, and then shocked the man’s heartbeat back to a regular rhythm before the paramedics even arrived on scene.

This is part of a network of six drones based in Sweden that cover 300,000 residents, with the drones beating ambulances by several minutes on average.

Now, here in the US, we covered this a week or two ago. Similar trials are going on in North Carolina and Virginia, but they still need case-by-case FAA approval. Sweden runs this as a routine dispatch procedure. The rules that could get us there in the United States, called Part 108, are sitting at the White House right now for approval. Rumor is that the wait for Part 108 is almost over. We’ll see. If you want to stay updated, make sure that you subscribe. We’ll let you know when that goes live.

The FCC Wants To Ban Foreign Drones You Already Own — Comment Before September 2

Last up, this is now the second time that we’ve covered this story. We need you to go comment before September 2nd of 2026. This is important.

If you haven’t heard, the FCC is considering a rule that could pull existing foreign-made drones off the shelves. This isn’t really about new models — we’ve talked about this at length. This is about drones that are already approved by the FCC, like the Mini 5 Pro and the Air 3S that you may already have.

The proposal targets what the FCC calls military-grade tech. Now, their definition is a bit loose. It includes lidar, thermal cameras, agricultural spraying, docking stations, and drones that are over 55 pounds. The problem is that those are not really just military features. They’re obstacle avoidance, for example, for lidar, and commercial payloads that you see on pretty much every advanced drone these days.

Lidar, for example, helps your drone avoid collisions at night or even during the day, while thermal cameras help search and rescue teams find missing people.

If this passes, you could still fly the drone that you own, but you would not be able to find and buy a new one of the model that you have or replace parts, even though they have already been approved by the FCC. This would prevent you from buying pretty much anything that exists by now from DJI, Autel, or any other foreign-made brand that has the tech we mentioned.

So, public comments are open until September 2nd under PS Docket No. 26-189. Make your voices heard. This is pretty important. We’re going to have a full video explaining more details on this, but I feel like this is all you need to get started.

Search And Rescue Webinar On August 20

We also have an upcoming webinar on August 20th with Kyle Nordfors. Kyle is the instructor that teaches our search and rescue courses. He’s going to be reviewing the challenging situations that SAR teams are being faced with in the field. He’s going to dissect every single one of them and see what can be learned from all these situations.

You also will have a chance to bring your own challenges. Anything related to training, standard operating procedures, case studies, and anything else is basically fair game during the webinar. So, we’ll see you there. There’s information down in the description.

And then the conversation, as always, continues on Postflight, where we’re going to talk about all of these stories uncensored in the premium community. The link is also in the description, and we’ll see you on the live Q&A on Monday. In the meantime, have a great weekend. We’ll see you next week.

This article is based on this video from the Pilot Institute YouTube channel. You can find more of Greg Reverdiau’s articles on his DroneXL author page.