Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Founder of DroneXL.co, where he covers all drone-related news, DJI rumors and writes drone reviews, and of EVXL.co, for all electric vehicle news. Haye can be reached at haye @ dronexl.co or @hayekesteloo. Also on LinkedIn, Muck Rack, Instagram and YouTube.
I predicted the FCC would need to walk back parts of its sweeping foreign drone ban. Sixteen days after adding all foreign-made drones to the Covered List, the Pentagon has carved out exemptions for Blue UAS platforms and domestically assembled drones. But here’s what the headlines aren’t telling you: these exemptions expire on January 1,…
I’ve been warning about the consequences of a DJI ban for over a year. Now we have the data to prove it. Pilot Institute surveyed 8,056 drone operators across the United States, and the findings confirm our worst fears: the ban that took effect on December 22, 2025 will devastate the American drone industry while…
I’ve been watching content creators slowly wake up to the reality of the FCC’s December 23 drone ban, and adventure filmmaker Jeven Dovey just delivered one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen for the YouTube community. His message is straightforward but sobering: this ruling goes far beyond DJI, and the content creator community needs to…
The drone skills you learned for your Part 107 business are now battlefield capabilities. That’s the uncomfortable reality buried in a massive New York Times investigation published this week, and it should concern every commercial operator in America. C.J. Chivers spent 18 months reporting from Ukrainian frontlines, test ranges, and drone workshops. What he documented…
We have been tracking the evolution of Russia’s Shahed drones since at least the invasion of Ukraine, and the latest development is the most significant tactical shift yet. Just five weeks after they strapped an R-60 air-to-air missile to a Shahed, they’ve done it again, this time with a MANPADS. This isn’t experimentation anymore. This…
It was clear that Trump’s tariffs were never going to stop DJI. Now one of the most influential voices in US-China tech competition is making the same argument in the Financial Times. Chris Miller, author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist book “Chip War” that shaped Washington’s semiconductor policy, published an opinion piece this weekend analyzing why…
I’ve been tracking Florida’s disastrous DJI drone ban for over a year, and the bill is finally coming due. When we first reported on St. Cloud’s $890,000 Drone as a First Responder (DFR) program last month, the story was about the exorbitant cost of compliance. Now, new data shows the program is an operational success,…
Two weeks ago, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr signed the order that effectively killed DJI’s future in America. On Thursday, he’ll take the stage at CES 2026, the very show where DJI spent a decade building its brand, for a “fireside chat” that’s been carefully designed to avoid the questions drone pilots actually need answered, reports…
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