Rafael Suárez is a drone journalist and content creator with more than 20 years behind the lens. He began in film photography in 1998, moved to digital in 2005, and has been flying and filming with drones since 2016. As a commercial videographer he has produced work for premium brands including BMW, Porsche, and MINI, and his documentary work champions a #flysafe mentality across the industry. Based in Quito, Ecuador, he covers drone news, hardware, and the policy and business shaping the industry for DroneXL, and shares reviews and cinematic flight on his YouTube channel. A dad and a lifelong aviation nerd, he's happiest when something is in the air.
The St Paul Police Department’s new dock-based Drone as First Responder program flew 472 missions in its first four weeks, already passing the 436 patrol-drone flights the department logged in all of 2025. The three rooftop Skydio X10 drones went live on May 30 and now reach calls in under 90 seconds, a number St…
The Irvine Police Department’s Drone as First Responder program ended a Walmart shoplifting case the same way it ends most calls these days, with the suspect on the ground and an aircraft watching from above. Officers arrested Guillermo Hazael Martinez Diaz, 26, on June 24 after a DFR drone tracked him from the store to…
A federal grand jury in Georgia indicted twelve people for running drones over the walls of ten federal prisons in eight states, dropping drugs, cell phones, and saw blades at least 38 times. Prosecutors call it the largest federal case to date built around coordinated drone smuggling into prisons. The 17-count indictment, unsealed June 24…
XTI Aerospace’s Drone Nerds division added the RigiTech Eiger, a long-range delivery drone rated for 62 miles (100 km) per mission, to its enterprise portfolio. The Swiss-built aircraft takes off vertically, flies like a fixed-wing plane, and needs no runway. For a company that shelved a six-passenger air taxi in February to go all-in on…
The DJI Mavic 4 Pro Creator Combo is on sale on Amazon right now for $3,400. That’s down from its standard $3,999 retail price, a 15 percent discount that puts $600 back in your pocket. The sale covers the full Creator Combo with the RC Pro 2 controller, not the base kit. If you have…
Amazon Prime Day 2026 runs through June 26, and for once the drone deals are actually worth your time. I’ve flown most of DJI’s current lineup personally, and several of these discounts are the lowest prices I’ve seen on this hardware. Here’s my read on each one, organized by who should actually buy what. DJI…
Walmart is moving drone delivery into seven new markets, and Maricopa, Arizona is confirmed on the list. The company announced the expansion in early June 2026, naming Wing as its delivery partner for the greater Phoenix area push. No launch date exists yet. The whole project sits in the pre-application phase right now, working through…
On June 8, 2026, an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz, and a Navy sea drone picked up the two surviving crew members within two hours. It was described afterward as an operational first. It was not an accident. “You can rehearse medevac scenarios during exercises,” a U.S. military official…
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