Rafael Suárez

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.

1,178

Articles

144

Beats covered

2025

Writing since

Aug 13

Latest story

Wingtra

AI Drones Give 5-Week Warning on Vibrio Outbreaks

Showing that AI drone, trained on environmental and microbiome data, can predict the appearance of Vibrio vulnificus in Baltic Sea coastal waters

Rafael SuárezMay 31

DJI

Minneapolis Studies DFR Pilot in North Minneapolis

The Minneapolis Police Department presented an exploratory proposal to the city council’s Public Health, Safety and Equity Committee in May 2026 to launch a Drones as First Responders pilot program. The pilot would deploy two drones, marked as police vehicles with red and blue lights, out of Fire Station 14 in the Fourth Precinct on…

Rafael SuárezMay 31

DJI

Palm Desert Eyes Police DJI Drones Amid Privacy Questions

Palm Desert is the latest Coachella Valley community where police drones are moving from “something other cities do” to “something coming here,” and a local NBC Palm Springs commentary framed the arrival with the question every city eventually has to answer: smart safety tool, or one more eye in the sky? That’s the right question,…

Rafael SuárezMay 31

First Responders

Palm Beach Fire Rescue Adds Drones for Hurricane Season

Palm Beach County Fire Rescue announced this week that it has stood up a dedicated drone fleet for disaster response, with hurricane season starting June 1, 2026. The agency is flying the Skydio X10, the American-made autonomous platform that has become the default choice for public safety agencies operating under Florida’s restrictions on Chinese-manufactured drones.…

Rafael SuárezMay 31

Walmart

Walmart Hits 1M Drone Deliveries, 40% This Quarter

Walmart announced on May 29, 2026 that it has crossed the 1 million drone delivery mark across its U.S. operations. The headline number is the kind of thing every press release reaches for, but the line buried in the announcement is the one I want to focus on. 40% of that million happened in a…

Rafael SuárezMay 31

Drone as First Responder

Basalt PD Pitches $50K Drone Stations to Council

Basalt, Colorado is the latest mountain town to look at the Drone-as-First-Responder model, and the price tag they’re putting on the table tells you exactly where this category has settled. Chief Aaron Munch presented to the Basalt Town Council on May 27, 2026, asking them to consider roughly $50,000 per drone and docking station, plus…

Rafael SuárezMay 30

Drone Research

Bat-Inspired Drone Navigates Smoke, Snow, Darkness

A team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute just pulled off something that sounds simple until you actually think about what cameras and lidar can’t do. They built a palm-sized quadrotor that flies by listening, the same way a bat does, and they got it to dodge obstacles in fog, snow, and pitch darkness with a success…

Rafael SuárezMay 30

Skydio

Lee County Deploys Skydio X10 for Sterile Mosquito Releases

Lee County Mosquito Control District made history this week as the first in the United States to release sterile mosquitoes using a drone. They flew a Skydio X10 over targeted neighborhoods in Fort Myers to deliver thousands of lab-reared, sterilized male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The goal is straightforward. Reduce the population of this invasive, disease-carrying…

Rafael SuárezMay 30

Rafael Suárez

The drone industry moves fast. Stay ahead of it.