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.
Kalashnikov rolled out a new drone this week and wrapped a familiar Russian word around it: record. The SKAT-220 is a lighter, faster spin on the company’s SKAT-350M, and Kalashnikov says it tops out around 99 mph (160 km/h), which it calls unmatched in its class. The pitch is all agriculture and power lines. The…
The West Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office is adding four Skydio X10 drones and a four-legged Boston Dynamics
ConocoPhillips just ran a trial that did the same job in 16 minutes from the air, flying a DJI drone-in-a-box beyond visual line of sight at one of the U.K.'s
St. Louis is getting six police drones, and how the city approved them says as much as the program itself. On Wednesday its Board of Police Commissioners signed off on a Drone as First Responder program built on BRINC hardware, racing a funding deadline that had Mayor Cara Spencer calling the process rushed. The drones…
NASA is sending drones to the Moon, and not one of them has a rotor. Firefly Aerospace won a $75 million subcontract to fly four hopping drones to the lunar south pole under a mission called MoonFall, with delivery targeted for no earlier than 2028. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is building the drones. Firefly’s job…
The Wyoming Police Department is going from one drone to three. The Wyoming City Council approved $26,226 for two new aircraft on May 18 in a 5-1 vote, with one council member dissenting on surveillance grounds. The department flew its existing drone 131 times in 2025, and command staff say the additional units will close…
The Metro Nashville Police Department started flying drones over the Madison precinct on Tuesday, May 26, the first day of a Drone as First Responder trial that will run up to 45 flight days. Three Skydio aircraft are involved, on loan from the manufacturer at no cost to the city. Four FAA-certified officers operate the…
U.S. Army Special Forces and a Romanian Air Force crew dropped autonomous cargo gliders over North Macedonia during Trojan Footprint 26, the largest U.S.-led special operations exercise in Europe. The aircraft were DZYNE’s Grasshopper resupply gliders, the same family the Air Force quietly fielded last year. The exercise wrapped on May 21 after ten days…
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