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.
Northrop Grumman has successfully flown the XRQ-73 SHEPARD, a hybrid-electric flying-wing UAS developed for DARPA’s Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration program. The milestone flight took place in April 2026 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, after previous delays, as reported by Aviation Week. This experimental Group 3 UAS represents a significant step in testing…
Waiv Robotics, a London-based maritime tech startup, has unveiled a gyro-stabilized platform that enables fully autonomous takeoff and landing of VTOL drones on moving vessels at sea, as reported by The Robot Report. The system works with existing drones without requiring any hardware or software modifications, addressing one of the biggest barriers in maritime drone…
DJI has officially confirmed the Osmo Pocket 4 Pro is coming, and based on everything that has leaked so far, this is not an incremental update. The Pocket 4P, as DJI is calling it on Chinese social media, is a dual-camera pocket gimbal that borrows directly from the DNA of DJI’s best drone optics and…
The U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division is training its Soldiers to fight in a world where a drone flying overhead and a jammer carried on your back are just as important as the rifle in your hands, as ARMY.MIL reported. During Raider Density, an intensive training event running April through May at Fort Stewart, Georgia,…
DJI announced the Osmo Pocket 4 in April, and by every account it’s a beautiful little machine. Better dynamic range, 4K at 240 frames per second, improved photo quality. The kind of camera that makes your hands itch the moment you see the demo footage. And you can’t buy it. Not in the United States.…
Kansas State University Salina is putting agricultural drone spray operations directly in farmers’ hands. The university’s UAS program is offering a two-day in-person course covering everything from regulatory compliance to live spray missions, with the next session scheduled for May 28-29, as KSAL reported. What the Course Actually Covers The course is called UAS Aerial…
DIRT picks up where that training ends. A drone that has crashed, been shot down, been abandoned, or been found near sensitive infrastructure
Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division’s engineer battalion at Fort Riley, Kansas, spent the last week of April launching one-way strike drones in a series of live experimentation events with a small defense contractor, as DVIDS reported. The exercise has a name: the Diehard One-Way Strike Drone Experimentation Series. The mission concept it’s testing is…
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