Rafael Suárez is a drone pilot and commercial videographer with more than 20 years behind the lens, flying and filming with drones since 2016. He wrote for DroneXL on drone news, hardware, and developments shaping the industry. Rafa is based in Quito, Ecuador.
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…
A small startup in Rolla, Missouri is building what may be the nation’s first rural health care drone corridor, and the clock it’s racing isn’t measured in minutes. It’s measured in whether an organ donor’s tissue reaches a matching recipient in time to save a life, as FOX News reported. The Problem No One Talks…
European defense ministries now have a single platform to browse, compare, and deploy drones from across the continent, as reported by Agence Europe. Amsterdam-based Intelic launched BASE on May 4, describing it as the first procurement hub of its kind in Europe and the answer to a fragmentation problem that’s been slowing European rearmament since…
The U.S. Navy has selected Insitu to continue providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services to the Navy, Marine Corps, and other federal customers, as Sea Power Magazine reported. The award covers both the ScanEagle and Integrator platforms under a Contractor-Owned, Contractor-Operated model, which puts Insitu’s own aircraft and operators on the mission rather than handing…
Leander, Texas, is putting two Skydio drones on actual 911 calls for two weeks to decide whether the city needs a permanent Drone as First Responder program, as CBS Austin reported. The trial runs May 4-15 and deploys the aircraft to real incidents, not simulations. A Fast-Growing City With a Response Problem Leander isn’t a…
The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a Phase II contract to advance its Improved Threat Detection System, as reported on a press release. The award, following a competitive Phase I that included Lockheed Martin, puts Northrop’s ATHENA sensor on track to replace the aging warning systems currently protecting Army aviation. Why the Army Needs…
Purdue University just put its full weight behind a future where one drone pilot coordinates dozens of aircraft at once. The Indiana research powerhouse is expanding a cluster of AI and autonomy programs that could fundamentally reshape how drones operate at scale. Building the Brain for Autonomous Flight The centerpiece of Purdue’s effort is AIDA3,…
The point was not to have drone operators train drone operators. It was to force combined arms units to work with aerial intelligence in real time
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