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.
NPR caught up with the Fulton County Jail drone story this week, three weeks after we covered the original Flock Safety deployment in detail. The national coverage matters because it surfaces two details that weren’t in the March announcement: Sheriff Patrick Labat’s plan to expand from one rooftop drone to 19 drones positioned across Fulton…
Oakland is about to become the second U.S. city to run a DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise on AI-powered garbage patrol. The city council is moving forward with a six-month, $150,000 pilot contract with San Francisco startup Aerbits, which will fly 72 missions over roughly 1,440 miles of Oakland streets, as reported by NBC Bay Area.…
The DJI Mini 4K just dropped to $209 on Amazon thanks to a clippable on-page coupon. That’s 30% off the regular $299 price tag and the lowest this drone has ever been. If you’ve been thinking about getting into drones but didn’t want to risk $800 on something you might park in a tree, this…
Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division launched a Textron Systems Aerosonde unmanned aircraft system during a Joint Readiness Training Center rotation at Fort Polk, Louisiana on April 9, 2026, as DVIDS reported. The deployment puts one of the Army’s leading tactical drone candidates into a realistic combat training environment alongside the service’s most storied light…
A Ukrainian company called PAWELL has figured out how to take battery cells designed for electric vehicles and stuff them into fixed-wing drones. The result: operational range jumped from roughly 19 miles to 122 miles on a single charge, as Euro Maidan Press reports. One of those upgraded drones has already destroyed a Russian Buk-M1…
The DJI Lito 1 and DJI Lito X1 are real, they’re coming on April 23, and we now have our clearest look yet at what DJI has been cooking behind closed doors. Leaked images of both drones and their retail packaging have surfaced, and the details confirm a brand-new product family that slots between the…
A traffic safety drone helped Kingston Police find and rescue a person in distress on Sunday, April 12, 2026. Officers had limited information to work with, but the drone located the individual’s vehicle within an hour of deployment, leading to a swift rescue and hospital transport, as The Whig reported. The Kingston Police Service received…
Oakland County’s Board of Commissioners voted 13-4 on April 8 to approve a nine-month pilot program that puts Flock Safety drones in the hands of the county Sheriff’s Office, as M Live reports. The decision came over loud protests from residents who packed the meeting in Pontiac and warned of mass surveillance. Seven Flock drones…
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