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Westmag Raises $11M To Build American Drone Motors, Betting Scale Beats China On Price
Skydio

Westmag Raises $11M To Build American Drone Motors, Betting Scale Beats China On Price

Westmag emerged from stealth on Tuesday with $11 million in seed funding to manufacture drone motors and robot actuators in South San Francisco, aiming squarely at the one part of the American drone supply chain almost no one has tried to fix. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Founders Fund, Lux Capital, NFDG,…

Pentagon Bets Its Drone Arsenal On Racers, Hobbyists, And Two Ukrainian Firms
Ukraine

Pentagon Bets Its Drone Arsenal On Racers, Hobbyists, And Two Ukrainian Firms

The Pentagon is staking the next generation of American combat airpower on a company that once analyzed grass on golf courses, a firm with roots in aerial light shows, and a startup run by a 23-year-old former drone racing world champion. These are not the defense primes that have built U.S. weapons for decades. They…

Ukraine's Petcube Founder Built AI Drones That Strike Without a Pilot, and Investors Are Lining Up
Counter-Drone

Heligan Report Warns Counter-Drone Defenses Are Starved, But the Government Spending Numbers Tell a More Complicated Story

A consultancy report distributed this week puts a hard number on something drone operators have watched develop for two years: the money flowing into building drones dwarfs the money flowing into stopping them. The report’s author argues that imbalance has left soldiers nearly defenseless against machines that now inflict the majority of battlefield casualties in…

Ukraine’s Winged FPV Drones Just Hit a Russian Van 102 Kilometers Behind the Line
Ukraine

Ukraine’s Winged FPV Drones Just Hit a Russian Van 102 Kilometers Behind the Line

A Ukrainian quadcopter-type FPV drone struck a Russian UAZ “Bukhanka” van at a distance of 102 kilometers (63 miles) from the front, with no carrier aircraft launching it closer to the target. The strike was disclosed on May 26 by Serhii Sternenko, the Ukrainian fundraiser and adviser to Ukraine’s Defense Minister, who has spent the…

Colombia Arms DJI Matrice 300 Drones With Grenades
DJI

Colombia Arms DJI Matrice 300 Drones With Grenades

Colombia just acquired 3,744 grenades built to fall from drones, and the aircraft doing the dropping are off-the-shelf DJI Matrice 300 RTK quadcopters. The grenades are homemade by the state arms maker Indumil, and they’re already in service with the Army’s drone battalion. It’s the clearest sign yet of where Colombia’s long fight against armed…

Congress Wants Sea Drones to Guard Army Boats
US Army

Congress Wants Sea Drones to Guard Army Boats

Congress wants the Army to put robot boats in the water to protect its manned ones. A new defense bill directs the Army to study using unmanned surface vessels as escorts for its watercraft, the boats that haul troops and cargo into a fight. The timing isn’t subtle. Ukraine has spent two years proving that…

Amazon Eyes a 176-Square-Mile Drone Zone in N.Y.
Amazon

Amazon Eyes a 176-Square-Mile Drone Zone in N.Y.

Amazon wants to turn 176 square miles of upstate New York into a drone delivery zone. The company is asking the town of Clay, near Syracuse, for permission to fly Prime Air deliveries out of an existing warehouse. If it clears the FAA and the local planning board, anyone within 7.5 miles could get a…

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