News, deep dives, and analysis — every California story, newest first.
Zipline plans to expand its autonomous drone delivery service to Austin later this year, making it the California company’s third Texas market in under 12 months. Dallas-Fort Worth launched in August 2025. Houston followed in April 2026. Austin is next, and the pace of this rollout tells you more than any single city announcement. Zipline…
The Chino Police Department will put several drones over residential neighborhoods this Fourth of July and pair them with 65 officers dedicated to illegal fireworks enforcement, a sharp expansion of a program the city ran with a single aircraft a year ago. Each drone flies with a two-person crew, a pilot and an observer, with…
A drone pilot in Northern California spotted a shark circling a surfer on June 10, then used the aircraft itself to push the man out of the water before anything happened. Nick Bertocchini was flying over Seascape Beach in Aptos when the shark moved in behind a surfer named Rex and began to circle. Instead…
DOJ charges five men over a drone-and-sniper plot at the White House UFC Freedom 250 event. Court filings show real guns but barely-built drones.
A shoplifting run at a Buena Park Kohl’s ended with two people in custody on June 9, and the deciding factor never touched the ground. When one suspect bolted on foot and folded himself into a stranger’s backyard shed, he figured the dark and the fences would hide him. A police drone overhead, reading his…
The New York Times Magazine published a feature on June 5 about the technology rewiring American agriculture, and the one machine actually flying over these fields barely made the cut. Robotic milkers, laser weeders, and driverless tractors each got a farmer, a photo essay, and a few hundred words. Spray drones got a single clause:…
U.S. Africa Command ran its CURTAIN CALL drone-swarm defense through a second field test at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California from April 27 to May 1, 2026, and this round added the threat the program was built to stop: a coordinated attack by several drones at once, not a single aircraft. What the command…
Zipline plans 12 new Nigeria drone hubs by 2028 to reach 100 million people, but its paused Kaduna operation shows the political risk underneath.
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