Drone policy, incidents, and industry news across the United States — from statehouses to the national airspace.
NOAA announced a new uncrewed surface vehicle for its research fleet, and the pitch is simple. It’s solar-powered, self-propelled, small enough to trailer behind a truck, and built to loiter at sea for months. Engineers at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle think it can do almost everything a weather buoy does, plus a…
The Federal Aviation Administration is quietly developing an AI-powered air traffic management tool that would let controllers deconflict flight paths up to two hours before a collision risk emerges, according to reporting from The Air Current published April 17, 2026. The program is called Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, or SMART. Three companies are…
DJI Lito X1 launches on April 23. That’s in four days. Somebody apparently forgot to tell Speedy Drone in Toronto, because their product page for the Lito X1 has been live for a while now, complete with a full spec sheet, a comparison chart, an FAQ section, and sample photos allegedly shot on the drone…
The Federal Aviation Administration announced a new drone enforcement program on April 16, 2026, that offers first-time individual violators reduced civil penalties or shorter certificate suspensions in exchange for admitting liability and surrendering their right to appeal. The Drone Expedited and Targeted Enforcement Response program, known as DETER, was published in a press release the…
Kraken Robotics just pulled off something navies have been trying to make practical for years. The Canadian firm integrated its KATFISH towed sonar onto Sefine’s RD-22 unmanned surface vessel off the coast of Istanbul, then launched and recovered the system from the moving USV with no humans in the loop, as Unmanned Systems Technology reported.…
Barclays published research on Wednesday arguing that autonomous food delivery, driven by sidewalk robots and drones, could cut per-order costs to roughly $1 in the long term. The British bank sees about $16 billion in unlocked annual profit across the global food delivery industry if penetration reaches projected levels, as Yahoo! reported. For the drone…
YouTube creator Cam Mackey argues the DJI Pocket 4 is blocked from US sale because of political money and Trump family drone investments, not security.
Skydio just landed the kind of contract that separates a public safety drone company from a defense contractor. U.S. Air Forces Central, the USAFCENT component of U.S. Central Command, awarded the San Mateo, California company an order exceeding $9 million for Skydio Dock and X10 systems to secure American airbases across the Middle East. Skydio…
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