News, deep dives, and analysis — every Washington story, newest first.
Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have four stories for you this week. Washington state jacks up the commercial drone fees, an industry survey shows DJI still dominates, the FCC tells certification labs to tighten their screening, and SiFly raises $20 million. So let's get to it.
Washington will charge commercial drone operators $150 per aircraft a year from January 2027, up from $15, in the bill that repealed its luxury jet tax.
An FBI-led counter-drone unit built for the FIFA World Cup detected 41 unauthorized drones over the Spokane wildfires in four days and used electronic countermeasures to force them down. No pilots were arrested; the cases went to the FAA with fines of up to $100,000 each.
BRINC added live wildfire detections and smoke coverage to its LiveOps software at no additional cost, shipping the feature days after an engineer prototyped it. The layers run on NOAA satellite data that the agency itself labels strategic guidance rather than tactical fire intelligence.
The Washington National Guard's 10th Civil Support Team trained for two weeks on Anduril's WISP sensor suite, a fused stack built to tell a drone from a bird before a counter-drone response begins — with World Cup security driving the timeline.
Civilian drones entered restricted airspace over the Spokane County wildfires at least 26 times in three days, repeatedly grounding helicopters and air tankers while three uncontained fires burned homes below. Two operators have been cited, and the cases have been referred to the FAA.
Spokane police say four Skydio X10 drones flew about 400 missions in three weeks, including a pursuit where the aircraft tracked suspects overhead after patrol cars backed off.
The Seattle Fire Department wants up to three drones for structure fires, water rescues, hazmat calls and mass-casualty scenes, but the rescue program still has to pass through the city's surveillance-technology review process.
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