
FAA Awards SMART Air Traffic Contract to Air Space Intelligence, Beating Palantir and Thales
The FAA awarded Air Space Intelligence an $875M, 12-year contract for SMART air traffic AI, beating Palantir and Thales. What it means for BVLOS drones.
Sensors, batteries, LiDAR, obstacle avoidance, and the engineering that moves the industry forward.

The FAA awarded Air Space Intelligence an $875M, 12-year contract for SMART air traffic AI, beating Palantir and Thales. What it means for BVLOS drones.

Greece will run more than 100 drone surveillance bases and three mobile command centers carrying thermal cameras across the country during the 2026 wildfire season, its largest drone deployment yet for fire detection. Government officials laid out the plan as part of a wider civil-protection strategy presented at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Kyriakos…

XTI Aerospace’s Drone Nerds division added the RigiTech Eiger, a long-range delivery drone rated for 62 miles (100 km) per mission, to its enterprise portfolio. The Swiss-built aircraft takes off vertically, flies like a fixed-wing plane, and needs no runway. For a company that shelved a six-passenger air taxi in February to go all-in on…

Thales and Renault Group rolled out a joint hybrid 4×4 tactical vehicle named 4 TROOP at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris-Nord Villepinte on June 15, designed to serve as a mobile command and control node for unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles operating around it. The platform is a civilian Renault chassis carrying a Thales…

Ag spray drones have moved from novelty to revenue stream in the U.S. Corn Belt, and the operators flying them have strong opinions about which platforms hold up over a full season. Prairie Farmer recently spoke with three Illinois custom operators about the aircraft and trailers they actually run. Their answers line up around two…

Picture a wheat field in Anhui Province at midnight, lit up like a stadium. The light isn’t coming from towers on the ground. It’s hanging in the air, bolted to a drone that hasn’t landed in hours and doesn’t plan to. Chinese state media posted footage in June of combines harvesting wheat after dark while…

Pokémon Go players' 30 billion scans trained navigation tech now bound for military drones, via Niantic Spatial's defense partnership with Vantor.

EHang shattered the Guinness World Record for drone light shows on February 3, 2026, flying 22,580 drones simultaneously from a single computer over Hefei’s Luogang Park. Of the swarm loaded for launch, only about 25 drones failed to lift off. The performance aired during China Media Group’s Spring Festival Gala on February 16, beaming the…
One email with the drone news that matters — DJI, FAA, public safety, and everything in between, straight from the newsroom. No spam, no fluff.