UTM · FAA
FAA Puts $12 Million Into Drone Test Sites as Part 108 Sits Unsigned
The FAA awarded $12 million to 19 drone research projects at its nine test sites. Congress mandated the money in 2024, and Part 108 is still unsigned.
UTM
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Europe
Unifly Now Owns The Auditor And The Consultancy EU Operators Use
EuroUSC-Benelux is now Unifly Compliance. EU law bars a Qualified Entity from selling into the market it audits, and accreditation records are not public.
Amazon
DRONERESPONDERS Warns Public Safety Drones And Delivery Fleets Are On A Collision Course Over UTM
America now has roughly four registered drones for every registered crewed aircraft, and a public safety official is warning that the country has no agreed system for deciding which one moves out of the way. In a piece published June 24 in Homeland Security Today, Charles Werner, director of the DRONERESPONDERS Public Safety Alliance, laid…
Amazon
Flytrex And Wing Built Drone Air Traffic Control That Skips The Hard Part
Two rival drone delivery companies have spent a year running a working air traffic control system over North Texas suburbs with no humans brokering the traffic, and the headline number is genuinely impressive: zero airspace conflicts across roughly 8,000 overlapping flights. Flytrex and Wing coordinate their aircraft automatically in shared airspace above Little Elm and…
FAA
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.
Anduril
FAA Picks Palantir, Thales, and Airspace Intelligence to Build AI That Predicts Flight Conflicts Two Hours Out
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…
Amazon
Amazon Prime Air Quits Drone Alliance Over Safety
Amazon’s Prime Air division has walked away from the Commercial Drone Alliance, and the reason is blunt: a fundamental disagreement over whether detect-and-avoid technology should be mandatory across the national airspace. The split went public March 12 after Reuters obtained the letter Amazon sent to the trade group, as Unmanned Airspace reported. The Core Disagreement…
Amazon
Why Amazon’s Darlington Drone Flights Are a Calculation, Not Just a Test
Walking through the logistics of Amazon’s latest UK announcement, it’s clear that the selection of Darlington isn’t just about finding a convenient warehouse—it’s about finding the perfect regulatory battleground. While the broader media is buzzing about “packages from the sky,” the real story for those of us in the industry is how Amazon is using…
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