News, deep dives, and analysis — every VTOL story, newest first.
Papa Johns is the second major pizza chain to go airborne this year. The brand teamed up with Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery subsidiary, to launch a pilot program in Indian Trail, North Carolina on May 11, as PMQ Pizza reported. Customers near Sun Valley Commons can now order three Oven Toasted Sandwiches through the Wing…
Another defense tech company has made the call on California. Knightwerx, a tactical drone developer that built its name making compact military UAS, has moved its headquarters from Camarillo to Scottsdale, and it’s already hiring, as Hoodline reported. The move drops the company squarely into the Phoenix metro’s expanding defense manufacturing corridor just as it…
Waiv Robotics, a London-based maritime tech startup, has unveiled a gyro-stabilized platform that enables fully autonomous takeoff and landing of VTOL drones on moving vessels at sea, as reported by The Robot Report. The system works with existing drones without requiring any hardware or software modifications, addressing one of the biggest barriers in maritime drone…
The U.S. Navy has selected Insitu to continue providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services to the Navy, Marine Corps, and other federal customers, as Sea Power Magazine reported. The award covers both the ScanEagle and Integrator platforms under a Contractor-Owned, Contractor-Operated model, which puts Insitu’s own aircraft and operators on the mission rather than handing…
A Chinese research team has flown what it calls the world’s first fixed-wing drone built largely from bamboo. The tilt-rotor UAV took off from a field in Tianjin, climbed, transitioned to forward flight, and came back down on its own rotors, as reported by China Daily. More than a quarter of its airframe is made…
Joby Aviation completed New York City’s first point-to-point electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi demonstration flights this past weekend, the company announced this morning. The aircraft, tail number N545JX, departed John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and landed across Manhattan’s existing heliport network. Joby is calling the campaign ‘week-long’ in its release headlin
Terrahaptix Inc., the Nigerian defense-tech startup also known as Terra Industries, will open a 34,000-square-foot drone factory in Accra, Ghana, by the end of June 2026. At full capacity, the plant targets 50,000 units annually by 2028, which would make it the largest drone manufacturing site on the African continent, the company confirmed in a…
A Tokyo defense startup just put a $450 fixed-wing drone on the Japanese market, and the airframe is made of wood. JISDA, short for Japan Integrated Security Design Agency, announced the ACM-01 Shiraha on April 14 in Tokyo. It’s a 6.2-foot wingspan trainer built to be flown hard, crashed, and replaced without anyone wincing at…
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