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Munson Medical Drones Jump From 1 Mile to 30 After DroneUp Quit

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:18:00 GMT

Munson Healthcare starts the second phase of its medical drone delivery trial on Tuesday, October 6, flying between Munson Medical Center in Traverse City and the Crystal Lake Health Center in Frankfort, Michigan, through October 30. Traverse Connect, which runs the state-funded project, announced the dates in a release emailed Monday morning. The flights will simulate deliveries of supplies, laboratory samples and medications between the two Munson facilities.

The first phase, in May 2025, never flew more than about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) from the hospital. Frankfort sits about 30 miles (49 kilometers) west of it by air, on Lake Michigan. Warren Call, Traverse Connect’s president and CEO, says in the release that this phase runs “multiple drones and sensor technology, with approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.” The release does not say which approval, or name the aircraft.

Phase two was supposed to fly in May. As DroneXL reported on May 22, the plan then was a 2026 move into beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations with DroneUp as the licensed operator. By June 3, DroneUp had left the project.

DroneUp Walked Away in Spring, and Blueflite Took Over the FAA Paperwork

DroneUp, the Virginia operator that ran phase one’s flights, winch deliveries and ground infrastructure, exited the Munson project before the May 2026 flights, Michigan public radio station WCMU reported on June 3. Blueflite, the aircraft maker, assumed the operator role and the FAA approvals DroneUp was to secure.

Greg James, DroneUp’s vice president of business development, told WCMU the company was refocusing on “scalable platform, autonomy, and airspace-management capabilities” and that the exit reflected “current market timing and delivery economics at scale.” Tracy Cleveland, Munson’s vice president of supply chain, said DroneUp was leaving the space as a business and that Munson would work with blueflite for the immediate future.

Blueflite’s chief technology officer James McClearen told the station the company now handles the regulatory requirements that DroneUp was going to do. That is a different job from building the aircraft. Blueflite’s Cobalt 461 went onto the FAA’s Section 44807 approved list on June 1, and it holds a Department of War conditional approval exempting it from the FCC Covered List, as DroneXL reported in August when the same aircraft began flying auto parts for a Ford dealer group in metro Detroit. In June, WCMU reported testing would restart near the end of summer. It is starting on October 6.

Phase One Flew 67 Times Inside One Mile and Lost Six Flights to Hardware

The first phase ran from May 9 to 20, 2025, within one mile (1.6 kilometers) of Munson Medical Center and completed 61 of 67 flights, a 91% success rate. Three failures were winch problems. One was a GPS fault, two were lost cellular links that triggered automatic return to launch.

Those figures come from the project report Traverse Connect published in December 2025. Fifty-five of the 67 flights ran the shortest route, roughly 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) to the Munson Dialysis Center on West Royal Drive. The longest, to Copper Ridge Surgery Center in Garfield Township, was about 2,200 meters (1.4 miles). Every flight was under Part 107 with the pilot watching the aircraft and three to four visual observers covering ground and air risk, and the report’s stated purpose for that constraint was to gather data for later BVLOS operations under Part 135.

The flights started with water bottles and temperature loggers standing in for specimens, then carried real patient laboratory samples once the handling checked out. Munson staff drive more than 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers) a year moving samples and supplies between the system’s facilities, which span 29 counties, and that mileage is the number the project exists to cut.

The state has put about $1.64 million into the project through the Advanced Aerial Mobility Activation Fund, an initial $689,500 and a further $950,000 announced in May 2025. The fund is run by the Michigan Department of Transportation, the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Newlab provided additional support, per the release. Central Michigan University’s Rural Health Excellence Institute is the evaluation partner.

Cleveland said in Monday’s release that expanding to “multiple drones to multiple Munson Healthcare sites” is another step toward operationalizing the service for the region. Call said the data would “inform best practices for statewide and national adoption.”

DroneXL’s Take

A twentyfold jump in range is the story here, and the operator swap is why it took five extra months. DroneUp was the party with the FAA relationship, the winch system and the ground stations in phase one. Its exit left a Michigan aircraft maker to become an air carrier on top of being a manufacturer, and the release’s silence on which FAA approval covers a 30-mile hospital run is the loose end I want closed before anyone calls this phase a success. A Section 44807 listing says the FAA has looked at the Cobalt 461, and nothing more. It says nothing about who is allowed to fly it beyond the pilot’s eyes over Benzie County.

Phase one’s six failures were three winch faults, a GPS receiver and two dropped cell links across routes under a mile and a half. Over 30 miles of lake-effect weather in late October, the cell-link failure mode is the one to watch, because an automatic return to launch from 25 miles out is a long flight home with somebody’s lab sample on board. If the project publishes a phase two report as candid as the December one, with the FAA authorization named and the abort causes listed, Munson will have done more for rural medical drone delivery in the US than any press release could.

Sources: Traverse Connect and Munson Healthcare media release, October 5, 2026 (emailed to DroneXL), 9&10 News, WCMU, June 3, 2026, Traverse City Medical Drone Delivery Pilot Project Report, December 2025.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FAA Warns NFL Drone Pilots After 700 World Cup Seizures Didn't Deter

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:05:49 GMT

The Federal Aviation Administration posted a reminder over the weekend that every NFL game is a strict No Drone Zone, with operators who enter the restricted airspace facing fines of up to $100,000, confiscation of the aircraft and federal criminal charges. The post went up on the agency’s Facebook page on Saturday, ahead of Sunday’s games and pointed pilots to B4UFLY to check restrictions before flying.

The restriction is the standing stadium Temporary Flight Restriction: no drones within 3 nautical miles (3.5 miles, 5.6 kilometers) of the venue and up to 3,000 feet (914 meters) above the ground, from one hour before kickoff until one hour after the game ends.

None of this is new. The FAA ran the same No Drone Zone message from March through July around the FIFA World Cup, published the venue list and the penalty figures in May, and the FBI still seized more than 700 drones before the final.

World Cup Seizures Passed 700 Despite Four Months Of Warnings

The FBI and DHS seized more than 700 drones inside World Cup restricted airspace across all 11 U.S. host cities between June 11 and the July 19 final, the Transportation Department said July 22. The FAA issued close to 250 Temporary Flight Restrictions for the tournament.

The count had already passed 600 by July 4, with Miami at 99 seizures, Atlanta at 77 and Dallas at 63. Detections ran higher still: 1,139 drones logged at tournament sites by June 28, according to the White House task force. Federal prosecutors in Texas charged at least three men, including a 26-year-old who flew a DJI Mavic 3 for two minutes to film a church inside the Houston ring on opening day, unregistered and without a remote pilot certificate. Greg Reverdiau of Pilot Institute, a DroneXL partner, said in his July 3 update that the early feedback was that plenty of the violators held Part 107 certificates.

The DOT release also put a number on what comes next: $500 million in counter-drone grant funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics named as the next application. The detection gear and the state and local mitigation powers that produced 700 seizures did not leave town with the tournament.

The Stadium TFR Covers Regular And Postseason Games, Not Preseason

The FAA’s stadium restriction covers every regular and postseason NFL game, Major League Baseball, NCAA Division I football and major motorsport races at venues seating 30,000 or more. Preseason games fall outside it. The FAA issues it through a standing NOTAM, not the league.

That answers the question commenters put under the FAA’s weekend post about whose rule this is. The restriction sits in B4UFLY and in the FAA’s Sporting Event Automated Monitoring System, and it activates on the schedule, whether or not a drone’s own app flags it.

Enforcement at NFL games already has a record. A drone paused the Ravens-Steelers playoff game on January 11, 2025, the third drone incident at M&T Bank Stadium in two years, and the NFL told Congress it counted 2,845 stadium incursions in 2023, up from 2,537 the year before.

DroneXL’s Take

Don’t be that guy. The World Cup settled the question of whether a Facebook graphic deters anyone: four months of No Drone Zone posts, a published venue list, and 700 confiscated drones anyway. My read is that the FAA’s NFL warning is aimed less at the pilots who will read it than at the record it builds, because every one of those 700 seizures is now an exhibit for the next counter-drone authority bill, exactly as the Baltimore playoff drone was for the last one. Stadium TFRs exist because people really do fly over packed seating bowls, and the Ravens game proved it three times. The 18-week NFL season hands enforcement teams, now funded for the Olympics, a weekly chance to add to the pile. Check tfr.faa.gov before you spin a prop within 3 miles of a stadium on a Sunday, because the FBI spent the summer proving it will find you.

Sources: Federal Aviation Administration on Facebook, U.S. Department of Transportation, FAA Stadiums and Sporting Events.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Wing Picks Denver for Walmart Drones. Two Suburbs Already Froze Hubs

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:42:30 GMT

Wing and Walmart will bring drone delivery to the Denver and Seattle metros in 2027, the companies said Monday, taking the partnership to 19 U.S. metros. Five are flying today: Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando. The other 14 are announced and waiting, and Wing says more than three million customers already have access.

Wing’s two Hummingbird aircraft cruise at up to 60 mph (97 km/h), carry up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms) and lower the box to the yard on a tether. The target is more than 270 Walmart stores and 40 million customers by 2027, and Wing’s chief business officer Heather Rivera said the new metros show “how quickly people across the country are adopting drone delivery.”

Neither Denver nor Seattle was on the list Wing and Walmart gave in January or the one they gave in June. Both metros turned up in September in city land-use filings, and two Denver suburbs had already voted to freeze drone-hub applications before Wing named the city.

Wing’s “Nearly 20” Metros Are 19, and Only Five Have Aircraft in the Air

Wing’s count of nearly 20 metros breaks down as five operating, 12 announced without a launch date, and the two named Monday. The 12 came in three batches: Tampa in June 2025, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami on January 11, 2026, then seven more on June 8.

The June seven were Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and Salt Lake City, as DroneXL reported. Orlando is the only market to go from announced to flying since then, in July. The FAA’s public list of drone-delivery environmental reviews, last updated September 24, carries Wing authorizations for Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte, Central Florida, Houston and Atlanta, plus the 2021 Christiansburg, Virginia site, and nothing for any of the 14 announced metros. A national programmatic environmental assessment the FAA signed on July 28 may let Wing skip metro-by-metro filings; Wing has not said whether it will use it.

Wing's October 5, 2026 map of its Walmart drone delivery network shows Denver and Seattle as new metros, five metros flying today (Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando), and twelve metros announced but not yet live. Photo credit: Wing

Denver Suburbs Wrote the Rules Before Wing Said the Word Denver

Castle Rock passed an emergency ordinance on July 20 freezing drone-hub applications for six months, and Parker followed on July 21 with a nine-month pause. Both sit south of Denver. North of the city, Northglenn’s Planning Commission voted September 15 to recommend Colorado’s first drone-delivery ordinance.

Walmart had approached Northglenn about flying Wing drones from its Neighborhood Market at 10755 N. Washington St. The draft keeps launch pads 200 feet (61 meters) from homes and schools, caps ground noise at 65 decibels at the property line and limits hours to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. City Council takes a first reading October 12 and a final vote October 26, as DroneXL reported September 28. Thornton is drafting its own hub ordinance and Longmont is holding two Walmart pre-applications with no hearing scheduled.

Every one of those rules governs the parking lot, and Northglenn’s own staff memo says so: a nest in the next town can serve every address in the city, because the FAA owns the airspace. Wing’s nests have a range of about six miles (9.7 km).

Seattle Starts With One Tacoma Walmart and a Rival Already in FAA Review

Wing’s first sign in Washington was a City of Tacoma building permit for the Walmart Supercenter at 1965 S. Union Ave., filed in September with no FAA filing behind it, as DroneXL reported September 15. Monday’s release quotes Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell rather than anyone from Tacoma or Seattle.

Zipline got there earlier on paper. The FAA posted a draft environmental assessment for up to 75 Zipline sites and 500 docks across the Seattle metro in September 2025, took comments through November 2, 2025, and has posted no decision since. Wing’s name does not appear on the FAA’s Washington entries at all. Rivera said in June that Wing was already working with communities in its new markets; what that has produced in Puget Sound so far is one store permit in Tacoma.

Ferrell’s statement in the release closes: “The future has arrived and its being delivered by Walmart by drone!”

DroneXL’s Take

Wing keeps letting its permits announce its markets, and Colorado shows the bill for that. Castle Rock and Parker did not freeze hubs because a Walmart lot scared them. They froze them because the first thing their planners saw was a pre-application for an 18-drone port, filed while no delivery operator had said the word Denver in public, and with none of the altitude, noise and frequency figures that Northglenn is now writing into law. Wing has had DroneXL’s 30 written safety questions since September 8 and has answered none of them, so I don’t expect a Thornton planner to have better luck.

A pad moratorium cannot stop the flights, and Northglenn’s memo says that in plain words. But it can stop the pad, and a Wing network is nothing without pads in Walmart lots six miles apart. Every month a suburb spends on a moratorium is a month of Denver that Wing cannot serve, and the company bought those months by staying quiet.

If you live in Thornton, Longmont or anywhere else on the Denver survey list, the operational narrative in Northglenn’s draft is the clause to ask your council for: altitude, noise figure, aircraft count and flight frequency, in a public filing, before the first delivery. It is the only place so far where Wing will have to put those numbers on paper.

Sources: Wing, October 5, 2026 announcement, Wing, June 2026 seven-market announcement, FAA Public Involvement and Environmental Review for Drone Operations, City of Northglenn staff memorandum #29-2026, DroneXL Wing tracker

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FBI's Balloon Fiesta No Drone Zone Runs On A Clock: 10.5 Hours A Day

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 20:11:28 GMT

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a no drone zone through October 11, and the FBI says it has counter-drone personnel in place to enforce it. FBI Albuquerque, working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Albuquerque Police Department, warned on September 30 that anyone flying inside a 4-nautical-mile (7.4-kilometer) ring around Balloon Fiesta Park faces drone confiscation, loss of their pilot certificate and civil fines of up to $75,000 per violation.

This is the first Fiesta since local police gained counter-drone authority of their own, and it follows a summer in which the same federal playbook seized more than 700 drones at World Cup venues. DroneXL tracked that crackdown city by city.

The FBI’s warning says the restriction is in place for the duration of the event. The FAA notices that create it switch on at 5:30 a.m., switch off at noon, and run again from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

FAA’s Fiesta Restriction Runs 10.5 Hours A Day Across Two NOTAMs

Despite the FBI’s whole-event framing, the FAA built the Fiesta restriction from two daily windows. NOTAM FDC 6/5920 closes the airspace from 5:30 a.m. to noon Mountain time, and FDC 6/6087 closes it again from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., for 10.5 restricted hours a day.

Both cover the same circle, centered on the park, from the surface to 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) above sea level. Both are issued under 14 CFR 91.145, the FAA’s rule for aerial demonstrations, so they apply to every aircraft, crewed or not, unless Albuquerque Tower clears the flight. The morning restriction took effect October 2, a day before opening, and runs through the final morning on October 11. The evening restriction covers October 3 through October 10, and it is the only notice the FBI’s release links. A duplicate evening notice, FDC 6/6191, carries identical terms after the FAA replaced an earlier version over a text error.

The only drones flying legally inside those windows belong to the Fiesta. Its 2026 schedule lists a drone light show, sponsored by Sandia Resort & Casino, at 5:45 a.m. every day and at 7:45 p.m. on October 3, 4, 8 and 9. DroneXL covered those shows in 2024, when Verge Aero flew an estimated 500 drones per performance.

Saturday, October 10, doesn’t fit the pattern. The evening restriction expires at 8 p.m. that night, while the schedule puts the drone show at 9 p.m. and the AfterGlow fireworks at 9:15 p.m.

Outside the windows, the TFR is not in force and north Albuquerque’s normal airspace rules apply. The Fiesta’s own website still tells visitors there are no drones within 4 nautical miles, with no hours attached.

Local Police Gained Counter-Drone Powers Three Months Before The Fiesta

The SAFER SKIES Act, signed December 18, 2025, lets certified state and local police run counter-drone operations on their own authority. A Justice and Homeland Security rule implementing it took effect July 1. That authority expires December 31, 2031, unless Congress extends it.

The interim final rule sets two tiers. Detection and warning certification comes from an online course. Mitigation certification, which reaches as far as forcing an aircraft down, requires resident training at the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center. When the rule published on July 6, just 61 officers across roughly 46 agencies held mitigation certification, a gap DroneXL laid out when 1,500 agencies lined up for the new powers.

The FBI says its personnel are working with trained state and local partners at the Fiesta. Its release does not say which tier, if either, Albuquerque Police officers hold, so whether a city officer or a federal agent would be the one to take a drone down is not on the record.

Turning off Remote ID will not help a pilot hide, either. The release calls a disabled or noncompliant Remote ID broadcast a separate federal violation, and adds: “Authorities use multiple detection methods, whether Remote ID is broadcasting or not.”

Anyone who sees an unauthorized drone at the Fiesta can report it to 911, on-site officers, 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov.

FBI Enforcement Since The World Cup Has Ended In Federal Charges

The FBI says any Fiesta drone caught in restricted airspace now gets referred to the FAA for mandatory enforcement action. Beyond the $75,000 civil ceiling, federal prosecutors can seek criminal fines up to $100,000 and up to one year in federal prison.

The FAA’s own 2019 Fiesta warning cited civil penalties above $30,000. The harder line since then has a record behind it. Federal agencies seized more than 700 drones at World Cup venues this summer and opened around 120 federal cases, with about a dozen arrests, building on the 600 seizures the FBI reported in early July. One of those cases belongs to a 26-year-old Houston cinematographer charged after a two-minute DJI Mavic 3 flight to film a church, who now faces up to a year in prison.

The FAA has also run a faster case-processing program, DETER, since April. Russ at 51 Drones walked through what it changes in July: reduced penalties for qualifying first-time violators who accept responsibility and give up their appeal rights.

DroneXL’s Take

The restriction is justified. A balloon pilot steers only by climbing or descending into different winds, so a drone wandering over the launch field is a hazard the balloon can’t dodge. What I object to is the FBI telling the public the zone runs for the whole event when the FAA’s own notices say 10.5 hours a day. Precise rules get obeyed. Vague ones teach pilots that TFRs are guesswork, and the World Cup showed where that leads: 700 drones seized and about a dozen arrests, which reads to me as hundreds of pilots who never checked the airspace. A release that printed the two windows would have done more for compliance than another counter-drone team. If you’re in Albuquerque this week, pull up both NOTAMs in B4UFLY, and leave the drone in the bag whenever balloons are in the air, TFR or not.

Sources: FBI Albuquerque, FAA NOTAM FDC 6/5920, FAA NOTAM FDC 6/6087, Federal Register, Balloon Fiesta 2026 Schedule of Events, The Paper.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Estonia's Capital Trains Kids From 8 on Drones, Citing Russia

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:17:18 GMT

Tallinn is now teaching children as young as 8 to fly drones, and every seat is taken before the first school group walks in. The city opened its first drone classroom on September 18 at the Energy Discovery Center, the capital’s science museum, and from October any Tallinn school can book the course for students aged 8 to 16. Deputy Mayor Kristjan Järvan, who launched the project at the start of the summer, told Le Monde the program is already fully booked and the city’s problem is now finding room for the children it has turned away.

The city’s own announcement of the opening talked about engineering, programming, electronics and future careers. Järvan, asked by Le Monde why he built it, gave a different answer: the defense of a country with Russia next door.

Tallinn Sold the Classroom as STEM and Its Creator Calls It Defense Prep

Estonia has required every student entering upper secondary school to take a 35-hour national defense course since autumn 2023, and Järvan told Le Monde the children’s drone classroom feeds it. Students fly civilian drones only. “We know we have a slightly crazy neighbor, but we are getting ready,” he said.

The quotes the city released at the September 18 opening covered engineering and careers and never mentioned defense. The national course Järvan is pointing at covers military history, weapon handling and first aid in its theory block. A second 35-hour practical block, run by the Defence League, stays voluntary. Tallinn’s classroom sits below both, aimed at primary and middle schoolers, and Järvan’s point was what those children can do with the skill once they are adults.

The idea itself came from Ukraine. Järvan said he visited Ukrainian cities where children are taught civil defense with 3D-printed replicas of mines so they learn what not to pick up, and concluded that protecting citizens during a military crisis is a civil authority’s job. Estonia is not the first Baltic state to reach that conclusion: DroneXL reported on Lithuania’s program in Lithuanian Kids Learn to Fly Drones Near Russian Border, where the defense ministry put a 22,000-person training target and a €3.3 million budget on paper when it announced the program in August 2025. Tallinn has published neither a headcount nor a budget beyond the fact that the city paid for the room.

Järvan was Estonia’s minister for entrepreneurship and information technology in 2022 and 2023 before taking the transport portfolio at Tallinn City Hall. Estonia has 1.4 million people, a number DroneXL has flagged before when covering the country’s drone warfare push in 2024.

Students Fly 30 Simulator Hours Before They Touch a Real Drone

Children in Tallinn’s course fly computer simulators for 30 hours before the Energy Discovery Center lets them pilot a real drone, instructor Richard Muuga told Le Monde. After-school clubs for ages 8 to 11 and 12 to 16 have run since September 8, built with the HobiZone club since March.

Muuga, 22, opens each session with a plush duck, because every child already knows how a duck flies, then takes apart one of the round drone-soccer quads the museum also flies to show what moves when the sticks do. The 30-hour simulator rule exists, in his words, “to avoid too many crashes.” Public drone-soccer sessions on the city’s own pitch run daily at noon, 2, 4 and 6 p.m. and are open to adults too, according to the ERR report on the opening.

The three boys Le Monde watched, two 9-year-olds and a 15-year-old, did not talk about war. One wants to shoot films, the 15-year-old already flies at home and wants to race. Asked whether he could see himself operating military drones as an adult, he answered that defending the country is important. The grandmother collecting one of the 9-year-olds, a member of Estonia’s Russian-speaking minority who introduced herself as Estonian, called drones a profession of the future and then added that if the country were attacked, her grandson might be useful.

DroneXL’s Take

Tallinn has the order of operations right, and Russia has it backwards. Moscow put a drone-operation textbook into the federal curriculum for 8th and 9th graders with a stated goal of one million operators by 2030, a military quota dressed as a school subject. Tallinn built a science-museum classroom where a 22-year-old explains lift with a stuffed duck, let the kids fill it on their own, and only when a French correspondent asked did the deputy mayor say the quiet part. The children get drone soccer and simulator time. The state gets a generation that knows how a quadcopter fails before it ever needs them to. Teaching 9-year-olds anything with a war in the next sentence is uncomfortable, and the grandmother’s “that would be a good thing” is the sentence in this story I keep coming back to. My read is that Estonia’s version is still the honest one: a civilian program that admits why it exists beats a defense program pretending to be a hobby. American school districts are running drone soccer leagues and STEM flight classes right now with no such framing, and that is fine for a country with two oceans. Estonia shares a land border with Russia. Fully booked is the only correct enrollment number.

Sources: Le Monde, ERR, Estonian Defence Resources Agency

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Germany Funds Jet-Drone Interceptors As Ukraine's Best Hits 30%

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:24:00 GMT

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv by train on October 4 with a support package worth more than €1.3 billion ($1.46 billion), and the headline item is money to mass-produce interceptor drones against Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds. About €1 billion ($1.13 billion) is military aid: the interceptor production financing, long-range strike weapons, combat drones and satellite equipment. Another €350 million ($394 million) goes to generators, substations and grid repairs before winter.

Merz came with Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and executives from Siemens Energy, Hensoldt, Diehl Defence and Quantum Systems, a day after Russia’s foreign ministry told foreign diplomats to leave the capital. Four air-raid alerts sounded over Kyiv that morning. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries signed 15 agreements worth more than €8.5 billion ($9.57 billion) in total, including a separate agreement on joint counter-drone work.

Zelensky also gave the figure Berlin is betting against. Of Ukraine’s interceptor drones, he said, the Bars has shown the best results so far, and it downs up to 30% of its targets.

Volodymyr Zelensky and Friedrich Merz outside the Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv on October 4, 2026, before the talks that produced the €1.3 billion package. Photo credit: Office of the President of Ukraine.

Quantum Systems Gets The Interceptor Contract And A Successful Test

The interceptor money runs through Quantum Systems. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense signed an agreement with the Munich company on testing and procuring interceptors for jet-powered drones, and Zelensky told the joint press conference that a new German-Ukrainian interceptor, the SPYS, had just passed its test.

German officials told Euronews thousands of interceptors will reach Ukrainian forces in the coming months.

The SPYS comes from WIY Drones, the Ukrainian interceptor maker Quantum Systems bought into in March when Berlin funded 15,000 Strila interceptors for the National Guard. WIY says the SPYS tops out at 373 mph (600 km/h), carries a 300 g payload, and is being tuned to meet a diving Shahed head-on in its final approach. The first 50 went to the military for combat evaluation in July. Quantum Systems has been chasing that speed since its Apex test aircraft hit 699 km/h in June.

Merz said the recent technical progress means the new interceptors can go into serial production quickly. “This will quickly and noticeably strengthen Ukraine’s air defense,” he said. Quantum also signed a memorandum with Fire Point, the Ukrainian maker of the FP-1 long-range drone, on unmanned systems and countering advanced aerial threats. The same business forum produced a Diehl memorandum on thousands of IRIS-T missiles and a Hensoldt agreement on surveillance radars.

Russia’s Jet Shaheds Are Arriving Faster Than Ukraine Can Catch Them

Russia used more than 1,900 attack drones against Ukraine in the week before Merz’s visit, and more than 800 of them were jet-powered, according to Zelensky. Ukraine’s propeller-driven interceptors were built for a Shahed cruising near 115 mph (185 km/h). A jet Geran runs at roughly twice that.

Ukrainian intelligence said in May that the Geran-4 was designed specifically to beat Ukraine’s $2,000 interceptors. An RFE/RL teardown last week found the Geran-4 runs on a $25,000 Chinese hobby turbojet and that Russia builds about 3,000 a month. Zelensky said on September 22 that Russia plans to spend $12 billion next year on jet-powered drones and loitering munitions alone, and that Ukraine was intercepting about 55% of the jet-powered Shaheds at the time. The SBU released video of the first confirmed jet Shahed kill by an interceptor on September 19, two weeks before Merz landed.

Zelensky said Ukraine expects the first results from small missiles designed for jet drones in the second half of October. Earlier in the day he and Merz walked through the National Academy of Sciences building in central Kyiv, where a Russian drone killed two people and injured seven on September 28. While they spoke with rescuers, an alert sounded and emergency service chief Andrii Danyk showed Merz Russian drones moving across the map in real time. A Russian drone hit Kyiv’s Northern Bridge again the same day.

DroneXL’s Take

Germany is doing the right thing in the right order, and I still want the hit rate on the next press release, not the unit count. Berlin is buying production capacity for a weapon Russia has already engineered around once: the Geran-4 exists because the $2,000 interceptors worked too well against the propeller Shaheds, and the 30% Zelensky gave for his best jet-killer is the bill for that. Ukraine’s cheap interceptors earned this money: the $2,000 Sting has been trading for $50,000 Shaheds on camera since spring, so the concept is proven. The target moved. Serial production of a 600 km/h airframe fixes the speed gap only if the guidance closes the head-on intercept WIY says it is still refining, and Zelensky’s own date for the next data point is the second half of October, when the small missiles report in. Americans should watch this one too: Quantum Systems is the German firm that In-Q-Tel walked into Washington, and the Pentagon has been shopping for Ukrainian interceptors since the Patriot math broke in March. Whatever Kyiv’s 30% becomes by winter is the number the US will be buying.

Sources: Kyiv Independent, Zelensky and Merz joint press conference, Euromaidan Press, Reuters via Business Day, Euronews, UA.News, NV

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon North Haven Drone Hold Disputed as Legislators Meet Oct. 5

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:16:00 GMT

Amazon’s North Haven, Connecticut, drone plan is on hold until residents, state legislators and regional mayors have been heard at meetings the company will run, First Selectman Michael Freda wrote on Facebook on Saturday, October 3, after a call from Amazon’s corporate office. On Sunday morning, Connecticut House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, whose district includes part of North Haven, posted that the project has not been put on hold and that calling it one is “not the case.”

The two posts agree on one date. State legislators meet Amazon on Monday, October 5, Candelora wrote. Freda wrote that no decision comes before a series of such meetings.

The paper between them is the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s review of the hub, which the agency extended last week from October 1 to October 15. Candelora’s reading is that the extension is the whole change. Amazon has not said which man is right.

Freda Says Amazon Corporate Called; Candelora Says Only the Comment Window Moved

Freda’s Saturday post says he had a very good discussion with a representative of Amazon corporate, not Amazon North Haven, and that “the drone initiative is now on hold.” Amazon agreed to decide nothing until the public, legislators and regional mayors had been heard at meetings Amazon will run.

Candelora’s post, about 18 hours later, links DEEP’s notice page and says Amazon already holds the FAA’s July 28 programmatic environmental assessment, needs to apply for FAA operating approval, and must first clear the state’s coastal review. The state got an extension to October 15, legislators meet Amazon on October 5, and “the application has not been put on hold, but merely extended for two weeks.” He asked residents to keep filing written comments.

Both accounts fit the record DroneXL has. The FAA’s national finding of July 28 is the document Candelora names, and it is the one 15 states, Connecticut among them, sued over on September 28. What Amazon told Freda is a phone call with no filing behind it. What Candelora describes is the filing. A company can pause a launch while its paperwork runs, and the two posts read to me as describing different things with the same word. Amazon’s only statement on the record is spokesperson Jack Stelzner’s defense of the program to CT Insider last week, before either post. DroneXL found no Amazon statement on North Haven in the Amazon newsroom or any named outlet on the morning of October 4.

Five state legislators, four Republicans including Rep. Dave Yaccarino of North Haven and Democratic Sen. Christine Cohen of Madison, had already written DEEP Acting Commissioner Emma Cimino on September 25, CT Insider reported on October 4, citing harm to wildlife and nesting birds reacting to the drones’ noise. Yaccarino called the plan “a horrible idea” on September 30 and said the DEEP review was news to many legislators. Residents raised the same concerns at North Haven’s Board of Selectmen on Thursday, October 1, WTNH reported. The call to Freda came two days later.

DEEP Extended Its Comment Window to October 15 and Opened a New Inbox

DEEP’s public notice page for the review now says the agency has extended the comment period to October 15, 2026, and takes comments at DEEP.FCC.PublicComments@ct.gov. The notice was first published September 16, and the original 15-day window closed October 1. The page gives no new date for DEEP’s decision.

Anyone who used the address in DroneXL’s September 28 North Haven filing guide should resend. The guide pointed readers to an analyst’s email found on a community flyer and to the division’s general permit inbox, because DEEP had not answered DroneXL’s question about where to file. DEEP’s own page now names the address, and a comment sent to the new inbox before October 15 is the one DEEP has committed to accept.

The decision date is the open piece. The FAA’s August 17 consistency request started a 60-day clock under the federal coastal rules, which ran to October 16. DEEP’s extended comment window closes the day before. Whether DEEP has asked the FAA for more time, or will rule on October 16 with one day of review after comments close, is not on the notice page, and DEEP has not said.

Neither post changes the paper. The Planning and Zoning Commission’s 5-0 approval of application P26-17 on May 4 stands. DEEP’s review is a federal consistency determination that runs on the FAA’s request regardless of what Amazon tells the town. The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Connecticut, North Haven or New Haven document when DroneXL checked it on the morning of October 4. The FAA’s request to DEEP described up to 1,000 flights a day inside a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius, with the MK30 at 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff and 90.5 to 91.8 dBA SEL at 20 feet (6 meters) on takeoff and landing. Amazon’s own noise claim, made at its Westborough forum, is that the aircraft peaks below its delivery trucks. The two figures measure different things at different distances, and nobody in Connecticut has put them side by side on the record.

Westborough Was Delayed the Same Week, Not Paused

Amazon asked Westborough’s Planning Board to move its drone pad vote from October 6 to no later than November 10 in the same week, and residents appealed the town’s accessory-use ruling to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Neither step came with an Amazon statement calling Westborough paused.

DroneXL reported both in Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No and Amazon’s Westborough Drone Launch Now Hinges on a Zoning Appeal. CT Insider’s account says the Westborough plan is on hold, citing MassLive. MassLive’s own October 3 report says delayed, with a vote by November 10 and a ZBA date still unset. Three Massachusetts lawmakers asked Amazon for a pause in a September 28 letter, and Amazon did not grant one on the record.

North Haven is the only hub in DroneXL’s record, including the Drone Delivery Tracker, where a town official has quoted Amazon itself calling a plan on hold since the company’s August announcement of nearly 500 communities. Westborough got its Amazon forum on September 23, which DroneXL covered in the report on residents being told the drones were coming anyway. North Haven never had one. Amazon’s Sam Bailey told the P&Z in May that the company would hold a public session, according to The Register Citizen, and the first scheduled meeting is Monday’s, with legislators rather than the public.

Residents in the North Haven circle who want to reach Amazon directly can call 1-888-280-4331 or use the customer-service chat on Amazon, choosing “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” The rest of what residents can still do is in DroneXL’s guide.

DroneXL’s Take

A hold announced in a first selectman’s Facebook post and denied in a state legislator’s is not a status. It is two men describing one phone call they were not both on, and Amazon, which was, has said nothing. My read is that both are telling the truth as they understand it: Amazon told Freda it would not launch before the meetings, and Candelora is right that no filing was withdrawn and no clock stopped. What that means for a North Haven resident is simple. Nothing Amazon said on Saturday reaches DEEP’s inbox or the FAA’s docket, and the only lever with a date on it is still the one DroneXL pointed at last week: comments to DEEP close October 15, the address is finally official, and a comment about the Quinnipiac marsh, the harbor and the missing site-specific FAA document goes into the record whatever Amazon decides after Monday. I’m for drone delivery when the cargo earns the flight, and Zipline’s P2, at 55 pounds with a tethered drop and two parachutes, shows how. The MK30 carries 5 pounds at 83, descends to 13 feet over the lawn and has no parachute, and both Tolleson collisions ended in uncontrolled descents. That judgment is mine. Candelora’s advice and mine are the same: keep filing.

Sources: Michael Freda, Facebook, October 3, 2026, State Rep. Vincent Candelora, Facebook, October 4, 2026, CT Insider, October 4, 2026, WTNH, October 3, 2026, Connecticut DEEP public notice, MassLive, October 3, 2026, FAA NEPA and Drones, The Register Citizen via GovTech.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FPV Pilot Flies Kinzua Bridge, A Pennsylvania Park That Bans Drones

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 20:27:00 GMT

FPV pilot Parker Sheppard flew a 5-inch freestyle quad around the Kinzua Bridge in McKean County, Pennsylvania, and published the footage to YouTube on October 1, 2026. The 13,500-subscriber channel’s video had 8,260 views two days later. Sheppard dove from cloud level onto the Skywalk, flew under the surviving span and crossed the valley where the 2003 tornado left 11 of the viaduct’s towers lying in the creek bed.

Kinzua Bridge is a state park. Sheppard says so on camera, adds that drones are not allowed there, and says the state cleared his flight anyway. He does not say which office cleared it.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources publishes exactly six state parks where drones may fly, each at one designated site inside the park. Kinzua Bridge State Park is not on the list.

Sheppard Says Pennsylvania Cleared A Flight DCNR Policy Does Not Allow

Sheppard told viewers “Pennsylvania gave me special permission to come here and fly FPV,” a flight the Bureau of State Parks’ drone policy rules out: the bureau permits drones only at designated sites in Beltzville, Benjamin Rush, Hillman, Lackawanna, Prompton and Tuscarora, and restricts them at every other state park.

DCNR’s drone page describes no permit route for the other parks. It tells pilots to contact the park office of the six flying sites and stops there. Sheppard’s video and its description name no agency, no permit and no date of approval, so what Pennsylvania granted, and who at the state granted it, rests on his word alone. DroneXL covered the gap between what state parks allow and what pilots assume in You Want to Fly a Drone in Your State Park? You Need This! in March 2023, and most of those parks ban launches from inside their boundaries. Pennsylvania’s version is one of the strictest, with six parks open and the rest closed.

The timing of the shoot narrows the window. The Skywalk has been closed for a multi-year steel rehabilitation since late 2024 and reopened for foliage season on September 5, 2026, with contractors back on the structure November 1. Sheppard flew from the Skywalk deck, so unless his permission also covered a closed structure, the flight landed inside that eight-week opening, the busiest the park gets all year.

A Cut Antenna And An Unseen Wire Bracket The Bridge Flight

Earlier the same trip, Sheppard launched the DeepSpace SEEKER5 with an antenna cable folded into a prop, heard it clipping, took off anyway and flew into a branch. The prop severed the cable. The quad’s DJI O4 Air Unit carries two antennas, and he flew on with one.

He said the lesson out loud: spend more time in prep before flying. The O4 series shipped in January 2025 with that dual-antenna layout. At the bridge, under a cloud deck he called questionable, he planned a single pass and clipped past a wire he had not seen, then packed up ahead of the storm. The trip was filmed entirely on a sponsored GoPro MISSION 1 PRO with the ILS lens mount, Sheppard filming with two broken wrists while pro mountain biker Rémy Métailler and Quin Gable rode.

That makes it the second GoPro-equipped FPV flight this year that DroneXL has written up from a place that bans drones. In August, GoPro flew 8K over Niagara Falls and left the permit out of the description. Sheppard at least said his on camera.

DroneXL’s Take

Sheppard did the hard part right. He wanted a spot where drones are banned, and instead of flying it anyway and hoping, he asked the state. That is the opposite of “don’t be that guy,” and I’d rather see ten more videos like this than one more unpermitted stadium dive. The flaw is in what he left out. “Pennsylvania gave me special permission” is a sentence the next pilot at Kinzua will repeat to a ranger with nothing behind it, and the DCNR page that pilot will be shown offers six parks and no permit process. One line naming the office and the agreement would have turned his flight into a map for everyone else. He found a door into a park the state says is closed. Tell us which one, Parker.

Sources: Parker Sheppard on YouTube, Pennsylvania DCNR Bureau of State Parks, Kinzua Bridge State Park history, exploreJeffersonPA.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Mach Initiative Builds 20-Lb RC Jet to Break the 9-Year 465 mph Record

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 20:12:00 GMT

The Mach Initiative, a student team at the University of Bath in England, published the build of KingChaser on October 3: a 3D-printed, carbon-reinforced jet aircraft with a 300-newton (67 lbf) turbine, designed to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest jet-powered model aircraft. That record has sat at 465 mph (749 km/h) since German pilot Niels Herbrich set it at Rothenburg, Germany, on August 23, 2017.

KingChaser weighs 9 kg (20 lb) fueled, needs more than 50 mph (80 km/h) to leave the launcher, and has completed five static engine runs at full throttle. It has not flown. The team’s previous aircraft, Kingfisher, flew in January and reached 205 mph (330 km/h) on a 60-newton engine. The jump the team is attempting is from 205 mph to past 465 mph in one airframe generation.

The video credits the Boom Prize for the surge of interest in high-speed RC. The Boom Prize’s published rules limit entry to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

KingChaser Swaps a 150 N Engine Plan for a 300 N One Because the UK Runway Is Short

The team planned a 150-newton (34 lbf) engine to replace Kingfisher’s 60-newton (13 lbf) unit. A UK attempt flown within visual line of sight leaves little room to accelerate, so the team scaled Kingfisher up 20 percent and fitted a 300-newton engine, five times January’s thrust.

The airframe is printed in PETG rather than PLA for better tolerance of aerodynamic heating. The engine bay is PPS-CF, a carbon-filled polymer that holds shape above 392°F (200°C) but is brittle, so the team wrapped it in carbon fiber. An earlier attempt to anneal a PETG bay in a secondhand oven warped it. Underneath, CNC-machined and laser-cut aluminum, carbon rods and steel engine mounts make up a structure the team sized for 20 G, with the margin reserved for steep banks that keep the aircraft inside the pilot’s view. The skin is sanded to 1,000 grit because skin friction, not pressure drag, dominates at these speeds.

Control comes from two 70 kg-cm servos driving geared elevon linkages, with servos and hinges bolted directly to aluminum to hold the tolerances that prevent flutter. A new power harness with ceramic and electrolytic capacitors, inductors and shielded cables keeps servo switching noise out of the FPV feed. Telemetry stays on TBS Crossfire with the geofence monitor and loss-of-link throttle kill carried over from Kingfisher. A modified RunCam 2, its board tucked inside the inlet with only the sensor exposed, films the control surfaces from behind to catch flutter. The 3-liter (0.8 gal) fuel bay buys engine start, two high-speed passes and a small reserve.

The team's title card: the jet from behind, with the exhaust nozzle and vertical fin, and the launcher ramp in the background. Photo credit: The Mach Initiative / YouTube

The Video Proves the Engine Runs, Not That the Aircraft Flies

Five full-throttle static fires with no cooling airflow confirmed fuel burn, thermal protection and a clean FPV feed under full electromagnetic load. Wing-loading tests matched the structural analysis. The team has no launcher yet: its pneumatic system fell through, and a replacement comes in the next video, then the flight.

That launcher is the open item. KingChaser needs more than twice the launch energy Kingfisher did, and the team itself calls Kingfisher’s launch “pretty sketchy.” The 205 mph Kingfisher figure and every KingChaser number in this article come from the team’s own video and have not been independently timed. The 465 mph mark it is chasing is the verified one: Guinness recorded Herbrich’s 7.5 kg Behotec-powered aircraft at 749.221 km/h, averaged over 200 meters in two directions.

A team member runs through checks on a FrSky Taranis X7 with the aircraft loaded on the bungee rail launcher. The team says KingChaser needs more than twice the launch energy Kingfisher did and is building a new launcher for the flight. Photo credit: The Mach Initiative / YouTube

The Boom Prize the team cites as the reason the hobby is hot is the $800,000 purse Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl formalized in July, after the $100,000 offer DroneXL covered on July 2. The published rules require U.S. citizens or permanent residents, an air-breathing engine under 25 kg (55 lb) including fuel, and Mach 1 sustained for five seconds twice in one day. As I reported when the rules landed on July 18, the nationality clause shut out Herbrich and every other record holder outside the United States. A Bath team attempting its record in UK airspace sits on the same side of that line.

DroneXL’s Take

I like this project more than the viral dorm jet that started the Boom Prize sequence, because the Bath team is doing the boring parts on camera: a geofence monitor, a throttle kill on lost link, a structure sized so the pilot can bank hard enough to keep the aircraft in sight, and a record attempt built around a planned venue rather than a college field. That is what a legitimate speed program looks like, and it is the posture the “don’t be that guy” rule asks of anyone pushing a turbine past highway speeds. My read is that the record is the right target and the prize was never theirs: Mach 1 is 64 percent faster than a mark nobody has touched in nine years, and Boom wrote its rules so the team doing this most carefully in public could not enter. If the launcher holds, the attempt worth watching is in England, judged by Guinness timing gates rather than a tweet.

Source: The Mach Initiative on YouTube, Guinness World Records, Boom Supersonic

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon's Westborough Drone Launch Now Hinges on a Zoning Appeal

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 18:40:00 GMT

Several Westborough residents have appealed the town ruling that lets Amazon treat its Prime Air drone launch pad as an accessory use of its Otis Street warehouse, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Saturday, October 3. The appeal goes to Westborough’s Zoning Board of Appeals, which has not yet set a hearing date, and the paper says it has pushed Amazon’s launch back indefinitely.

Amazon told a hotel ballroom on September 23 it hoped to fly by the end of October. Its site-plan hearing before the Planning Board, set for Tuesday, October 6, already carries a request to continue to November 10.

The Planning Board can attach conditions to a use the zoning bylaw allows by right. It cannot refuse one. The ZBA appeal asks whether the pad is a by-right use at all.

Residents hold Mass Blue Skies signs outside Mill Pond School before the Westborough Select Board's October 1, 2026, meeting on Amazon's Prime Air proposal. Photo credit: Gary Kelley, via The Heart of Westborough Facebook group

A ZBA Reversal Would Move Amazon’s Pad From Site-Plan Review to a Special Permit

Westborough’s building commissioner and town counsel classified Amazon’s 6,800-square-foot (632-square-meter) launch pad as accessory to the warehouse, which put it in site-plan review, not a special permit. The residents’ appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals challenges that, the Telegram & Gazette reported. Its hearing date is to be determined.

The accessory-use call is not new. Select Board member Welch questioned it on August 18, pointing to the bylaw’s definition of “airport” and asking whether the pad belonged on the special-permit track, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Wants Drones Over 6 Massachusetts Towns. Not All Have Been Told. Westborough’s bylaw defines an airport as any area on a lot used for the landing and takeoff of aircraft on a regular or intermittent basis, and an accessory use as an incidental or insubstantial part of the activity on a lot. Which districts allow an airport, and on what permit, sits in the bylaw’s Use Regulation Schedule, which DroneXL has not been able to pull. Town staff told the board that Building Commissioner Bill Hezlitt and town counsel had reviewed and agreed with the accessory reading. No appeal was reported at the time.

If the schedule puts an airport on the special-permit track, the difference between the two is the whole fight. Under Prudential Insurance Co. v. Board of Appeals of Westwood (1986), a Massachusetts board reviewing a site plan for a by-right use can impose conditions but cannot deny the plan unless the problems are so intractable no condition fixes them. Planning Board vice chair John Gelcich said as much on September 15: “we are almost required to approve it.” A special permit under Chapter 40A, Section 9 is discretionary. The board that issues it weighs whether the use fits the district, and a no is a no the applicant has to take to court.

State law sets the clock. Chapter 40A, Section 8 lets any person aggrieved by a building inspector’s decision appeal it to the ZBA, and Section 15 gives them 30 days from the decision to file. Once filed, the board must open its hearing within 65 days and decide within 100 days, or the appeal is deemed granted. Section 17 then gives either side 20 days to take the ZBA’s decision to court. When the residents filed is not in the T&G account, and the paper says the hearing date is still to be determined, so the 65-day arithmetic cannot be run yet. The filing date on the town clerk’s stamp is the number that sets every other date in Westborough.

The appeal lands in a week that already slowed Amazon down. Three state lawmakers asked the company to pause in a letter dated September 28, which DroneXL covered in Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA, and Massachusetts joined 14 other states in the Second Circuit the same day against the FAA clearance Amazon’s site review would rest on. Amazon then asked the Planning Board for five more weeks, as DroneXL reported Friday in Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No. None of those reports, and not the T&G’s, carried an Amazon statement on the appeal. The Drone Delivery Tracker keeps the Westborough hub at in review.

Mass Blue Skies Is 13 Residents With a 1,200-Response Survey Behind Them

Mass Blue Skies, the Westborough group organized against the drones, is a core group of 13 residents formed after Amazon’s September 23 session, the T&G reported. The separate resident-run Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey passed 1,200 responses on October 2: 92% opposed, 94% saying they would not use it.

Those percentages have not moved since DroneXL first reported the survey at 853 responses on September 28 in Amazon Faces 92% Opposition in Westborough Drone Survey, Calls Urged. The survey calls itself unscientific and is run by a resident with no tie to Amazon or the town.

Dan Kline, a Westborough resident and Mass Blue Skies member, told the T&G the program would add noise to a society that already has too much and leave no sense of freedom and peace. “This is not something we want in Westborough,” he said, and framed the fight as asking residents what they want their future to look like. He also said the group feels it has momentum and wants a conversation.

The T&G put Amazon’s reach at 11 communities nationwide and the Westborough radius across 15 cities and towns, Worcester, Hopkinton and Sutton among them. It also raised Richardson, Texas, where residents organized over noise and overflights and an MK30 struck an apartment building in February. DroneXL’s record of that strike, which Amazon attributed to a GPS fault, is in its February 9 report, and it is the incident I asked Amazon’s Tareq Wafaie about in the Westborough ballroom. He did not address it.

Residents in the 15 towns who want to put questions to the company directly can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and choose “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can and cannot do once a hub is proposed. Amazon Prime Air has not said whether it will send anyone to the ZBA hearing, and Amazon sent no one to Thursday’s Select Board meeting.

DroneXL’s Take

This is the appeal I expected in August, when Welch first raised the airport question. Everything Westborough has thrown at Amazon since, the letter, the unanimous Select Board, the North Reading bylaw idea, works on the flights, and no town can touch the flights. The ZBA appeal works on the ground, which is the only place a Massachusetts town has any power. My read is that a parking lot built to launch up to 1,000 aircraft a day is not accessory to anything. Westborough’s own definition says accessory means incidental or insubstantial, and a launch pad is the principal use of that corner of the lot. Whether a special permit is the alternative depends on the use schedule the ZBA will have in front of it, and I don’t.

Singer v. Newton cuts the other way, and the ZBA should know it. A special permit denied on noise or overflight grounds hands Amazon a preemption argument it has not needed so far. The denial that survives is the one written about the land: whether an aircraft operation is a principal use of the lot, and whether the warehouse district’s schedule allows one. Nothing about the 78-pound aircraft with no parachute belongs in that decision, and the ZBA that keeps it out is the one Amazon cannot preempt.

Watch for the ZBA to post a hearing date. Under Section 15 it has to come within 65 days of the filing, so the posting dates the appeal and starts the only clock in Westborough that Amazon does not control.

Sources: Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Citizen Portal summary of the August 18 Select Board meeting, Boston Globe, Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey, Westborough Zoning Bylaw § 1.6 definitions, M.G.L. c. 40A §§ 8, 9, 15 and 17.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Neo 3 Leak Puts the Osmo Action 6 Square Sensor in a 193 g Drone

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 18:12:00 GMT

A leaked DJI Neo 3 marketing sheet lists a square 1/1.1-inch camera sensor, the same size and shape DJI put in the Osmo Action 6 last November. Leaker Igor Bogdanov posted the photo of the printed sheet on X on October 1, with the feature lines in Chinese and French.

The French side spells out what the sensor is for: native vertical shooting and 2x lossless zoom. The rest of the sheet covers palm takeoff and landing with one-hand gesture control, high-speed ActiveTrack with automatic camera moves, omnidirectional obstacle detection, the DJI RC Mini controller, SelfieShot 2.0, and fast startup with quick file transfer.

The DJI Neo 2 shoots on a 12MP 1/2-inch sensor and weighs 151 grams. The production listing Bogdanov surfaced on September 21 puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 grams.

Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News), October 1, 2026

The Square Sensor Is the Osmo Action 6’s, and It Explains the Vertical Shooting Line

The Osmo Action 6 launched on November 18, 2025 with a 1/1.1-inch square CMOS sensor behind an f/2.0 to f/4.0 variable aperture. A square sensor records portrait or landscape at full resolution without rotating the camera, which is what the Neo 3 sheet’s native vertical shooting line describes.

Shawn from Air Photography called it “not a full 1-inch sensor, but it’s pretty close” in his Osmo Action 6 review for DroneXL, and showed the aspect ratio being switched in the camera’s settings rather than by remounting it. On a drone, the same trick means a vertical TikTok clip and a horizontal YouTube clip from the same flight, both at full pixel count, with no gimbal rotation hardware.

Lossless zoom on DJI’s recent consumer drones is a sensor crop, and the Neo 2’s 1/2-inch sensor had no zoom listed at all. Whether the Neo 3 keeps the Action 6’s variable aperture is not on the sheet. Neither is a video resolution, a bitrate, or a flight time.

The Rest of the Sheet Matches the September Box Leaks, and the US Is Still Out

Nothing on the sheet contradicts the retail box Bogdanov leaked in September, and it names the same RC Mini. The RC Mini got its FCC grant on December 19, 2025. The Neo 3 itself has no FCC grant, so it cannot be sold in the United States.

The box back DroneXL went through on September 20 listed the RC Mini and three batteries and dropped the Neo 2’s separate transceiver module. The sheet’s fast startup and quick transfer line fits a drone with the radio built in. The Chinese line on obstacle avoidance reads “upgraded again,” DJI’s framing for a system the Neo 2 already carries in omnidirectional form.

Notebookcheck reported the 192.7 gram weight from a production listing dated September 21, 2026, roughly 28 percent over the Neo 2. The listing is Bogdanov’s, as is the spec sheet, so the weight and the sensor rest on the same leaker. His September record on this drone is good: the one Neo 3 image that fell apart last month was recycled box art with AI-drawn battery vents, and it did not come from him. The sheet gives no price and no launch date, and DJI has not announced the Neo 3 on any of its channels.

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that DJI didn’t design a camera for the Neo 3. It reached into the Action 6 parts bin and pulled out a sensor it already makes at scale, which is how a 193 gram beginner drone ends up with a chip larger than the Mini 4 Pro’s 1/1.3-inch sensor. The square format is the tell: that sensor exists because action-camera buyers shoot vertical, and DJI is betting Neo buyers do too. For a first drone aimed at phone-first shooters, that is the right bet. The 42 grams it costs over the Neo 2 are the only price on the sheet, and under 250 g they change nothing for the buyer. DJI never launched the Neo 2 in the US, the Neo 3 has no FCC grant to launch on, and the sensor that makes this one worth buying is the one US beginners will read about and not fly.

Sources: Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News) on X, Notebookcheck, DJI Osmo Action 6 specs

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DHS Tested DJI Against Blue UAS and Hid the Scores. Why Weren't We Told?

Russ 51 Drones — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:40:34 GMT

I think we just learned something pretty important about the whole DJI situation here in the United States. And depending on how you look at it, it might raise even more questions about how much information we’re actually getting from our government when it comes to Chinese-made drones. Before I get into this, I want to give full credit to Haye over at DroneXL. He published an article that I think every drone pilot should read, because he obtained a Department of Homeland Security document that was not part of the public report. And what is in that document is pretty incredible.

DHS Flew Blue UAS Drones Through Hudson Yards

Here’s what happened. The Department of Homeland Security, through its National Urban Security Technology Laboratory, has been testing Blue UAS drones for first responders. Those are the drones that are allowed to be operated by government agencies in the United States. They meet certain federal sourcing and cybersecurity requirements and are supposed to give agencies alternatives to foreign-made drones like DJI.

One of these tests took place at Hudson Yards in New York City. That is a very brutal environment for a drone. You’ve got huge buildings, GPS interference, reflected signals, RF congestion, all of the things that can make flying a drone in a dense urban environment pretty difficult.

They tested several Blue UAS drones there. But here’s where it gets a little more interesting. They also tested two DJI drones, the Matrice 4T and the Matrice 30T. DHS actually scored those DJI drones right alongside the approved Blue UAS aircraft.

The Public Report Left the DJI Numbers Out

When the public DHS report came out, the DJI scores weren’t in it. The public report acknowledged that covered-nation drones were tested and said there were significant differences between them and the Blue UAS platforms, but it didn’t tell the general public what those differences were, or even which direction they went. Instead, it said the covered-nation results were available to public safety agencies upon request.

Well, now we know what those numbers were.

The DJI Matrice 4T Scored 4.6 Out of 5

According to the DHS addendum obtained by DroneXL, the DJI Matrice 4T scored a 4.6 out of 5 and the Matrice 30T scored a 4.3. The Skydio X10D scored a 3.7. And the Parrot Anafi USA scored just a 2.4.

It wasn’t just the overall score. According to the addendum, the Matrice 4T scored a 4.9 for its regular camera, 4.9 for its thermal camera, and 4.9 for command and control link quality.

Remember, this is Hudson Yards. This isn’t somebody flying over an empty farm field in North Dakota. This is about as challenging an RF and GPS environment as you’re going to find anywhere. And the DJI drones performed extremely well.

A DJI Matrice 4 series aircraft with its auxiliary light on, in front of a fire engine. DHS evaluators gave the Matrice 4T a 4.9 for its regular camera, 4.9 for thermal and 4.9 for command and control link quality at Hudson Yards. Photo credit: DJI

One Matrice 30T Drifted Into a Building

There’s another part of this that we absolutely have to mention, because I don’t want to cherry-pick the information that supports one side of the argument. One of the Matrice 30Ts had a problem. According to the report, during a nighttime flight in a narrow urban canyon, it lost both satellite positioning and vision positioning. It dropped into attitude mode and drifted into a structure. It was damaged badly enough that it couldn’t continue the test.

That’s pretty significant. If we’re going to talk about how well these drones performed, we also have to talk about when one of them fails. But even with that incident, DHS evaluators still gave the Matrice 30T an overall score of 4.3.

The Disadvantages DHS Listed Had Nothing to Do With Flying

Something else really caught my attention. According to the DroneXL article, the disadvantages DHS listed for the DJI aircraft included cybersecurity concerns associated with being manufactured in a covered nation, and the fact that buying these aircraft benefits a covered nation rather than domestic manufacturers.

Think about that for a second, because it gets directly into something a lot of you have been saying for years. How much of this is actually about cybersecurity, and how much of it is about building and protecting an American drone industry? Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

This Test Doesn’t Settle the Security Question

I want to be very careful here, because this particular DHS assessment does not answer the cybersecurity question. In fact, the assessment specifically says it examined operator experience and did not evaluate or determine national security risk. So somebody can’t take these results and say, “See, this proves that DJI drones aren’t a security risk.” It doesn’t prove that.

But the opposite is also important. If we’re going to restrict these products because they’re supposedly an unacceptable security risk, then I think it’s completely reasonable for Americans to ask where the testing is that demonstrates that risk. And at the same time, when the government conducts an operational comparison showing how these drones actually perform against the alternatives, why weren’t all of those results included in the public report?

Maybe DHS has a legitimate reason. DroneXL reached out to them, and they said certain NUSTL findings are designated For Official Use Only because they contain sensitive operational information. Okay. But according to DroneXL, public safety agencies could already request these results from DHS. So I think it’s fair to ask why the scores themselves couldn’t have been included in the public report. I think we all know why.

The Cheaper Drone Won

There’s another number I think you’re going to find interesting. According to the assessment information, the Matrice 4T cost DHS about $12,958 and the Matrice 30T about $18,608. I’m not sure why they had to pay that much, because you can go on B&H Photo right now and get a 4T for about eight grand, but the government likes to pay more for stuff. The Skydio X10D was $28,382.

So put yourself in the position of a fire department or a police department or any kind of search and rescue organization. You’re not debating geopolitics. You’ve got somebody missing, or you’ve got a structure fire, or you’ve got a police situation unfolding. You need a drone that launches quickly, maintains connection, gives you a great thermal image, and actually works between buildings. And according to these test results, the much less expensive DJI Matrice 4T scored higher overall than the Blue UAS alternatives that were scored at Hudson Yards.

That’s not my opinion. Those are the scores contained in the DHS addendum. What is my opinion is that this information should have been part of the public conversation.

Test the Drones. All of Them.

Here’s what really bothers me about the entire DJI debate. For years, we’ve heard about the potential security threat posed by Chinese drones. We’ve heard about data security, supply chains, foreign adversaries, and protecting critical infrastructure. Those are legitimate things for our government to investigate.

But I’ve said this a thousand times and I’m going to continue to say it. Test the drones. Develop a cybersecurity standard. Make DJI pass it, but also make Skydio pass it. Make Parrot pass it. Make every drone manufacturer pass the exact same test, and if DJI fails, show us the results. Then we actually have evidence to discuss.

What I don’t like is making enormous decisions about an entire industry while relevant information sits somewhere that the people affected by those decisions can’t easily see.

This addendum doesn’t prove that DJI has no cybersecurity problems. It doesn’t prove that every American-made drone is inferior. And it doesn’t prove that every restriction on Chinese drones is purely protectionism. But it does tell us something we didn’t know before. Our own government tested DJI drones against some of the alternatives that agencies are being encouraged, or in some cases required, to use. And according to this addendum, the DJI drones performed extremely well. Yet when the public version of the report came out, those scores weren’t available. I think we’re allowed to ask why.

Where Do You Land on This?

Does this change your opinion at all about what’s happening with DJI in the United States? Do you think these results should have been included in the public report? And I think the bigger question is this: if the government believes DJI represents a national security threat, should it have to publicly show the technical evidence behind that conclusion? Or are there legitimate national security reasons why some of that information simply can’t be made public? Go read Haye’s original DroneXL article for yourself, because there’s a lot more in there than I covered in the video.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Russ. Watch the full video on the 51 Drones YouTube channel, and find more of Russ’s work on his DroneXL author page.

North Myrtle Beach Amazon Drone Vote: Staff Ask Oct. 20, Forum Oct. 7

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:57:00 GMT

North Myrtle Beach’s planning staff are asking the Planning Commission to put off Amazon’s drone launch pad a second time, to October 20, and the staff report posted Friday afternoon says a public workshop on the project has been scheduled for October 7. The commission meets Tuesday, October 6, at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers to hear the request, a minor amendment to the Palmetto Coast Industrial Park’s planned development district for a 13,627-square-foot fenced paddock behind Amazon’s same-day delivery building at 8651 Water Tower Road. The plans show six launch and landing pads, a divert pad, two banks of turn stations and an 8-foot barrier wall.

The city’s zoning administrator has classed the drone operation as accessory to the warehouse already approved on the site, which keeps the decision with the five appointed commissioners and off the City Council agenda. Staff found nothing that would preclude approval, and the report says approval would not authorize a single flight: Amazon is separately pursuing the Federal Aviation Administration authorization it needs for that.

The staff report gives the workshop a date. The city’s online calendar for October 7 listed only a parks program when DroneXL checked it on Friday evening.

Staff Want the Vote Pushed to Oct. 20 After a Sept. 22 Motion Was Withdrawn

Minor PDD Amendment Z-26-22 reached the commission on September 22, where an approval motion was withdrawn and the item postponed for more information and public engagement, according to the October 6 staff report. The recommended motion for Tuesday is postponement to October 20.

The commission may approve, approve with modifications or conditions, disapprove, or postpone. It did not take staff’s advice on September 22, when the packet carried a ready-made approval motion and five findings of fact. Assistant planning director Suzanne Pritchard told WMBF News the city wanted to workshop the idea, and that the FAA governs the flying: “I think the city absolutely does have a say in where they would launch from.”

Tuesday’s agenda carries a second Amazon item, Z-26-24, for building and site signs at the same address. Staff want that one postponed too, for revised plans, and asked that the signs say North Myrtle Beach rather than Myrtle Beach.

The Plans Show Six Launch Pads, a Divert Pad and a Jersey-Barrier Wall

The paddock sits in a paved service lot behind the fulfillment center, on a 19.73-acre property, and removes 24 parking spaces. Its 8-foot (2.4-meter) enclosure is 32-inch concrete Jersey barriers topped with metal posts and privacy mesh. Inside: storage containers, turn stations, pads.

The architectural set, dated August 5, 2026 and drawn by Timothy Lott of Arlington, Texas, labels the site SSC3-PADDC, the acronym Amazon’s FAA filings use for a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center, and adds an operations cage inside the warehouse. The application was filed on August 18 by permit expediter Burnham Nationwide on behalf of the property’s owner and was complete on August 28. No new building, access drive, exterior lighting, antenna or tower is proposed, and the fire marshal, public works, planning and zoning all signed off at the conceptual stage. Battery charging and storage get their review at the building-permit stage.

The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed Amazon filings for Texas, Florida, Detroit, Kansas City, Omaha, Baton Rouge, Chicago and Tolleson on October 2, and none for South Carolina. Since the FAA signed a nationwide environmental finding for drone delivery on July 28, a site like this one can be authorized against the national study with no local comment period. The operating numbers that follow are Amazon’s own, from its other hubs, on the DroneXL Amazon Prime Air tracker.

The 7.5-Mile Circle Reaches Atlantic Beach, Barefoot and Myrtle Beach’s North End

Every Prime Air hub in Amazon’s FAA filings serves a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius, about 174 square miles, with up to 1,000 MK30 flights a day. From Water Tower Road, that circle reaches Briarcliffe Acres at 2.2 miles, Atlantic Beach at 3, Barefoot Landing at 3.5 and City Hall at 4.9.

The hours in those filings run 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Myrtle Beach’s north end, around 82nd Parkway and Arcadian Shores, is 5.3 miles out, inside. Longs is 7.3 miles and the Cherry Grove pier 7.6, on the line. Little River’s center sits 9.5 miles out and Carolina Forest 8.7, outside. DroneXL measured from Water Tower Road’s position in OpenStreetMap, not the parcel, and Amazon’s actual delivery boundary can exclude any of these.

Grand Strand Airport is 2.6 miles from the hub. Pritchard told WMBF the FAA keeps a large no-fly area around the city and the airport. The aircraft is the one Amazon flies at its US hubs: 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff, a 5-pound (2.3-kilogram) payload, a drop from about 13 feet (4 meters) over the lawn, and no parachute in any FAA filing DroneXL has read.

South Carolina’s New Drone Law Leaves the Launch Pad to the City

Act 150 of 2026, the Drone Regulation and Public Safety Act, takes effect January 1, 2027. Its preemption clause, S.C. Code § 55-1-230(A), bars local ordinances that conflict with the act or FAA rules, then lets a municipality restrict drone takeoff and landing sites. The paddock is one.

Governor McMaster signed the act on May 15, 2026 after unanimous votes in both chambers. Until it takes effect, South Carolina’s only drone-specific statute is § 24-1-300, which keeps drones away from prisons. The state has no drone-specific trespass or privacy law before or after January 1; § 16-17-470, the voyeurism statute, is the closest general provision. The act’s § 55-1-210(B) says nothing in it supersedes federal authority over airspace, so altitude, routes and hours in the air stay with the FAA.

That puts South Carolina closer to Massachusetts, where Westborough’s Planning Board still holds a site-plan vote, than to Florida, where state preemption stripped Tallahassee of the ordinance a commissioner asked for. North Myrtle Beach can decide whether the pad exists, and on what terms.

Three Levers Remain: Conditions, the Noise Record and the File

The first lever is the vote, whenever it comes. Staff told commissioners they may approve with conditions, and a condition written into Z-26-22 binds the site plan afterward. Pad hours, a departure cap or a flight-volume report are proposable; whether each survives preemption is the city attorney’s question.

The second is the noise record. The FAA’s noise appendix for Amazon’s Baton Rouge hub puts an MK30 in delivery hover at 92.1 dBA SEL measured 25 feet from the aircraft, and at 63.7 dBA SEL under a 200-foot cruise pass. Amazon’s Baton Rouge operations manager told a Rotary Club on September 9 that the aircraft is quieter than an idling delivery truck. Both belong in the city’s file with their distances attached, because the nationwide finding’s 600-foot setback from homes is calculated on an annual day-night average, and a backyard is not.

The third is the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, S.C. Code § 30-4-10 and following. The Z-26-22 file, the zoning administrator’s accessory determination, and any correspondence between the city and Amazon about flight counts, routes or the workshop are public records, and the time to ask for them is while the item is open.

Who to Contact Before Tuesday

The Planning Commission meets October 6 at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers, 1018 2nd Avenue South, with a 9:15 a.m. workshop in the Planning and Development conference room and a YouTube stream on the agenda. Public comment is item 7. The chair is Silvio “Rocky” Cutuli; staff answer at (843) 280-5566.

Amazon’s Prime Air line is 1-888-280-4331, and the customer-service chat reaches the drone team through “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” A resident inside the circle can opt out of a drop zone through the same path once service starts, and anyone ordering from Amazon will see the drone option only if their address qualifies. The FAA takes drone questions at 844-359-6982. DroneXL’s residents’ guide covers what applies in any town Amazon is entering.

Richardson Approved Its Pads in 2025 and Learned What It Had Signed in 2026

Richardson, Texas approved Amazon’s launch pads in 2025. By April 2026, after an MK30 struck an apartment building and residents counted drones over their pools, the city concluded it had no legal handle on the flights, dropped a rezoning threat on legal advice, and now points residents to their senators.

Amazon told Richardson’s council in March the hub filled about 150 orders a day. Its FAA approval allows 1,000. Westborough, Massachusetts is the other end of the same process: its Planning Board has refused Amazon’s request to delay a site-plan hearing while 92% of 853 survey respondents said they oppose the hub. In Westborough Amazon asked for the delay. In North Myrtle Beach the city’s own staff did.

North Myrtle Beach resident Jolene Puffer, who also writes for MyrtleBeachSC News, told WMBF: “Once we set a precedent, something happens forever.”

DroneXL’s Take

A staff recommendation to postpone, a workshop with a date, and a packet that spells out what the city can and cannot decide: my read is that North Myrtle Beach is doing in two weeks what Richardson did not do in a year, and that nobody there is running a trick. The accessory-use reading is defensible, and the state law that arrives in January says the pad is the city’s call. The risk is the one Richardson shows: a city that approved pads in 2025 was telling residents to call Washington by 2026, because nothing attached to the approval said anything about flight counts or hours, and the hub it approved at 150 orders a day holds FAA authorization for 1,000.

I’m for drone delivery where the flight earns its noise: blood, medication, a defibrillator across a bay. A box of sunscreen flown over Barefoot by an 83-pound aircraft with no parachute, built to carry 5 pounds where Zipline’s P2 carries 8 at 55, does not earn it, and my reading of every collision on the tracker is that an MK30 that hits something comes straight down.

The commission does not need to share that view to act on it. It needs to use October 7 to ask the city attorney, in public, which conditions will hold, and to write them into Z-26-22 on October 20. The October 7 workshop has a date in the staff report and no listing on the city calendar; the first thing to ask for Tuesday is the room and the time.

Sources: City of North Myrtle Beach, Planning Commission agenda and staff report, Oct. 6, 2026, Planning Commission packet, Sept. 22, 2026, WMBF News, MyrtleBeachSC News, South Carolina General Assembly, Act 150 of 2026, FAA drone environmental review index.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Utah Rescue Captain Tells DC the FCC Drone Ban Will Cost Lives

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 16:42:58 GMT

Captain Kyle Nordfors, the drone coordinator for Weber County Search and Rescue in Utah, has taken his fight against the Federal Communications Commission’s “military-grade” drone proposal to Washington’s own newspaper. In an opinion piece published by The Hill this morning, October 2, he writes that the drones the FCC wants to pull from the US market have helped his volunteer team save an estimated 25 to 30 lives and cut its average search from four and a half hours to under one.

The proposal, in PS Docket 26-189, would bar the import and sale of foreign-made drones carrying a thermal camera or LiDAR, among other categories. Nordfors says that describes nearly every aircraft his team flies, including the one that found a snowboarder in the dark two years ago.

He also says he has flown the American-made alternatives, and none of them match his fleet. The companies positioned to replace it charge three to eight times as much.

Nordfors Puts a Price on the Fleet and on the Alternative

Weber County bought its entire fleet of 12 drones for roughly $90,000, Nordfors writes in The Hill. A helicopter costs millions before crew, fuel and standby time. The thermal drone in that fleet had eyes on a missing North Fork snowboarder in 10 minutes, hours faster than a ground team or a helicopter launch.

The North Fork rescue is one DroneXL readers know. Our December 2025 investigation into DJI drones saving American lives documented it: a pre-release DJI Matrice 30T found the snowboarder off-trail, after dark, with ice forming on his skin. Nordfors uses the same case in The Hill to make the point that the FCC’s proposal would classify that exact aircraft as military-grade because of its thermal camera, and the LiDAR that keeps it out of trees and cliff faces.

On the domestic alternatives, Nordfors is specific. He writes that the US-made drones on the market cost three to eight times as much and deliver less than half the capacity, with shorter flight times, weaker thermal sensors and less reliable performance in high winds and cold. “I have tested them, and none have been able to match what my team’s current fleet can do,” he writes.

The federal government’s own test lab reached the same result, and DroneXL published it yesterday. A DHS addendum marked For Official Use Only scored the Matrice 30T at 4.3 out of 5 at Hudson Yards, against 3.7 for the Skydio X10D, with the DJI Matrice 4T at 4.6, the highest mark of any aircraft in the Blue UAS series. The two DJI aircraft outscored both Blue UAS on all nine criteria. DHS left those scores out of the public report.

Nordfors briefs Weber County Search and Rescue team members on a search area from the screen in the team's rescue van. Photo credit: Weber County Search and Rescue / Pilot Institute

That is the same claim he put on the record with the Commission itself. His comments in Docket 26-189, filed on September 2 and published in full by DroneXL, named Skydio directly and said the proposal would set the country back an easy ten years. The Hill piece drops the names and the “blood on their hands” language and keeps the numbers.

The Record Shows 16 Comments in Support of the FCC

Nordfors cites Pilot Institute’s analysis of the docket, which found 98.6 percent of comments opposed the proposal and just 16 supported it. Pilot Institute, a DroneXL partner, read and coded all 3,824 filings with readable text; Greg Reverdiau walked through the method and the results on DroneXL on September 9. On the economic-impact question, 1,701 filings addressed it and one agreed with the FCC.

Nordfors writes that many of the opposing comments came from agencies like his. The proposal’s own economic analysis tentatively concluded the impact would be minor and contained because domestic production is more prevalent in the higher-end categories. The comment record, and his own cost figures, say otherwise.

He closes the piece with the same offer he made the Commission: come to Utah and watch a search. “See side-by-side how the American drones match up to the equipment you want to ban,” he writes.

Nordfors is the sUAS Team Coordinator for Weber County Search and Rescue and UAS Chairman of the Mountain Rescue Association, which covers more than 90 rescue teams in North America. He is a 25-year aviation veteran and a current Boeing 737 captain for a US legacy airline. He won the Unsung Hero Award at the Global Search and Rescue Excellence Awards in London in May 2025 for the drone work behind these rescues.

DroneXL’s Take

Kyle is a friend, and I have covered his team’s rescues for years, so take this with that disclosure. He is right, and the fact that he has to say it in The Hill instead of being heard in the docket tells you something about how this proposal was built.

The FCC asked whether domestic alternatives exist and whether the economic impact would be minor. A rescue pilot with an airline captain’s certificate answered both questions with numbers: $90,000 for 12 aircraft, a search time cut by three and a half hours, and a domestic alternative that costs up to eight times more and does less than half the job. Then 3,770 other filers said some version of the same thing, and DHS’s own evaluators put the Matrice 30T six tenths of a point ahead of the best Blue UAS at Hudson Yards and filed the result where the public could not see it. A month after the record closed, the Commission has issued no order, and Nordfors is still extending the Utah invitation in print, which tells you nobody took it. I don’t expect the FCC to argue with his numbers. My read of the December Covered List action is that the agency’s habit is to not engage with the public safety record at all, and this docket is on the same path.

I have been making the “drones for good” argument since my DroneDJ days, and the people who need to hear it most are the ones who still think of drones as toys. A retired FDNY firefighter laughed at the idea over lunch a few years ago. Nordfors’s piece is written for that reader, not for me, and it is the right venue for it. Congressional staff read The Hill. I doubt many of them read PS Docket 26-189.

Whether the Commission’s order, whenever it comes, addresses the public safety record directly or hides behind its tentative finding that only recreational users are affected is the test. If you run a rescue program and have not told your congressional delegation what your fleet does and what it would cost to replace, Nordfors just wrote the template.

Source: The Hill; Pilot Institute FCC comment record analysis; FCC Public Notice DA 26-758

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:12:00 GMT

Amazon has asked Westborough’s Planning Board to push the hearing on its Prime Air drone launch pad from October 6 to November 10, according to the board’s revised agenda on the town website. The request, filed under the name of Amazon economic development policy manager Tareq Wafaie, covers site-plan application 26-02275, the only local vote Amazon needs before its MK30 drones can fly from the parking lot at 64 Otis Street.

Wafaie told a packed Westborough hotel ballroom on September 23 that Amazon hoped to launch by the end of October. A November 10 hearing puts the earliest possible local approval ten days past the end of October, and five weeks past the date the board was set to vote.

On Thursday night, Westborough’s Select Board met in the Mill Pond School auditorium in front of a capacity crowd, none of whom spoke for the drones, and agreed to take the fight to the State House. Amazon did not send anyone.

Amazon Wants Five More Weeks on the Only Vote Westborough Controls

The October 6 Planning Board agenda lists 64 Otis Street, applicant Tareq Wafaie, Amazon, as a site-plan review hearing with “Continuation requested to November 10, 2026 meeting,” permit 26-02275. Two unrelated applicants on the same agenda, an earth-moving permit and a warehouse site plan, asked for the same date.

The board votes on continuances at the meeting itself, so Tuesday’s 6:30 p.m. session in the Forbes Building’s Great Hall decides whether Amazon gets the delay. The agenda shows the board’s next scheduled dates as November 10, November 17 and December 1.

When Amazon filed the request is not clear from the record. The PDF the town serves at the agenda’s web address carries a “Revised agenda posted on 9-11-26” stamp, but when DroneXL checked that same agenda on September 28 for the survey story, it listed no Amazon item. Either the town replaced the file without a new stamp, or the request was added after September 28, which would put it within days of the lawmakers’ letter. The Planning Department’s filing record would settle which.

Amazon has given no public reason for the request. It moves the local vote past the launch window Wafaie floated on September 23, and past the pause three state lawmakers asked for on September 29 in Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA. Sen. Michael Moore, Rep. Kate Donaghue and Rep. Hannah Kane asked for answers on operating hours, flight paths, service range and daily flight counts first. None of Thursday’s reports carried an Amazon response to the letter, the Select Board meeting or the continuance.

Even with the pad approved, Amazon would still need the FAA’s site-specific environmental sign-off, which a member of its airspace team said on September 23 was under review, and a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the hub as in review. The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Massachusetts document when DroneXL checked it on September 28.

Westborough’s Select Board Voted to Take the Drones to the State House

Westborough's Select Board and town staff on the Mill Pond School stage on October 1, 2026, for the special meeting on Amazon's Prime Air proposal. Amazon sent no one. Photo credit: Stephen Quinn, WHDH 7News, via X.

The Select Board’s special meeting opened at 6 p.m. Thursday with public comment, followed by a 7 p.m. item on additional comments to the Planning Board about Prime Air and a 7:45 p.m. item on next steps with the town’s legislative delegation on unmanned aircraft. Westborough TV recorded it.

Board members were unanimous in opposing the proposal, WHDH reported, and said they would draft a letter to state lawmakers and look at towns with more restrictive drone bylaws, naming North Reading. WCVB’s account has the board reviewing the town’s own drone rules and noise ordinances as well.

Residents rallied outside before the doors opened, WCVB reported, and more than 100 filled the auditorium, per WHDH. Resident Faina Kofman, speaking a year to the day after two MK30s struck a crane in Tolleson, Arizona, told the board a person with malicious intent could use a drone to “interfere with emergency operations or conduct unauthorized surveillance.” Resident James Bedar: “The simple answer to all these questions is no, we don’t want this.” A mother quoted by WHDH asked what it means for a family if devices overhead record the backyard where she breastfeeds and her children play.

The Mill Pond School auditorium during the Westborough Select Board's October 1, 2026, meeting on Amazon Prime Air. Photo credit: Stephen Quinn, WHDH 7News, via X

The room matched the numbers. The independent Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey at dronefeedback.com, run by a resident with no tie to Amazon or the town, stood at 1,211 responses on Friday morning, up from 853 when DroneXL first reported it on September 28, with opposition unchanged at 92%, 3% in support, 3% supporting with safeguards, and 94% saying they are unlikely to use drone delivery. Hopkinton residents were among those outside, the Hopkinton Independent reported, and Hopkinton’s own Select Board takes up the hub on Tuesday, October 6, the same night as Westborough’s Planning Board. Chair Shahidul Mannan invited Amazon, which had not confirmed. Amazon is Westborough’s largest taxpayer, WHDH noted, and held its own community meeting on September 23, the one DroneXL reported from in Amazon Tells Packed Westborough Room Its Drones Are Coming Anyway.

North Reading’s Bylaw Regulates Hobbyists, Not a Part 135 Carrier

North Reading’s drone bylaw, adopted at Town Meeting on June 5, 2017, bans interfering with emergency responders, recording people where they expect privacy, and flying within 25 feet of bystanders. Operators must keep the aircraft in sight. The Attorney General approved it that November. Fines run to $300 per violation.

The bylaw sits as Chapter 9 of the town’s general bylaws, the North Reading Transcript reported when it passed, and the police chief who proposed it said he wanted something on the books in the absence of state law.

Those are rules written for a Phantom in a park. Amazon flies the MK30 under a Part 135 air carrier certificate, beyond the operator’s line of sight by design, and a Massachusetts town has already lost in federal court over that kind of rule. In Singer v. City of Newton (2017), a federal judge struck Newton’s ban on flights beyond the operator’s line of sight, along with its registration rule and its altitude limit over private property, as preempted by federal aviation law. My read is that a Westborough copy of North Reading’s bylaw would bind the hobbyist next door and not a single Amazon flight.

The Planning Board’s own hand is weak too, as its vice chair John Gelcich told the September 15 hearing: “we are almost required to approve it,” the Boston Globe quoted him. Town counsel treats the pad as accessory to the warehouse, which puts it in site-plan review rather than a special permit, and under Prudential Insurance Co. v. Board of Appeals of Westwood (1986) a Massachusetts board cannot deny site-plan approval for a use allowed by right once the bylaw’s criteria are met. It can impose conditions. DroneXL walked through what those conditions can and cannot cover in its guide for residents. Residents with questions for the company can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”

DroneXL’s Take

Amazon asked for the delay the lawmakers wanted and told nobody, and I count that as the week’s real news. A continuance request is not a pause, and Amazon has not called it one, but the effect is the same: no pad vote before November 10, no October launch, and five more weeks to answer the four questions Moore, Donaghue and Kane asked. If Amazon walks into the Great Hall on November 10 with those answers, the delay was worth it. If it walks in with the same slide deck it showed on September 23, it will have spent the time teaching Westborough, Shrewsbury and Hopkinton to write bylaws that do not work and to ask Beacon Hill for one that might.

The Select Board did the one thing Thursday that can matter. A town cannot regulate the airspace, and North Reading’s bylaw shows how little a town can do alone. A state already licenses commercial landing areas through MassDOT Aeronautics, and the delegation that signed the September 29 letter now has a unanimous Select Board asking it to act. Watch November 10 for the pad, and watch for a bill filed in Donaghue’s or Moore’s name before then. The one that shows up first tells you who is setting the schedule in Westborough, and as of this week it is not Amazon.

Source: Town of Westborough Planning Board agenda, October 6, 2026, Town of Westborough Select Board agenda, October 1, 2026, WHDH, WCVB, Hopkinton Independent, Boston Globe, Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey, North Reading Transcript, Town of North Reading AG approval notice, Holland & Knight on Singer v. Newton

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Castle Rock Froze Walmart's Drone Hub 7-0. Its Clock Runs Out Jan 21

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 14:46:02 GMT

Castle Rock, Colorado, needed one meeting to stop Walmart’s drone delivery hub. On July 21, 2026, the Town Council adopted Ordinance No. 2026-023 on first and final reading, 7 to 0, under an emergency clause that made it law the moment the vote closed. For six months the town will not accept, process or approve any application for a commercial drone delivery hub.

The trigger was a pre-application from Walmart for an 18-drone port at its store at 133 Sam Walton Lane, north of downtown, flying orders to homes within five to six miles. Walmart flies its drones with Wing, Alphabet’s delivery unit. Neither company had filed a formal application when the council voted.

The ordinance is two pages long, and this week it was circulating in a Facebook thread among Westborough, Massachusetts residents fighting an Amazon Prime Air hub there. The moratorium expires January 21, 2027. The council said in July that the pause buys time to write rules. No draft has been published.

Castle Rock Wrote A Definition Before It Wrote A Rule

Section 4 of the ordinance defines a commercial drone delivery hub as “an area used for the storage, charging, take-off and landing of private unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for the purpose of picking up and discharging cargo.” The zoning code had no such use.

The recitals list what the town wants to regulate: proximity to residential and other sensitive areas, light, noise, size, site design, hours of operation and screening. Nothing in the document touches flight, altitude or routes. A staff memorandum to the July 7 council meeting said the Federal Aviation Administration has primary authority over drone operations and that the town’s reach ends at launch and landing areas, setbacks, screening and lighting. Staff told the council the town may have limited ability to address flight complaints once a hub is approved and operating, and pointed to disputes in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina as the reason to write standards first.

Town Attorney Michael J. Hyman approved the ordinance as to form and Tara Vargish, director of development services, as to content. Mayor Jason Gray and Town Clerk Lisa Anderson signed it. The emergency clause cites Section 2.02.100.E of the municipal code, which requires an extraordinary majority; the council had all seven votes.

Gray’s line at the meeting, reported by Colorado Community Media, was “I just think there’s a lot more questions than answers right now.” Councilmember Max Brooks said the delivery model will be commonplace in six months, six years or 16 years, and the town did not need to rush to embrace it before understanding the impacts. Brooks also raised privacy, telling Denver7 residents would have concerns “as they should.”

Parker Paused For Nine Months The Night Before

Parker, Castle Rock’s neighbor in Douglas County, passed its own emergency ordinance on July 20, suspending for nine months any land use approval or building permit for a drone dispatch and delivery facility. Councilmember Anne Barrington put it as “We’re not saying no, we’re just saying no today.”

Parker is bringing in a consultant to study federal and state rules, industry practice and other jurisdictions before writing its framework. Castle Rock’s council liaison told the Planning Commission on July 23 that staff would bring proposed use categories, design standards and zoning rules back to the commission in the fall, per Citizen Portal’s record of the meeting. As of October 2, no draft has surfaced in the town’s public meeting records or in local coverage; the last time drone delivery appears in a Castle Rock meeting record is that July 23 briefing.

On the far side of Denver, Northglenn went the other way. Its Planning Commission recommended a Commercial Drone Delivery Hub land-use category on September 15, with 200-foot buffers, a 65-decibel cap and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. hours, and its own staff memo said a hub in the next town can legally deliver to every address in Northglenn regardless. That memo applies to Castle Rock in reverse: the moratorium keeps the pad out of town and stops there.

Walmart Has Hit Three Local Stop Signs This Year

Castle Rock is the third local government this year to stop a Walmart-Wing launch site. Cobb County, Georgia denied one in April, Axios reported. Parker and Castle Rock froze applications before any were filed. Lincoln County, North Carolina approved one 3 to 1 on June 15 over a 200-signature petition.

Walmart passed one million drone deliveries in May and announced with Wing in September a network of more than 270 launch locations for 2027. Colorado was on neither company’s 2026 market list. Each of the three Colorado sites surfaced through a pre-application at a planning counter, not a press release.

The Westborough residents who found Castle Rock’s ordinance are in a different legal position. Their Planning Board can only approve or deny Amazon’s site plan for a fenced pad on an existing parking lot. Westborough changes its zoning at Town Meeting, not by a seven-member council on an emergency clause, and the board hearing Amazon’s application has no power to impose a pause. The Colorado document reads to them as the tool their town does not have.

DroneXL’s Take

Castle Rock did the honest version of this. It did not pretend to regulate airspace, it did not ban drones, and it did not hide the applicant. It admitted its code had no word for what Walmart wanted to build, wrote the word, and stopped the clock while it writes the rest. That is what a zoning moratorium is for, and a 7 to 0 vote with the town attorney’s signature on it is harder to attack than a petition.

The weakness is the clock. Six months runs out on January 21 and the town has shown nothing. Northglenn, which started later, already has a draft with numbers in it. If Castle Rock reaches January with no ordinance, it either extends the moratorium, which starts to look like the ban it said it was not, or it lets the pause lapse and takes Walmart’s application into a code that still has no standards. Watch the Planning Commission agendas between now and then; that is where the real decision gets made.

For the Westborough crowd passing this around: the ordinance stops a pad, not a drone. Northglenn’s own memo says the hub next door serves every address in town. Castle Rock’s residents will find out whether that holds the first time a Wing aircraft from a store outside the town line drops a package on a Castle Rock driveway.

Sources: Town of Castle Rock Ordinance No. 2026-023, Castle Rock News Press, Denver Gazette, Axios Denver, Denver7, Citizen Portal.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DSPA Calls Congress Over Blue UAS Report as 15 States Sue FAA and Skydio Unveils the MegaDock

Greg Reverdiau — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:05:00 GMT

Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have four stories for you this week. DSPA asks Congress to look at the Blue UAS report. We have 15 states that are suing the FAA over drone delivery. We have DJI’s next enterprise drone leaking in China. And finally, Skydio unveils a new fixed-wing drone and a robotic dock. So, let’s get to it.

DSPA Wants Every Drone Pilot and First Responder to Call Congress

The Drone Service Providers Alliance is asking every drone pilot and first responder in the country to call Congress. Now, this is a group that normally lobbies for commercial drone operators. Its CEO, Vic Moss, says the issue here is big enough that they need to step outside of their lane a little bit.

If you haven’t seen the report yet, DHS tested six different Blue UAS listed drones and two Chinese drones in a New York City environment, where, as you can imagine, it’s pretty complex.

From the Blue UAS list, three of them actually could not hold position, one had a flyaway, and another one failed to pair with the controller for up to 15 minutes. The results for the Chinese drone testing were not publicly released, but we were still able to get that report through an anonymous source.

Of the six Blue UAS drones that were tested, the Skydio X10 came out with the best overall score of 3.7 out of 5. The only other aircraft that was able to be tested in the complex urban environment was the Parrot Anafi USA Gov edition, which got a 2.4 out of 5.

Now, the For Official Use Only report that tested the two DJI drones showed an overall score of 4.6 and 4.3 for the Matrice 4T and the Matrice 30T, respectively. One has to actually wonder why the assessment of these two specific drones was hidden from the general public, but you probably know the answer.

Problems with the Blue aircraft included latency, connection issues, slow boot-up time, and slow connection time as well. Based on the results from the public report, DSPA wants Congress to name an agency to test every manufacturer’s security the same exact way they’re testing usability in these reports, regardless of the country of origin.

If you fly commercially or if you’re flying for public safety, it’s probably worth five minutes for you to get on the phone with a representative, or even send an email, and let them know they should be taking action here.

15 States and Harris County Are Suing the FAA Over Drone Delivery

Next up, 15 states and Harris County, Texas are suing the FAA. New York’s Attorney General filed the case on September 28th. The target here is a nationwide environmental clearance the FAA issued in July. That clearance lets the FAA approve new drone delivery markets without having to do an environmental study for every single one of them.

The states are saying the FAA barely addressed the lithium battery fire risk, even after an Amazon drone battery burned here in Arizona, near a home, last October.

No stay has been requested yet, so drone deliveries are going to keep on flying for now, but it’s another hurdle for drone delivery.

DJI Matrice 5D Leaks in China, 750 Grams Heavier Than the Matrice 4TD

The DJI Matrice 5D has been leaked in China. It’s listed at just over 3 kg, which is about 750 grams heavier than the current Matrice 4TD, which is actually quite a bit of a jump. Keep in mind, these specs come from a leaker, not from DJI, so treat it as unconfirmed for right now. But this specific leaker has a pretty good track record with DJI specs, so it’s more than likely going to be true.

Now, the extra weight here means there’s probably LiDAR or a built-in RTK antenna in the drone itself directly.

This is unfortunately not one we’re going to see in the US, as DJI aircraft cannot get approval from the FCC, but it goes to show that DJI is just going to continue to innovate and produce new aircraft for the rest of the world.

Skydio Shows the Production F10 Lightrunner and the MegaDock

Skydio, at its yearly in-person event, showed the production version of its F10 Lightrunner that was introduced last year at the same event, with quite a bit more detail and refinement than the initial announcement. The company says it can hit 100 miles per hour, cover a 30-mile radius, and stay on mission for up to two hours.

It launches and lands from something they call the MegaDock. It uses a robotic arm to grab the aircraft out of the air right in front of that big dock. There’s no runway needed, no person standing there to catch the aircraft. They have a tray where a bunch of them are lined up, and then they can pick up the next one to go.

Skydio also announced new software that they call Asset Command for utility inspection, and Security Command for autonomous property patrols. The pitch here is fewer pilots watching individual drones, and more autonomous systems covering pretty much an entire county or utility corridor.

Skydio says the F10 will actually not reach customers until 2027, and pricing was not released at the time. Based on the infrastructure required for the MegaDock, it’s likely in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

This conversation is going to continue on Post Flight, where we’re going to talk about all of these stories uncensored in the premium community. Link is in the description. We’ll see you on the live Q&A on Monday. Have a great weekend, and don’t be that guy.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Greg Reverdiau. Watch the full weekly UAS news update on the Pilot Institute YouTube channel, and find more of Greg’s work on his DroneXL author page.

Hegseth Orders Four-Star Drone Command, Congress Has To Build It

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:51:00 GMT

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the creation of a four-star Autonomous Warfare Command on September 30, 2026, telling 600 O-3 officers and E-6 noncommissioned officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico that it will scale drones, robotics and AI across the entire military. He calls it AutoWarCom. It is to be a functional combatant command with service-like authorities, its own budget and manpower, and new military career fields for the people who fly and fight with unmanned systems.

It was the first of six announcements in the speech, and the only one built around hardware. The target date is October 1, 2027. Until then an interim effort called Project Agincourt, run out of the Pentagon’s unmanned systems office, is supposed to build the path to it.

The memo Hegseth signed the same day sets that date and directs his staff to go to Congress for the legislation the command needs. The speech named no commander, no budget line and no headcount.

Project Agincourt Turns the Drone Czar’s Office Into the Command’s Builder

The Project Agincourt memo directs the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS, to lead the effort, and gives it 30 days to submit a plan of action and milestones with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. That puts the first deadline at roughly October 30.

DRPM-UxS is the office DroneXL covered in July as the Pentagon’s drone czar memo, created June 29 with milestone decision authority over nearly every unmanned program in the department and a direct line to Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg. It already owns the Defense Innovation Unit, the counter-drone task force JIATF-401 and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group.

Agincourt adds two missions on top of that portfolio. The first is the pathway: organizational shifts, the legislation, and career tracks for officers and enlisted. The second is a prototype of what Hegseth calls warfighting acquisition. The memo says the output it wants is not a particular drone but a repeatable procurement system that keeps adapting in combat on the right side of the cost exchange. Decisions and dollars move to combatant commands and frontline units, and systems get tested in exercises and, where possible, in combat.

The name is a 1415 reference. Hegseth’s version has the English winning with longbows and moving their fletchers, the arrow makers, up to the front to keep the rate of fire going. The fletchers in this analogy are engineers and startup founders embedded with operators.

Hegseth addresses roughly 600 O-3 officers and E-6 enlisted leaders at Quantico as screens flanking the flag display the Autonomous Warfare Command seal, a Reaper-style drone inside a letter A. Photo credit: Department of War

West And Strasiser Run It As CEO And COO, And DIU Loses Its Director

Hegseth named Owen West, director of the Defense Innovation Unit since March 2, chief executive of DRPM-UxS for the next year, with Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser as chief operating officer. West gets strategic risk, resources and scale. Strasiser gets operational problem solving and combat employment.

West is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and a former Goldman Sachs partner who ran its gas and power trading. He deployed twice to Iraq as a Marine on leave from the bank. Before DIU he was the department’s senior advisor on the Drone Dominance Program. Strasiser is described by the department as the first enlisted SEAL to graduate from Navy Test Pilot School.

DIU moved the next morning. On October 1 it named Travis Metz, its deputy director and chief operating officer and the program manager for Drone Dominance, as acting director, saying in a post on X that West “steps aside to kickstart Project Agincourt.” Metz came to DIU from the Secretary of War’s office, where he worked on Drone Dominance, after a career running venture and private equity funds. Inside Defense first reported the handover.

Drone Dominance Is The Template, And It Has A Year Of Results To Judge

Hegseth told the Quantico audience that Agincourt applies the Drone Dominance playbook to DIU and that the DRPM team has shipped thousands of autonomous systems to the Middle East and elsewhere for Operation Epic Fury. The “thousands” figure is the department’s own, repeated in its release, with no breakdown published.

The playbook is the one DroneXL has tracked since the March Gauntlet I results: a $1.1 billion, four-phase buy of one-way attack drones in which military operators fly and score vendors’ aircraft, and orders follow the leaderboard. Gauntlet I produced orders for about 30,000 drones. By August 25, the winners had delivered 13,440 of the 22,320 the first tranche required, about 60 percent. Gauntlet II at Fort Carson in August ended with Neros taking a $100 million order plus 800 drones its rivals failed to deliver, and the department opened a $450 million Phase 3 round with a 400-drone entry requirement the day before Hegseth spoke.

That program bans motors and batteries from China starting in Phase II. Whatever AutoWarCom buys will inherit that rule, and the suppliers who can meet it.

Hegseth framed the whole command around cost. For 40 years, he said, the United States bought quality over quantity. “The pace of war is changing faster than the process to support it,” he said, before laying out a high-low mix in which exquisite weapons are the lightning and massed attritable drones are the wind and rain of the same storm. The full speech is on Rev.

Project Meridian Puts Anduril’s Founder On The Pentagon’s Futures Panel

Hegseth also commissioned Project Meridian, a 120-day future-warfare study co-directed by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich under Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael, ending in a public report with a classified annex. The three sat in the audience and met Hegseth in a secure facility right after the speech.

Luckey founded Anduril, which sells drones, counter-drone systems and autonomy software to the department whose future requirements he is now helping to write. The department’s release describes the panel as “the nation’s premier private-sector innovators” and says nothing about recusals or conflict rules. Meridian’s scope runs, in the department’s words, from the subterranean to the cislunar.

The Order Arrives Without A Commander, A Budget Or A Headcount

Hegseth said a four-star commander will soon be named to raise the AutoWarCom flag, and named nobody. The memo sets no dollar figure, no personnel number and no headquarters, and it conditions the whole structure on legislation that DRPM-UxS is told to go and secure from Congress.

Congress got there first, on paper. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s FY27 defense bill, approved 18-9 in June, creates a four-star Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command with test and evaluation powers and limited acquisition authority, as Breaking Defense reported. That bill has not passed, and the Senate’s limited acquisition authority is narrower than the service-like authority Hegseth described. Reconciling the two is the legislative work the memo assigns to DRPM-UxS, and it is why Hegseth spent part of the speech on Goldwater-Nichols, SOCOM and Space Force, three reorganizations the building fought before it executed them.

The money is already asked for. As DroneXL reported in July, the FY27 request seeks $75 billion across drones and counter-drone work, most of it routed through the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group that now sits under DRPM-UxS, and Hegseth used the speech to press Congress for a separate $350 billion reconciliation package. Whether AutoWarCom absorbs any of that, or gets a line of its own, is not in any document released this week.

DroneXL’s Take

Standing up a four-star command for drones is the right call, and I’d rather see the Pentagon over-rotate toward it than keep running autonomy as a side project inside three services that each want their own program. The idea is not what I’m skeptical of. The clock is.

“Fastest peacetime shift in modern military history” is Hegseth’s line, and the record he’s pointing to is one year of Drone Dominance. That year is real: orders for 30,000 drones from Gauntlet I, a $100 million order to Neros out of Gauntlet II, a Phase 3 round that demands 400 drones just to enter. It also includes a Gauntlet I tranche that was 60 percent delivered by late August and the 800 bonus aircraft Neros picked up because other winners could not deliver what they’d been awarded. My read is that the delivery gap, not the org chart, decides whether AutoWarCom means anything by October 2027. A combatant command with its own acquisition authority can write checks faster. It cannot make a startup with a China-free supply chain deliver the airframes it was awarded if the motors aren’t there.

Watch two dates. The 30-day plan due around October 30 will show whether the services are handing over force structure or just liaison officers. Meridian’s 120-day report, due around the end of January, will show whether a panel led by a drone vendor recommends buying more drones. If both land on schedule, Hegseth’s timeline is credible. If the first one slips, the 2027 flag-raising is a ceremony, and the real command will be whatever DRPM-UxS has become by then.

Sources: Department of War, Project Agincourt memorandum, Military Times, Inside Defense

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon Already Raised Its Texas Drones. 'Drone Warriors' Want Higher

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:16:00 GMT

A group of Richardson, Texas homeowners calling themselves the “Drone Warriors” told NBC’s TODAY last week that they want Amazon Prime Air to fly its drones higher over their neighborhood. Correspondent Ryan Chandler stood in Scott Bratcher’s backyard, where Bratcher, who has lived there 28 years, said hundreds of drones a day now cross what used to be his quiet spot.

Amazon answered with a statement calling Prime Air safe and reliable and the sound on the ground minimal and short-lived. The company announced in August that it plans to reach nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of the year.

Higher is exactly what Amazon already gave Richardson. In February, after complaints that started in January, Amazon lifted its average outbound altitude over Richardson to 225 feet (69 meters).

Amazon Raised Texas Drones After Complaints, Then Cited the FAA in Louisiana

Amazon changed its Richardson flight profile in February and explained it to the city council in March, with no new FAA rule involved. On September 9 in Baton Rouge, an Amazon spokesperson told a Rotary Club audience that altitude changes require Federal Aviation Administration approval.

Amazon’s Sam Bailey laid out the change at a March City Council meeting, along with rerouting some departures east over commercial land before they reach the Creek Hollow Estates neighborhood, Community Impact reported. He said making the MK30 itself quieter would take a hardware change that is not coming soon, which leaves altitude as the noise lever. The Baton Rouge exchange is in DroneXL’s report on that hub. If the Richardson change sat inside a flight envelope the FAA had already approved, both accounts can be true, and residents elsewhere have the same lever to ask for.

The TODAY segment is not the neighborhood’s first push. Residents from at least four neighborhoods protested outside Amazon’s Research Drive facility on June 13, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported, and Amazon answered then that it had raised altitudes and adjusted flight paths. The tracking apps the Drone Warriors use show Walmart drones too, and Richardson’s drone delivery FAQ lists both operators over the city.

On February 4, an MK30 hit an apartment building on Routh Creek Parkway and smoked on the sidewalk. Nobody was hurt. Amazon told NBC 5 the cause was some type of GPS interference near tall buildings, and that it removed all buildings of similar height and size from its delivery portfolio.

Richardson Has No Say Over the Sky, and 15 States Are Now in Court

Richardson cannot order Amazon to fly higher. The city’s FAQ says cities cannot restrict drones above a certain altitude or create airspace limits that conflict with federal rules. Fifteen states and Harris County, Texas, petitioned a federal appeals court on September 28 to undo the FAA clearance behind Amazon’s expansion.

That clearance is the FAA’s July 28 nationwide environmental finding for Part 135 drone delivery, which lets most new hubs open without the local comment period Richardson’s neighbors once had. The petition, filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James in the Second Circuit, states jurisdiction and makes no argument yet. DroneXL covered the filing the day it landed. Harris County is Houston, not Dallas: no North Texas government is among the petitioners.

One resident’s tracker logged 52 drones overhead on a single Friday in September, a figure from The New York Times that DroneXL reported on September 21. TODAY carried the story to a national morning audience, and the residents closed with advice for the next town: research first, and hold Amazon accountable. One of them put it more bluntly: “If they don’t follow the rules, take away their toys.” For residents in towns where a hub is coming, DroneXL keeps a running guide to what you can still do and how to reach Amazon.

DroneXL’s Take

Amazon should give the Drone Warriors their altitude, and do it before the MK30 reaches 500 more towns. Altitude needs no new aircraft, and Amazon has moved it in Richardson before. Telling Baton Rouge that altitude is the FAA’s call reads to me as a dodge.

My bigger worry runs past Amazon. “Take away their toys” is a line about an 83-pound delivery drone with no parachute, but legislators don’t write rules that precise. When a street gets angry enough to name itself, I expect the bill that follows to say “drones,” and the hobbyist with a 249-gram Mini and the volunteer search and rescue crew pay for a problem neither of them caused. I think Amazon can still defuse Richardson with a flight-profile change. If it waits for a court or a statehouse to do it, every drone pilot in Texas inherits the result.

Sources: TODAY, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, City of Richardson, Community Impact, Second Circuit petition, The New York Times.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DHS Left DJI's Scores Out of Its Blue UAS Report. Here They Are

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:20:00 GMT

The Department of Homeland Security’s test lab scored the DJI Matrice 4T at 4.6 out of 5 and the DJI Matrice 30T at 4.3 when it flew them at Hudson Yards in July 2025, against 3.7 for the Skydio X10D and 2.4 for the Parrot ANAFI USA GOV. The figures come from a 12-page addendum to the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory’s Blue UAS assessment, numbered SAVER-T-R-40, dated July 2026 and marked For Official Use Only. DroneXL has obtained a copy. The public report DHS published in September described the comparison in one sentence, said evaluators found “significant differences,” and did not say in which direction.

The two DJI aircraft outscored both Blue UAS on all nine criteria the lab measured, from camera acuity to controller interface. The addendum also records one Matrice 30T losing its satellite and vision positioning at night in a narrow urban canyon, drifting into a structure and leaving the aircraft unusable. DHS lists two disadvantages for each DJI aircraft. Neither one concerns how it flew.

The scores land in departments that have been making this argument without the data. An Arizona fire chief told DroneXL last December that lives would be lost if the DJI ban took his department’s air capability away. Oregon’s aviation department counted 467 restricted drones across 25 states. Utah’s Weber County Search and Rescue flies DJI aircraft on its searches, and its drone team coordinator told the FCC in September that a ban would cost American lives. The addendum says the agencies DHS recruited fly “predominantly DJI.” Until now, the only public sign that DHS had scored those aircraft was one sentence in the September report; the SAVER program’s own Blue UAS page lists a 2023 TechNote and a 2024 focus group report and nothing else.

DJI Matrice 4T Scored Highest of Any Aircraft in the Series

The Matrice 4T’s overall 4.6 is the highest DHS recorded in any round of the Blue UAS series, and its 4.9s for both cameras and for link quality are the highest criterion scores in either document. The Matrice 30T’s 4.7 for time to redeploy is the best of any platform.

Criterion at Hudson Yards	DJI Matrice 4T	DJI Matrice 30T	Skydio X10D	Parrot ANAFI USA GOV
EO camera visual acuity	4.9	4.6	3.9	2.6
IR camera visual acuity	4.9	4.2	3.2	2.3
Flight duration	4.6	4.2	3.9	3.0
Command and control link quality	4.9	4.2	3.4	1.8
Latency	4.6	4.4	4.1	1.7
Time to redeploy	4.1	4.7	3.6	2.1
Deployability	4.3	4.0	3.4	2.7
Ease of use	4.6	4.4	4.0	3.0
Ground control station interface	4.4	4.1	4.0	2.8
Overall score	4.6	4.3	3.7	2.4

Complex urban round, Hudson Yards, July 2025. Scale: 1 means the product met none of the evaluator's expectations, 5 means it exceeded all of them. DJI figures from the DHS S&T SAVER-T-R-40 addendum obtained by DroneXL; Skydio and Parrot figures from the public SAVER-T-R-39 report, Table 4-2.

Evaluators wrote that the Matrice 4T held position and kept its video feed “where other systems failed,” including in areas with heavy RF interference and buildings blocking the sky. One evaluator saw the aircraft briefly lose GNSS near the ground, and reported that its vision-based positioning held it in place until it climbed to where more satellites were visible. They could read license plates at long range at night, the airframe did not overheat on assessment days above 90°F (32°C), and most redeployments took under a minute. Their complaints were about the controller: too many features up front, quick-access buttons that were hard to customize, and a screen with no raised lip to protect its edges.

A DJI Matrice 4 series aircraft with its auxiliary light on, in front of a fire engine. DHS evaluators gave the Matrice 4T a 4.9 for command and control link quality at Hudson Yards, the highest criterion score in either document. Photo credit: DJI

The Matrice 30T’s evaluators credited the hot-swappable aircraft and controller batteries for the fastest turnarounds in the series, and one said the thermal camera let them see where vehicles had been parked. Some found the aircraft sensitive to inputs in flight and said it suited experienced pilots. One said deploying it with a payload would take two people. Others found the controller screen cluttered and the zoom slider cumbersome.

A Weber County Search and Rescue volunteer in Utah seats batteries in a DJI Matrice 30T. The hot-swappable batteries earned the Matrice 30T a 4.7 for time to redeploy, the best redeployment score of any aircraft DHS tested. Photo credit: Weber County Search and Rescue / Pilot Institute

In the public report, the X10D’s 3.7 was the best Blue UAS result at Hudson Yards, and the Ascent AeroSystems Spirit, Freefly Astro and Teal 2 were not scored there because they could not hold position. DroneXL covered those findings in DHS Lab Grounds 3 of 5 Blue UAS in NYC, Withholds Chinese Drone Scores. The addendum confirms that four of the seven aircraft DHS brought to Manhattan held position, and two of the four were DJI’s.

A Skydio X10D over Hudson Yards during the July 2025 complex urban assessment. Its 3.7 was the best Blue UAS score in that round, and its 3.4 for link quality compares with 4.9 for the Matrice 4T. Photo credit: NUSTL / DHS Science and Technology Directorate

One Matrice 30T Drifted Into a Structure After Losing GNSS at Night

The addendum’s link quality section for the Matrice 30T records one aircraft loss. At night in a narrow urban canyon it lost GNSS and, per the report’s footnote, vision positioning, and fell back to attitude mode. The evaluator lost control and it drifted into a structure, which left it unusable.

DHS describes attitude mode in a footnote as positioning based on the aircraft’s attitude alone, without GNSS or vision sensors, used as a fallback when both references are lost. The same section still gives the Matrice 30T a 4.2 for link quality and says evaluators described it as dependable for operational use, with occasional minor issues at the farthest distances and in the densest areas.

The two disadvantages DHS lists for each DJI aircraft are identical: cybersecurity concerns because the manufacturer is based in a covered nation, and that sales “benefit a covered nation and divert funds from investment in domestic manufacturers.” The advantages column for the Matrice 4T runs to nine items, including the highest-rated link, cameras and flight duration in the series. The addendum states, as the public report does, that SAVER examined operator experience only and did not evaluate national security risk under any statute.

The Matrice 4T cost DHS $12,958 and the Matrice 30T $18,608, both on procurement quotes. The public report priced the X10D at $28,382 at the time of the urban round, and put the six Blue UAS between $13,964 and $56,195. A footnote in the addendum says the DJI aircraft were bought “under specific clauses allowing the operation of foreign nation covered UAS for testing and evaluation purposes.”

DHS Dated the Comparison Two Months Before It Published the Report Without It

The addendum is dated July 2026 and numbered SAVER-T-R-40. The public report, SAVER-T-R-39, is dated September 2026 and says results for the covered-nation platforms “is available to public safety agencies upon request” through NUSTL@hq.dhs.gov. The addendum carries a date two months before the report that does not include it.

The addendum explains why the DJI aircraft were there at all. Throughout the three-round series, evaluators asked to compare their agencies’ existing aircraft, “predominantly DJI,” against the Blue platforms to understand the capability gaps. DHS added the two DJI models for the final round, chose them because they are what state and local responders deploy, and matched them to the selection criteria used for the Blue UAS. Its introduction adds a word the public version leaves out: agencies still rely on covered-nation drones for their “reliability, price, and overall performance.”

The cover sheet says the material is to be shared on a need-to-know basis and locked away when unattended. The public report says the results it contains are available to any public safety agency that emails to ask. The addendum names no evaluator or agency, and DroneXL is not publishing the document itself.

DroneXL sent questions to the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, DJI, Skydio and Parrot on the evening of September 29 with a deadline of 9 a.m. ET on October 1. Parrot answered. Marie Calleux, who handles investor relations and corporate communication for Parrot, said the company has not been given the test configuration, radio settings, operating conditions or methodology behind the comparison, and that the headline scores alone do not give it “sufficient information for us to meaningfully assess the comparison.” She said the ANAFI USA GOV remains a supported platform, that Parrot cannot establish whether the July 2025 configuration represents the software in use today, and that the aircraft is an earlier-generation platform; Parrot’s current defense and public safety offering is built around the ANAFI UKR. A DJI spokesperson told DroneXL the company had no comment before publication and would decide whether to respond after the story ran. Skydio had not responded by publication time.

DHS Science and Technology responded six hours after publication with a statement that did not address the four questions DroneXL asked and did not dispute any score or comment in the addendum. It said NUSTL conducts “impartial assessments” to help agencies make procurement decisions, that its assessments are “strictly aligned with federal security priorities” including the FCC Covered List and two 2025 executive orders, and that “NUSTL unequivocally does not endorse equipment on the FCC Covered List” because such equipment “poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.” On background, a DHS official said certain NUSTL findings are marked For Official Use Only because they contain sensitive operational details. The addendum describes the same assessment as one that examined operator experience and “did not evaluate or determine risk to national security.” DroneXL will update this article if Skydio responds.

A Parrot ANAFI USA flying near buildings during DroneXL's 2021 review, where radio interference cut its range. The GOV variant DHS tested lost its link as close as 50 feet from launch at Hudson Yards and scored 2.4 overall. Photo credit: Wiebe de Jager / DroneXL

Those numbers arrive as Congress is being asked, by the Drone Service Providers Alliance among others, to replace the country-of-origin ban with a security test every manufacturer must pass. The test Congress ordered for DJI and Autel in the FY2025 NDAA was never conducted, and the FCC added foreign drones to its Covered List in December 2025 without it.

DroneXL’s Take

The DJI drones in most public safety fleets were not bought out of ignorance, and this addendum is the federal government’s own evidence for that. The public report told agencies to research the capabilities of available equipment before buying. This is the research, and DHS did it for them.

A few years ago I had lunch with a retired New York City firefighter who laughed at the idea of a drone on a fireground. To him they were toys. The thermal camera that scored 4.9 in this report shows a crew where the roof is hot before anyone walks on it, and the link that scored 4.9 keeps the aircraft over the scene while the pilot watches the feed instead of the sticks. A volunteer fire department or a county search team gets one budget line for that. The aircraft on it has to power on, hold between buildings and keep its video up, and DHS’s own evaluators have now scored which ones do.

The cybersecurity concern DHS lists is real and this test did not measure it; SAVER says so twice. One Matrice 30T also ended a flight against a building after losing both of its position references, which is the kind of failure that gets an aircraft grounded in a fleet review, and it belongs in any fair reading of these scores. Neither point changes the direction of the numbers.

My read is that the performance data should have been in the public report, next to the Blue UAS scores, so that the agencies spending the money and the members of Congress voting on bans could weigh it. Any public safety agency can request the covered-nation results from NUSTL today. If yours does, share what you get.

Sources: [Unmanned Aircraft Systems in a Complex Urban Environment, Assessment Report Addendum, SAVER-T-R-40, DHS S&T / NUSTL, July 2026, marked For Official Use Only, obtained by DroneXL]; Blue UAS for First Responders Comparative Assessment Report, SAVER-T-R-39, DHS S&T / NUSTL, September 2026; DHS SAVER program, Blue UAS for First Responders

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Hillsborough Blood Drones Launch in October, Flown From Sarasota

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 01:35:00 GMT

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue starts flying whole blood to trauma scenes by drone in October. County commissioners approved the program on September 2, and Fire Rescue demonstrated it for reporters on Monday, September 28. Two Archer First Response Systems (ArcherFRS) drones, one at Station 9 in Sabal Park and one at Station 37 in Riverview, cover 70 square miles (181 square km) of unincorporated Hillsborough County.

When DroneXL last reported on the program, on August 18, it was still waiting on that vote. Tampa General Hospital, the program’s hospital partner, said in its August 3 announcement that Fire Rescue would operate the drones. The county’s September 24 release says Fire Rescue has contracted ArcherFRS to pilot them.

ArcherFRS Pilots in Sarasota Fly Hillsborough’s Blood Drones

Fire Rescue holds the FAA’s Beyond Visual Line of Sight Certificate of Waiver for both aircraft. The people at the controls work for ArcherFRS, which the county contracted for piloting, monitoring and maintenance, and which flies the drones from its Sarasota flight operations center, according to Tampa Bay 28.

The county’s release lets either a 911 operator or a paramedic at the scene order a unit of whole blood. The drones fly largely on their own, with pilots watching around the clock and ready to change course, WFLA reported. ArcherFRS founder and CEO Gordon Folkes told Tampa Bay 28 that each drone waits at its station in a climate-controlled container, already loaded with blood. Over the scene it hovers at about 197 feet (60 meters), and “we lower the deployable payload to the ground on a tether line,” he said.

The drone's insulated payload module, which mounts under the aircraft and is lowered to the ground by tether over a scene. Photo credit: WFLA

The paramedic option targets a problem ArcherFRS has hit before. Its first deployment, with Tampa General in Manatee County, launched in May 2024 and went more than seven months without a 911 dispatcher using it, Government Technology reported that December. The one launch attempted in that stretch failed its pre-flight checks in bad weather.

Hillsborough’s Release Gives Three Delivery Times for One Drone

Hillsborough County’s September 24 release sets the expected average delivery at just under three minutes. It also promises blood on scene in three and a half minutes or less. A flight to the far edge of the coverage area, the same release says, takes five minutes.

A five-minute flight breaks a three-and-a-half-minute ceiling, so the shorter figure can only describe a typical run. WFLA’s Monday report turned it into the average. Tampa General’s August 3 announcement, which we covered on August 4, said under three minutes on average. Each operating area covers 35 square miles (91 square km), from Interstate 4 and Interstate 75 in the north to just south of Gibsonton Drive. All of these figures are projections, because the system has not flown a live call.

Two crew members carry the drone across the pavement at the September 28 demonstration. Photo credit: WFLA

Hillsborough Has Not Published What It Pays ArcherFRS

Neither the county’s September 24 release nor the August announcements from Tampa General and ArcherFRS say what Hillsborough County pays for the program. When Manatee County took up its ArcherFRS deal in 2020, the county’s share was one dollar a month for the first year.

Florida Health Sciences, which operates Tampa General, agreed to pay most of Manatee’s costs, Firehouse reported that September. Hillsborough commissioners approved their program at the September 2 regular meeting, and nothing the county has published since attaches a dollar figure to it. The county calls year one a proof of concept. After it, Fire Rescue wants each operating area grown to 50 square miles (130 square km), then coverage of the entire 900-square-mile (2,331 square km) county.

DroneXL’s Take

Blood on a tether over a Riverview roadside is exactly the drone delivery I argue for: cargo where minutes decide whether someone lives. In my August 18 report, my read was that the vote would pass and October would hold. The vote passed. I also have no problem with a contractor in Sarasota flying the aircraft. A fire department covering 900 square miles has no business staffing round-the-clock remote pilots for two drones, and the FAA waiver stays in Fire Rescue’s name.

The price is a different matter. ArcherFRS sells this through its Champion Hospital program, the model Manatee started with a hospital paying most of the bill, and Hillsborough is now the showcase every fire chief will study. If Tampa General is paying, the county should say so and say how much, because the next county to call ArcherFRS may not have a trauma hospital willing to write the check.

Sources: Hillsborough County, WFLA, Tampa Bay 28, Tampa General Hospital, Government Technology, Firehouse

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Neros Wins $100M Pentagon Order, Plus 800 Drones Rivals Didn't Deliver

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:38:00 GMT

Neros Technologies announced on Wednesday, September 30, that the Department of War has ordered 14,000 drones and explosive payloads from it through Gauntlet II of the Drone Dominance Program, an award the Torrance, California, company values at more than $100 million. The order follows Neros’s first place in the Close Quarters Battle mission and third place in Deep Strike at Fort Carson, Colorado, in August.

The order covers Archer AI, Neros’s 10-inch FPV drone with terminal guidance that flies itself to an operator-selected target, and a 5-inch Archer built for urban and indoor fighting. Neros also received a second bonus order from Gauntlet I, 800 drones taken from competitors that missed their production deadline.

At the Gauntlet II unit prices the program set, $3,500 and $4,500, 14,000 drones cost between $49 million and $63 million.

Warheads Fill The Gap In Neros’s $100 Million Order

Explosive payloads are the only item besides drones that Neros names in the award, and the program’s $4,500 Deep Strike price excluded weaponization. Even if all 14,000 were Deep Strike drones, at least $37 million of the $100 million-plus sits outside the airframes’ list price.

Neros’s announcement gives no breakdown, but the total works out to more than $7,100 per drone (a figure the program’s price sheet never shows). Swarm Defense, fifth in Deep Strike, announced a 4,000-drone order last week with a minimum value of $25 million including munitions and control software, The Defense Post reported, or about $6,250 a drone. Tectonic Defense, which reported the 14,000 figure on September 23 before Neros confirmed it, had put the order at about $70 million on drone price alone. The program raised the Deep Strike price to $5,000 and cut Close Quarters Battle to $3,000 when it opened Phase 3 on September 28.

The quantity matches the order ladder in the program’s April Request for Solutions, which set 8,000 drones for first place and 6,000 for third in each mission area, Aviation Tech Today reported. Neros does not say how the 14,000 split between the two Archers, only that the department is prioritizing Archer AI, the model it launched with its $250 million Series C in August.

The shipment is also the first mass delivery of drones built to APEX, or Adaptive Payload Exchange, an open-source standard Neros introduced so operators can swap conventional, fiber and repeater payloads in the field.

Neros Collected 800 Drones Its Gauntlet I Rivals Did Not Ship

The 800-drone award is Neros’s second Gauntlet I bonus. Neros delivered and got acceptance for its full 2,400-drone March order by July, earning a first bonus of 2,000 drones, Inside Unmanned Systems reported. That brings its Gauntlet I total to 5,200.

Most of the field did not keep pace. Gauntlet I required the 11 winners to deliver half of 22,320 drones within two and a half months and the rest within four and a half. By August 25, 13,440 had arrived, about 60 percent. Only Neros, Ukrainian Defense Drones and Griffon Aerospace had delivered their full orders, and UDD’s batch was still awaiting inspection, as were deliveries from Skycutter and ModalAI. Inside Unmanned Systems traced the shortfall to NDAA-compliant motors, batteries, sensors and chips.

Neros’s announcement does not say which competitors lost the 800 drones. CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson called the program a test of whether companies can build good drones and “produce them in massive quantities with short notice.” He also says Neros is the only manufacturer with more than one Gauntlet I bonus. When I wrote up the Gauntlet II results on September 19, Skycutter, the March champion, had dropped to fourth, and its Gauntlet I order was one of two the program had flagged in July as neither ramping nor shipping.

DroneXL’s Take

The 800 drones are the best news in this release, and they have nothing to do with Neros’s score. The program took drones from companies that did not ship and gave them to one that did. That is merit-based competition, with delivery counted as merit.

Neros was building about 1,200 Archers a week in August, so a 14,000-drone order is under three months of output. The Gauntlet I stragglers were still short of finishing March’s order in late August. Any of them that wants a Gauntlet III slot must first clear the 400-drone delivery gate the program opened Monday, in about two months. Delivery is now the score that decides who stays in this program.

Sources: Neros Technologies, PR Newswire, Inside Unmanned Systems, The Defense Post, Tectonic Defense, Aviation Tech Today.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amprius Gets $75M Pentagon Drone Battery Grant, Mostly Unfunded

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:11:00 GMT

Amprius Technologies will convert an American electric vehicle battery line into a drone cell factory with a Department of War grant of up to $75 million, the Fremont, California company announced on Monday, September 28. The line is run by an unnamed South Korean battery maker and is supposed to turn out 12 million silicon-anode cells a year for Group 1 through 3 drones starting in early 2028. The conversion costs about $100 million, with Amprius and its partner covering the rest in kind.

CEO Tom Stepien went on CNBC the same morning and called it a $75 million grant. The company’s own announcement says a majority of that award is unfunded.

Most Of The $75 Million Still Needs Congress To Appropriate It

Amprius’s announcement says a majority of the award remains unfunded and subject to future appropriations. Payments also depend on the government accepting specified milestones, which the company says it may not hit on time or at all. The money comes through the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program.

Amprius signed the deal, a fixed-price Other Transaction Agreement called Project acCELLerate, on September 23, its 8-K filing shows. The government has obligated about $22 million so far, from fiscal 2025 research and development funds, for a base period that runs to September 22, 2028. That is less than a third of the headline number.

The size of the bet is in Stepien’s own numbers. He told CNBC that the 12 million cells represent about $150 million in incremental annual revenue. In August, Amprius raised its full 2026 revenue guidance to at least $140 million. One converted line, fully funded and fully sold, would more than double the company.

Amprius Walked Away From Its Own Colorado Factory Before Choosing A Retrofit

Amprius announced in March 2023 that it would spend $190 million turning a 774,155-square-foot building in Brighton, Colorado, into a battery factory, and the Department of Energy later selected it for a $50 million grant toward the project. Amprius cancelled the plant in June 2025.

Earlier this year the company paid $20 million to end its Brighton lease, Manufacturing Dive reported from a securities filing. On CNBC, Stepien sold the new plan as the opposite of Brighton: “We’re not pouring concrete, we’re not putting steel up.” After Brighton, it reads as a lesson learned.

Amprius now builds through partners. One of its South Korean contract manufacturers has delivered cells since September 2025, and Nanotech Energy in Northern California is its U.S. partner for cylindrical cells. The new line adds pouch cells. A separate Defense Innovation Unit contract for NDAA-compliant drone batteries now totals $18.1 million. Stepien told CNBC that the anode, cathode, separator and electrolyte all have to come from outside a foreign entity of concern in about 15 months.

Stepien Says China Still Makes Cheaper Cells That Customers Want

Stepien told CNBC that Amprius still has cells made in China. He said the company is happy with their cost and production, and so are many customers. He expects a balance, with buyers chasing the best technology often buying Chinese and contract-bound buyers needing cells made elsewhere.

That second group is growing because the Pentagon wrote it into the rules. Prepared Senate testimony from the Drone Dominance Program in March said Phase II would ban systems using batteries or motors from covered countries. On the August earnings call, Stepien said about half of the 19 drone makers invited to the Fort Carson demonstration use Amprius cells. The program opened its $450 million Phase 3 this week.

The dependency is older than the program. A former senior defense official named batteries among the top three Chinese parts in Blue UAS aircraft, as DroneXL laid out in its NDAA-compliant drones guide. In October 2024, Beijing ordered Dongguan Poweramp, Skydio’s sole battery supplier, to cut the company off, and Skydio rationed batteries shipped with its drones.

On air, Stepien called the cells twice as energy dense as anything else out there. The announcement is narrower: up to twice the energy density of conventional graphite-anode cells.

DroneXL’s Take

Batteries are the right place for this money. When Beijing cut off Skydio’s battery supplier in 2024, America’s largest drone maker had to ration packs, and no American-made airframe fixed that. A domestic cell line closes that gap. It won’t close the price gap, and Stepien said as much on national TV when he praised his Chinese cells’ cost. My read is that the Korean-run American line sells first to buyers whose contracts leave no choice, while the police departments and delivery operators Stepien pitched on CNBC keep buying on price. That is how fair competition should work. I’d rather see the Pentagon pay for a factory than ban a supplier. The weak point is the money. A mostly unfunded grant is a promise that depends on Congress, and the early-2028 date only holds if those appropriations arrive.

Sources: Amprius Technologies, CNBC, Manufacturing Dive, Amprius 8-K, Amprius Q1 2026 results (SEC), Nasdaq.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Avata 360 Can't Fly Acro. An FPV Pilot Still Calls It Enough

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:58:00 GMT

FPV pilot Kai Vertigoh, whose YouTube channel has 260,000 subscribers, published a test of the DJI Avata 360 on September 28 arguing that the 455-gram 360-degree drone can replace several drones for most buyers. He and his crew ran it through five jobs they normally split across different aircraft: a first-time pilot’s camera drone, an autonomous follow drone, a dual-operator rig, close-proximity FPV, and a chase camera for drift karts.

Vertigoh flies FPV first. The Avata 360 has no manual or acro mode, and its Sport mode tops out at 40 mph (18 m/s), against the roughly 100 mph he puts on the 5-inch quads he also flies.

Tracking Software Carries Vertigoh’s Case for a Drone Without Acro

Vertigoh’s case for an Avata 360 that can’t fly acro rests on its tracking software. ActiveTrack 360 and a mode DJI calls Spotlight Free let one pilot steer while the drone keeps a subject framed. He compares that to a dual-operator DJI Inspire 3, which he puts at about $16,000.

Spotlight Free is the feature he singles out. The pilot flies in any direction while the screen keeps an indicator on the tracked subject, so he can swing back to it like a beacon. In his video he says it sounded good on paper and won him over in the air.

The 360 capture also changes follow shots. The drone can fly nose-first toward its forward-facing LiDAR, which DJI’s specifications pair with an omnidirectional vision system, while recording a rider behind it. A single-camera follow drone has to fly backward to film a rider’s face, and Vertigoh says some he has used bumped into things doing it. At Battle Aero, a drift-kart builder run by his friend John, the Avata 360 simply hovered and logged the karts, and the exported clips came out already framed.

The beginner test produced the flip shot. A friend who had never flown a drone learned the stick inputs in a few minutes and flew the pass while Vertigoh backflipped over the prop-guarded aircraft. Shooting 8K at 60 fps let the crew slow the flip to 40% speed on a 24 fps timeline.

Vertigoh’s Own Verdict Keeps Specialists on Separate Drones

Vertigoh ranks the Avata 360 behind the best FPV drone and the best camera drone. Its 8K image is spread across two lenses, roughly 4K each by his count, behind a fixed ultrawide view, and anything beyond automatic tracking needs keyframing in DJI Studio afterward.

For image quality he points buyers to single-lens drones such as the Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S or Mavic 4. Sport mode also switches off obstacle avoidance, which is how his kart chase at golden hour was flown. On whether it is the best follow drone, his answer is “possibly.”

The video never puts the Avata 360 next to the Avata 2. Jeven Dovey did that in April, and DroneXL’s report on his back-to-back shootout found the 360’s obstacle avoidance made FPV footage stutter, while the 377-gram Avata 2 felt far sharper on the motion controller.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d call the Avata 360 a follow camera with prop guards, and a very good one. As an FPV replacement it comes up short on his numbers and on Dovey’s. For American buyers the choice is narrower than anywhere else. The FCC authorized the drone on November 19, 2025, 33 days before the FCC added DJI to its Covered List. In March, DroneXL called it likely the last new DJI drone US pilots can buy. A ban sold as security has left US hobbyists picking from a catalog that no longer grows. If you want one DJI drone that films you, this is it. If you want to learn FPV, a drone that won’t fly acro can’t teach you.

Sources: Kai Vertigoh on YouTube, DJI Avata 360 specifications

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DoorDash Air Drone Lands Chipotle and Popeyes, but No Payload Number

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:53:00 GMT

DoorDash unveiled the aircraft behind DoorDash Air on Wednesday at Dash Forward, its annual product event. The drone flies on six slow-spinning propellers and lowers orders to the ground on a winch. Pilot deliveries will start in Northern California with Chipotle Mexican Grill, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and a local restaurant, Momo N Curry. DoorDash gave no start date and named no city.

When DoorDash earned its FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate on July 29, I wrote that three numbers would decide what kind of aircraft it had built: span, payload and maximum takeoff weight. Today’s announcement says the drone can carry about 80% of typical DoorDash restaurant orders. It gives no payload weight.

DoorDash Built The Kitchen Handoff Before It Built The Drone

DoorDash says it designed the loading systems, packaging and kitchen handoff first and the aircraft second. Crews pack and hand off an order as usual, and a winch handles both pickup and drop-off. Failsafe systems can lower the entire aircraft to the ground in rare events, the company says.

That sequence is the pitch to merchants. Popeyes chief digital officer James Huang said the drone works “without asking our restaurant teams to change a thing.” Mohan Khatiwada, who owns Momo N Curry, said his small front-of-house staff makes every minute of order handling count. Chipotle’s chief digital officer, Arlie Sisson, said the service gives guests more choice in how they get their food.

Dispatch runs through DoorDash’s Autonomous Delivery Platform, the same software that already assigns orders to Dashers and to Dot, the company’s sidewalk robot. It weighs weather, flight range and ground traffic before sending an order by air, according to DoorDash’s announcement. Harrison Shih, head of DoorDash Air, framed the goal as “Any local business should be able to reach consumers by air.”

The partner fleets stay. DoorDash spokesman Eli Scheinholtz told FreightWaves that Wing and Flytrex keep flying for DoorDash, and that more than one drone option adds resilience to its network. Wing started flying Lowe’s orders sold through the DoorDash app in Matthews, North Carolina, only six days ago, as DroneXL reported in Lowe’s Now Flies Painter’s Tape to Charlotte Yards in 20 Minutes.

The 80% figure is DoorDash’s estimate, drawn from U.S. restaurant deliveries of limited distance and size over a limited period, a footnote in the release says. Like DoorDash’s July post, the announcement lists no payload in pounds, no range, no cruise speed and no maximum takeoff weight.

Compare that with Wing. Lowe’s customers in Matthews are held to Wing’s limit of about 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg) per flight, a number anyone can plan an order around. A share of DoorDash’s own order history can’t be checked against anything.

The delivery-time claim has the same shape. DoorDash says initial tests averaged under five minutes from restaurant to door, footnoted as a sample of limited distance and size, with times not guaranteed. In July the company put its 2025 drone deliveries, all flown by partners, at a 25-minute average, described only as its latest estimate.

Noise gets a comparison instead of a measurement: cruising sound roughly like a passing car at delivery height, with neither the decibel level nor the height given. Co-founder Stanley Tang went further when he posted the launch video on X, calling the drones “as silent as a passing car.”

This is DoorDash Air.
- Stanley Tang (@stanleytang) September 30, 2026

Noise is already a Bay Area question for DoorDash. In August 2025 it leased a warehouse at 1960 Folsom St. in San Francisco’s Mission District to build and test aerial delivery systems. Teamsters Local 665 appealed the zoning approval over jobs, and residents quoted by Mission Local raised noise and privacy, as DroneXL covered in DoorDash’s Mission District Drone Test Faces Union Pushback.

The DoorDash Air drone hovers over a residential hillside and lowers an order on its winch tether. Photo credit: DoorDash

The one hard airframe detail, six propellers mounted at the ends of the arms, also corrects my own July read. In DoorDash Just Became An Airline, I took the pointed nose in DoorDash’s launch video for a winged hybrid VTOL. DoorDash’s own photo released today shows no wing: a pointed white fuselage sits on two cross booms, each carrying three rotors. The nose I saw was real. The wing I inferred from it was not.

DroneXL’s Take

DoorDash did the hard part in the right order. Starting from the restaurant counter instead of the airframe is how drone delivery gets past pilot programs, and a Popeyes crew that never changes its routine is the version merchants will actually adopt. I want this to work.

But “80% of orders” and “a passing car” are marketing units. The people who will live under these flights need a payload weight, a maximum takeoff weight and a decibel figure at a stated height, and DoorDash has now had two announcements to publish them. DroneXL sent 30 written safety questions to Wing, Zipline and Amazon when it launched its Drone Delivery Tracker. DoorDash is now an airline with its own aircraft, and it belongs on that list. Until it publishes those numbers, Northern California neighbors are being asked to accept a drone overhead on the strength of a comparison.

Sources: DoorDash (Business Wire), DoorDash, July 29, 2026, FreightWaves, Stanley Tang on X

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Tallahassee Commissioner Urged Amazon Drone Rules. Florida Law Says No

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:02:00 GMT

Tallahassee City Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox was asked at a September 28 candidate forum whether Amazon Prime Air’s planned drone delivery service should be regulated. “So, absolutely, it needs to be regulated,” she answered. A day later she texted the Tallahassee Democrat that her understanding is the state legislature has preempted it.

The city’s own lawyer had already told the commission it can’t. City Attorney Amy Toman put that in a September 23 email to Commissioner Jack Porter, who had asked whether Tallahassee could regulate drone deliveries. Amazon, meanwhile, has set a date for a public showing in the city: a Prime Air meet-and-greet with an MK30 on display, October 20 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center.

Williams-Cox named the city’s Flock license plate cameras as the lesson behind her answer. The commission voted on those cameras in August.

Tallahassee’s City Attorney Says Florida Law Rules Out a Drone Ordinance

Toman’s email cites Florida Statute 330.41, which vests the power to regulate drone operations in the state, except where federal rules say otherwise. Subsection (3)(b) bars any city ordinance on drone operation, airspace, altitude or flight paths. Toman wrote that drone delivery services are explicitly covered.

Under subsection (3)(d), the city keeps its general laws on nuisance, voyeurism, harassment, reckless endangerment and property damage, as long as they don’t single out drones. On the ground, subsection (3)(c) bars the city from withholding permits from a drone delivery service over where its drone port sits, which leaves it setbacks and landscaping. DroneXL laid out those limits when Amazon’s Tallahassee hub preparations surfaced on September 23.

Porter told the Tallahassee Democrat she knew the city was preempted because the city attorney said so. She said she wasn’t aware of the city’s involvement and didn’t know more than what had been reported. Commissioner Curtis Richardson and Mayor John Dailey did not respond to the paper.

Flock Is a City Contract. Amazon’s Drones Are Not

The commission can vote on Flock because the city pays for it. Tallahassee operates 80 Flock license plate cameras and 75 Vigilant cameras, and Commissioner Jeremy Matlow’s motion to end the Flock contract failed 3 to 2 in August, WCTV reported.

Amazon’s drones fly under FAA rules and a state statute, and neither gives the commission a vote. Williams-Cox said at the forum that she learned from the Flock issue, and that she made a motion to suspend the cameras over surveillance concerns.

The forum was a campaign event. Williams-Cox faces former mayor Dot Inman-Johnson in a November 3 runoff for Seat 5, and Amazon’s meet-and-greet lands two weeks before it.

Matlow Expects Tallahassee’s Tree Canopy to Push Amazon’s Drones Low

Matlow agrees the city is preempted from regulating drone flights. His objection is operational: he told the Democrat he imagines Tallahassee’s tree cover will make many neighborhoods hard to serve without flying dangerously low. He also cited complaints from other cities about noise, privacy and safety.

The MK30 descends as low as 13 feet over a yard to drop a package, a figure The New York Times reported and DroneXL cited in its guide to what residents can still do when Amazon arrives. How it does that under a live oak canopy is a question for October 20.

Amazon is billing the event, in Conference Room A at 505 W. Pensacola Street, as a free chance to see the drone up close and ask its team questions. At Amazon’s forum in Westborough, Massachusetts on September 23, which I attended, Amazon’s Tareq Wafaie told residents there is no opting out of drones flying over their property.

DroneXL’s Take

Williams-Cox reached for the wrong comparison. Flock is a surveillance network the city pays for and its police run, so the commission gets to vote it down. The drones aren’t camera-free either: Amazon’s own Prime Air page says they may record people, pets and cars near the drop point, as DroneXL reported when Amazon told Pflugerville the opposite. That is a privacy fight for Florida’s legislature and the FAA, and a city ordinance on routes wouldn’t settle it.

A Prime Air drone is a delivery aircraft flying under FAA rules, and Florida wrote its statute so a city council can’t regulate its flights or zone its drone port out of town. I think Florida got that right. Amazon says it will reach nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of 2026, a count of every municipality inside its delivery zones. I don’t see how any operator runs a network across 500 sets of local altitude and route rules.

Matlow asked the better question. My guess is a drone that drops that low to deliver a package will meet a lot of Tallahassee oaks on the way down. Amazon has to solve that under FAA rules, not a city ordinance. If you live near the Mahan Drive warehouse, bring that question to the Civic Center on October 20 and ask for a route map.

Sources: Tallahassee Democrat, via Miami Herald, Florida Statute 330.41, WCTV, WTXL

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Pentagon Opens $450M Attack-Drone Round With A 400-Drone Deadline

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 02:15:00 GMT

The Department of War opened Phase 3 of the Drone Dominance Program on Monday, September 28, with $450 million for roughly 60,000 attack drones and an option to buy up to 40,000 more. Companies compete in two mission sets: Deep Strike, at stand-off ranges out to about 12 miles (20 kilometers), and Close Quarter Battle. Each company that reaches Gauntlet III must first deliver a 400-drone production order in about two months.

The announcement lists Deep Strike drones at $5,000 each, not counting weaponization, and Close Quarter Battle drones at $3,000. At those prices, 60,000 drones cost at most $300 million.

The Listed Prices Cover At Most $300 Million Of The $450 Million

At the announced prices, 60,000 drones cost between $180 million (all Close Quarter Battle) and $300 million (all Deep Strike), or $240 million split evenly. The announcement puts $450 million behind them and does not say what covers the difference. Deep Strike’s price excludes weaponization.

The wording reads a second way. The announcement splits the money evenly across the two mission sets without saying whether it means dollars or drones. Split by dollars, $225 million buys 45,000 Deep Strike drones at $5,000 and 75,000 Close Quarter Battle drones at $3,000, or 120,000 in all, twice the stated count.

Payloads may explain part of the gap. Gauntlet II companies were each paired with one or more lethality providers, and Swarm Defense, fifth in Deep Strike, received a prototype order valued at a minimum of $25 million for 4,000 Kiwi drones plus munitions and control software, about $6,250 a drone at the floor. Even at that rate for every drone, 60,000 come to $375 million, $75 million under the $450 million.

Deep Strike Rises To $5,000 And 40,000 Drones Are Priced By Vendors

Deep Strike drones rise to $5,000 from $4,500, excluding weaponization, to pay for better compute, communications and sensing, the program says. Close Quarter Battle falls to $3,000 from $3,500. The program will also weigh offers for up to 40,000 more drones at company-set prices, for a total of 100,000.

The program says the 40,000-drone option exists to buy more drones and “better understand the pricing in the marketplace.”

The December 2025 plan was different. Washington Technology reported that the department’s request for information laid out Phase 3 as 100,000 drones at $3,000 each and Phase 4 as 150,000 at $2,300, with payment only for delivered drones. That was before Gauntlet I bought about 30,000 drones for up to $150 million. The 100,000 figure survives only as a ceiling, with 60,000 committed and 40,000 open to offers. The $3,000 price survives for Close Quarter Battle alone.

Ten Gauntlet II Awards Are Spoken For In A Field Capped At 14

The ten Gauntlet II awardees skip the pitch steps and go to Gauntlet III in the mission they won. Everyone else submits a pitch deck on NSTXL, and about eight companies get a November Pitch & Fly. The program caps Gauntlet III at 14 companies.

The announcement counts ten awardees. Neros placed on both Gauntlet II boards, as DefenseScoop listed them, so the two boards name nine distinct companies. The announcement does not say whether the 14-company cap counts companies or awards. Depending on the count, four or five of the roughly eight pitch companies fit.

Gauntlet II entrants had to fill a 120-drone order with lethality payloads in about five weeks to qualify. The Gauntlet III gate is more than three times that volume, in about two months.

Skycutter finished fourth in Deep Strike. The program’s status page listed it in July as neither ramping nor shipping its Gauntlet I order, Aviation Tech Today reported, and DroneXL covered the placement on September 19.

DroneXL’s Take

The 400-drone gate is the smartest requirement in this announcement, and Gauntlet II is the case for it. A leaderboard score says a drone flew well at Fort Carson in August. Four hundred delivered drones say a company can build them. When I wrote up the Gauntlet II results, I said Skycutter’s shipping status would show whether its fourth-place score was a bad week or a business problem. Skycutter has to clear it to reach Gauntlet III. My read is that the gate exists because of cases like that one, though the announcement never says so.

Watch November’s Pitch & Fly, then watch who ships.

Sources: Drone Dominance Program, Aviation Tech Today, Washington Technology, The Defense Post, Soldier Systems, DefenseScoop.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:09:00 GMT

Three Massachusetts state lawmakers have asked Amazon to pause its proposed Prime Air drone delivery hub in Westborough until the company answers residents on operating hours, flight paths, service range and the number of flights a day. State Sen. Michael Moore, D-2nd Worcester, state Rep. Kate Donaghue, D-19th Worcester, and state Rep. Hannah Kane, R-11th Worcester, made the letter public on Tuesday, September 29. It is addressed to Tareq Wafaie, the Amazon economic development policy manager who presented the plan to a packed Westborough hotel ballroom on September 23.

I sat through that presentation. Wafaie told the room Amazon hopes to launch from its 64 Otis Street warehouse, possibly by the end of October, with about six MK30 drones and several hundred deliveries a day inside a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius.

The letter arrived one day after Massachusetts joined 14 other states in federal court against the Federal Aviation Administration over the environmental clearance new drone delivery hubs run on.

Lawmakers Say Amazon Left Hours, Routes and Flight Counts Undetermined

The letter says Amazon’s own outreach left the scope of the Westborough operation confused, with operating hours, flight paths, service range and daily flight counts still undetermined, and calls it unfair to ask the community to evaluate a proposal on those terms. It asks Amazon to pause until it answers.

The letter, as MassLive quoted it, credits Amazon with sharing information with officials and the public and says the sharing itself left the scope unclear. It lists the constituent concerns as noise, frequency of flights, flight path, operating hours, privacy, safety, drone cybersecurity and environmental impact, and calls them valid. The Shrewsbury Post, which also reviewed the letter, says it cites videos of a Prime Air drone dropping a package into a pool and of one crashing into a residential apartment building, plus news reports of noise complaints in Texas and Nebraska. It also puts Prime Air at 13 cities across 10 states and repeats Amazon’s plan to reach more than 500 communities by the end of the year.

Moore, in a statement released with the letter, drew the line between trucks on neighborhood streets and “flying dozens of camera-equipped drones in the skies above our homes.” He called Amazon’s Westborough warehouse a net benefit to the region and said launching over unresolved concerns could damage the company’s relationship with the community, Patch reported. Kane said people inside Amazon’s range “need to be able to trust that their questions will be answered.” Donaghue cited residents’ “serious concerns regarding the environmental impact of drones on wildlife, especially birds.” At the September 23 forum, Wafaie said Amazon ran no peer-reviewed wildlife study of its own and relies on the FAA’s review.

The letter’s sharpest line is about jurisdiction: “A federal permit does not reflect the community’s trust and support.”

Only Westborough’s Launch Pad Is Up for a Vote, and Amazon Set No Pause

The pause request has no legal hook. Westborough’s Planning Board, resuming its hearing on site-plan application 26-02275 on October 6, can rule only on the fenced pads and trailers in Amazon’s Otis Street parking lot. The FAA controls the flights, and Amazon hopes to hold every other approval by year-end.

Residents fill a Westborough meeting room, with more standing along the walls, for Amazon's Prime Air community meeting on September 23, 2026. The lawmakers' letter is addressed to Amazon's presenter that night, Tareq Wafaie. Photo credit: DroneXL

Those remaining approvals are the FAA’s site-specific environmental review, which a member of Amazon’s airspace team said the agency was still working on, and a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area. Wafaie said Amazon had none of them yet, and the Drone Delivery Tracker lists the hub as in review. He also said about 80% of the communities where Amazon has proposed a hub approved it administratively, with no public hearing, as DroneXL reported from the room in Amazon Tells Packed Westborough Room Its Drones Are Coming Anyway. Westborough is in the other 20%, and an independent resident survey DroneXL covered on September 28 had 92% of 853 respondents opposed.

Westborough’s Select Board has called a special meeting for Thursday, October 1, at 6 p.m. in the Forbes Municipal Building, with a 7 p.m. item on comments to send the Planning Board and a 7:45 p.m. item on next steps with the town’s legislative delegation, according to the agenda Patch published.

None of Tuesday’s reports carried an Amazon response to the letter, and WBZ-TV said it had asked. Amazon’s most recent statement on Westborough, from spokesperson Jack Stelzner earlier this month, said the company is working with local officials to bring the service to the area. Spokesperson Lindsay Hamilton told the Boston Globe this week that customer response in other markets has been overwhelmingly positive and that fewer than 1% of customer-service inquiries about Prime Air involve noise. In the ballroom, the only item Wafaie floated as negotiable was operating hours, and he said he was not committing to anything.

Massachusetts Joined a Lawsuit Against the FAA Clearance Amazon Needs

Massachusetts is one of 15 states, plus Harris County, Texas, that asked the Second Circuit on September 28 to set aside the FAA’s July 28 nationwide environmental finding for drone package delivery. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed for the coalition. The petition does not yet argue the case.

Every Part 135 delivery approval the FAA has issued since July 28 rests on the document the states want thrown out, and no stay has been requested, so approvals continue, as DroneXL reported in FAA Sued by 15 States Over Drone Delivery Clearance Amazon Runs On. Amazon told the September 23 room it does not yet hold the FAA’s sign-off for Westborough. The January comment letter that preceded the suit built its safety argument on the October 1, 2025, Tolleson, Arizona, crane collision, and DroneXL added the February 2026 strike on a Richardson, Texas, apartment building to that list. The lawmakers’ letter does not name the location of the apartment crash it cites, as reported. The filmed MK30 apartment strike in DroneXL’s file is Richardson, on February 4, 2026, and it is the one I asked Wafaie about on September 23. He did not address it.

DroneXL’s Take

Amazon should grant this pause, and I say that as someone who wants delivery drones to succeed. Three of the four things the lawmakers asked for, hours, routes and flights per day, are things Wafaie would not pin down for a room of several hundred people on September 23, and the eight safety questions DroneXL sent Amazon on September 4 are still unanswered too. A company that has these answers for other cities and withholds them here looks worse than one that stops to produce them.

The pause request carries no force, and by Wafaie’s own count 80% of Amazon’s proposed hubs never faced a public hearing. But the letter’s argument, that a federal permit is not community consent, is close kin to the one Massachusetts is now making in the Second Circuit: that the FAA cleared drone delivery nationwide with no information about the communities underneath. Launching in October on an FAA sign-off that would rest on a clearance fifteen states are asking a court to vacate, over a town whose legislators asked you to wait, is how a company earns the moratoriums Castle Rock and Parker already passed. Watch Thursday’s Select Board meeting for whether Westborough asks its delegation for a state bill, and October 6 for whether the Planning Board votes on the pad before Amazon has answered the four questions.

Sources: MassLive, CBS Boston / WBZ-TV, Shrewsbury Post, Patch, Boston Globe, Petition for Review, New York et al. v. FAA.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Lodi NJ Drone Ban Is Preempted, Judge Rules, But Pilot Gets No Order

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:56:00 GMT

A federal judge in Newark held on September 24 that the Borough of Lodi, New Jersey cannot enforce its 2025 drone ordinance, which bans drones below 400 feet across the whole town, because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) already occupies that airspace. Judge Susan D. Wigenton denied Lodi’s motion to dismiss a suit brought by resident Paul Palange, who was written up three times in July 2025 for flying a drone with no camera on it from his own yard.

Palange represented himself. He had no lawyer, and he still got a ruling that the ordinance fails under both field preemption and conflict preemption, one of them the theory that killed Newton, Massachusetts’ drone law in 2017.

He did not get the restraining order he asked for. Lodi told the court he is not in violation of the ordinance. He was served with summonses under it on July 18, 22 and 30, 2025.

Lodi Wrote a 400-Foot Floor Under the FAA’s 400-Foot Ceiling

Lodi adopted Chapter 217, Drones and Unmanned Aircraft, on June 17, 2025 as Ordinance 2025-08. It bans any drone with a camera or sensor below 400 feet anywhere in the borough, and bans sensor-free aircraft below 400 feet over residential and commercial zones, roads, public buildings and parks.

FAA rules cap small drones at 400 feet above ground level. The court put the two side by side: “Read together, those restrictions leave no meaningful altitude band in which a UAS may lawfully operate.” Lodi is 2.27 square miles (5.9 square kilometers) of houses, roads and shops. The carve-out for sensor-free aircraft covers, in practice, nothing.

The ordinance carries fines of up to $500 for a first offense, $1,000 for a second, and $2,000 plus up to 90 days in jail for a third. Its stated purpose is privacy and public safety. Section 217-4D says lawful operation under FAA rules “shall be permitted,” which is the clause Lodi leaned on in court.

The timing is not a coincidence. Lodi sits in Bergen County, one of the counties at the center of the December 2024 drone panic that DroneXL covered in “Debunking the New Jersey drone rumors,” and the borough council passed its ban six months after the sightings that federal agencies later attributed to manned aircraft and hobby drones. Westwood, in the same county, tried the same below-400-foot rule in 2020, and DroneXL reported then that only the FAA regulates that airspace. Lodi did it anyway.

Judge Wigenton Rejected the Privacy Defense and the FAA Savings Clause

The court held the ordinance field preempted because it “in substance dictates where UAS may fly and at what altitude,” core questions of airspace management and aviation safety. Lodi’s privacy rationale failed on the ordinance’s own definitions: Palange’s aircraft has no sensor, so no privacy interest is in play.

Lodi’s fallback was Section 217-4D, the clause permitting FAA-compliant flight. The court rejected it in one sentence: “where Congress occupies a field, even complementary or parallel state regulation is impermissible.” A local law that copies federal law is still a local law regulating federal airspace.

On conflict preemption, the opinion tracks Singer v. City of Newton, the 2017 Massachusetts decision that struck a privacy-framed 400-foot ban as a de facto prohibition. DroneXL’s May 2026 piece on the Olathe, Kansas ordinance walked through the same precedent; Olathe pulled its rule before a judge had to. Lodi did not, and now has a written opinion against it. The ordinance, Wigenton wrote, “stands as an obstacle to the FAA and Congress’s objectives to integrate UAS into the national airspace.”

The opinion is eight pages, marked not for publication, and it is a letter opinion on a motion to dismiss. Palange has shown his claims are plausible and likely to succeed, not won a final judgment. Lodi’s answer and any appeal are still ahead.

The Borough Won the TRO Fight by Saying Its Own Tickets Don’t Count

Palange asked for a temporary restraining order to halt enforcement during the case. Judge Wigenton found he is likely to win on the merits, then denied it for lack of irreparable harm: recreational flying is not protected speech, hobby time can be priced, and Lodi says it is not enforcing.

The First Amendment argument failed because Palange called his flights recreational and never claimed they carry a message. “At most, enforcement of the Ordinance would temporarily limit Plaintiff’s recreational enjoyment,” the court wrote, and that is not expressive conduct. He also did not allege his livelihood depends on the drone.

Then came the borough’s own representation. Lodi told the court that Palange’s FAA-authorized flights are already permitted under the savings clause and that he is not violating the ordinance. The court took Lodi at its word: the record “does not show that Plaintiff faces imminent enforcement,” so any injury is “speculative rather than immediate.” The opinion records that Lodi police visited Palange’s property repeatedly from February through July 2025, served him with the ordinance in court on July 16, and issued three summonses in the two weeks after. What became of those summonses is not in the complaint.

DroneXL’s Take

Lodi told a federal judge that a hobbyist its own police ticketed three times is not in violation of its ordinance, and that concession is why Palange goes home without an injunction. I read that as a borough that knows its ordinance is dead and would rather it die quietly than under a court order. New Jersey’s legislature already settled this in 2018: N.J.S.A. 2C:40-29 preempts any municipal drone ordinance inconsistent with state law, and the state act contains no altitude rules for a town to be consistent with. Lodi’s council passed Chapter 217 seven years after that statute, six months after a drone panic that turned out to be manned aircraft and hobby drones, and it took a resident with no lawyer and no camera on his drone to get the first written finding that the thing is unenforceable. The consequence for every other New Jersey pilot is the useful part. Wigenton’s opinion is not precedent, but it is a federal judge applying Singer v. Newton to a New Jersey town, and the next council that reaches for a 400-foot ban will have to explain why its version survives when Lodi’s did not. Bergen County has 70 municipalities. Check yours.

Sources: Palange v. Borough of Lodi, D.N.J. No. 2:26-cv-02375, Letter Opinion (Sept. 24, 2026), Lodi Code Chapter 217, P.L.2017, c.315

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FAA Sued by 15 States Over Drone Delivery Clearance Amazon Runs On

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 04:52:00 GMT

Fifteen states and Harris County, Texas sued the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday, September 28, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to throw out the agency’s nationwide environmental clearance for drone package delivery. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the petition on behalf of the coalition, which includes California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington and Wisconsin. The target is the July 28 finding of no significant impact that lets the FAA approve new Part 135 delivery markets against one national study instead of a fresh environmental assessment for each one.

DroneXL covered that finding on July 31 under the headline “FAA Clears Drone Delivery’s Environmental Path Nationwide, Overriding 17 State Attorneys General.” Those seventeen had demanded a full environmental impact statement in January and lost.

The FAA’s decision document gave challengers 60 days from July 28. That window ran out on Saturday, September 26. The petition is dated Monday.

Zipline's second-generation Platform 2 aircraft at its docking tower, one of the Part 135 fleets covered by the finding the states want set aside. Photo credit: Zipline

The Petition Names 16 Plaintiffs and Makes No Argument Yet

Fifteen states and Harris County, Texas petitioned the Second Circuit on September 28 to set aside the FAA’s July 28 nationwide environmental finding for drone package delivery. New York Attorney General Letitia James is counsel for all petitioners. The petition states jurisdiction and venue and makes no argument.

The petition, signed by Assistant Solicitor General Blair Greenwald under Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, names the FAA, Administrator Bryan Bedford, the Department of Transportation and Secretary Sean Duffy as respondents. The full list of petitioners: New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin and Harris County. One early report named Travis County as the Texas plaintiff. The document says Harris.

A petition for review under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 15 is a notice, not a brief. The arguments arrive once the FAA files the administrative record and the court sets a schedule, and neither has happened. The substance so far comes from California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s press release, which says the assessment covers deliveries that will happen at unnamed future places and times with no information about the communities underneath and does not address the safety risks of a much larger rollout. Bonta’s line: the assessment “falls far short of properly analyzing the environmental impacts.” The FAA did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Wing's delivery drone at a Walmart launch in Houston, inside Harris County, the one local government on the petition. Photo credit: Wing

The Filing Landed on Day 62 Because Day 60 Was a Saturday

The deadline was Saturday, September 26, and the petition is dated Monday because Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 26(a) moves a deadline that falls on a weekend to the next business day. The coalition used every day allowed, sixty days after the FAA signed the finding on July 28.

The petition cites that rule by name, alongside 49 U.S.C. § 46110, the statute that routes challenges to FAA orders straight to a circuit court and skips the district courts. It also quotes the FAA back to itself: page F-18 of the final assessment declares the document “a final agency action and a final order” reviewable only in the courts of appeals. The agency wrote the sentence that opened the courthouse door.

Matternet's M2, the first delivery drone to earn an FAA type certificate, flies under the same Part 135 approvals now tied to the nationwide finding. Photo credit: Matternet

Two January Signers Stayed Out and the Case Skipped the Ninth Circuit

Seventeen attorneys general signed the January 23 comment letter demanding a full environmental impact statement. Fifteen signed the petition. Connecticut and Vermont are the two that did not, and neither attorney general’s newsroom carried a word about the case on the night it was filed. The lead also moved: Illinois led the letter, New York leads the case.

The venue choice is the more interesting change. The January letter built its legal argument on Ninth Circuit precedent, the friendliest NEPA case law in the country, and four of the petitioners (California, Arizona, Oregon and Washington) could have filed there. They filed in New York’s home circuit instead. Nothing in the petition explains the choice.

Connecticut’s absence has a live edge. Amazon wants up to 1,000 delivery flights a day from North Haven, and the state’s own coastal review comment window on that hub closes October 1. Attorney General William Tong signed the January letter and skipped the suit.

Harris County’s signature changed hands too. The letter was signed for County Attorney Jonathan Fombonne. The petition lists Abbie Kamin.

DoorDash Air announced its own Part 135 certificate on July 29, one day after the FAA signed the finding. Photo credit: DoorDash

Every Approval Since July 28 Rides on the Document Under Review

Every Part 135 delivery approval the FAA has issued since July 28 tiers to the document the states want set aside. No stay was requested, so approvals continue. A vacatur would send the agency back to per-market reviews it says took six to eight months each.

The FAA completed 23 of those one-off assessments between 2019 and July 2025, plus a statewide one for North Carolina. Amazon Prime Air needed separate sign-offs for Detroit and Florida this spring while it was already lining up Omaha and Baton Rouge, and DroneXL reported on September 27 that Amazon still won’t say when its Tracy, California drones fly. Bonta’s release names Tracy. Wing’s 270-store Walmart expansion and Zipline’s Seattle application run through the same finding.

Part 108 is untouched by the case. Package delivery stays under Part 135 until the delayed BVLOS rule is final, and the FAA’s own finding estimates Part 108 delivery one to two years after that. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists which hubs were approved before the July finding and which came after it.

A Flytrex delivery drone on a rooftop dock. Flytrex aircraft fly under Causey Aviation's Part 135 certificate in North Carolina and Texas. Photo credit: Flytrex

The Battery Fire Gap Is the Claim the FAA Answered Least

The claim the FAA answered least is lithium-battery fire in an unmanned aircraft. The final assessment dismissed hazardous materials from detailed review on the expectation that operators follow transport and disposal rules, ten months after an Amazon MK30 battery ejected and burned near Tolleson, Arizona.

The January letter put the October 1, 2025 Tolleson collision at the center of its safety argument, along with the delivery drone that cut an internet cable in Waco. DroneXL added the February crash into a Richardson, Texas apartment building to that list. The letter’s other complaints, a noise baseline that counts only aviation noise and wildlife analysis built on hub locations the FAA admits it does not know, were argued at length and answered in the final document’s comment appendix. Battery fire was not analyzed at all. That distinction matters because of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, the Supreme Court’s unanimous May 2025 decision telling lower courts to defer to agencies on how much NEPA analysis is enough. A brief that says the FAA should have written more starts behind under that ruling. A brief that says the FAA wrote nothing on a documented hazard has a path.

DroneXL’s Take

The FAA earned this lawsuit on one page. It had the NTSB’s preliminary report on Tolleson in hand, it had Amazon’s own account of a battery burning on the ground, and it wrote that hazardous materials did not need detailed analysis because operators would follow the rules. That is the sentence the states will hang the case on, and my read is they’re right to.

None of that makes a vacatur the right outcome. I said in July that a conditional no-impact finding is a privilege the industry keeps only as long as it behaves like one, and the 600-foot setback and 1,150-delivery cap are real conditions, not paper ones. Send the FAA back to six-month reviews for every market and the people who pay are the operators who never crashed anything and the residents in Omaha and Baton Rouge whose hubs each needed a separate federal review for a service Texas already has. The remedy that fits the flaw is a supplemental battery analysis with enforceable mitigation, which is what the states asked for in January before they asked for everything.

Watch two things now that the case exists. Whether the coalition files a stay motion, which would freeze new approvals while the court decides, and the briefing schedule once the FAA lodges the record. Until then every hub the FAA signs off on carries a footnote that says a court may yet decide the signature was worth nothing.

Sources: Petition for Review, New York et al. v. FAA, California Attorney General, Federal Aviation Administration, Reuters.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.