DroneXL: The Independent Drone Authority — DJI, FAA, Reviews & Deals

Lewisville Police Drones Flew 1,789 Times. Public Log Shows 1,303

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:32:00 GMT

The Lewisville Police Department says its drones flew 1,789 times between Jan. 1 and Nov. 3, about six flights a day. The department’s example of what that buys came on Oct. 20, when one of its drones tracked a man who fled from officers behind a motel to an apartment balcony and guided officers to him, police said.

The North Texas department flies Skydio drones from docks around Lewisville under FAA authorization for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights, according to the department. The department has 19 drones and 15 trained operators, and the program officially launched on May 8.

The department also posts its Drone as First Responder flights on a public dashboard, and the city’s transparency page says those flights update automatically. When I went through the dashboard on Nov. 9, it listed 1,303 flights, and the last of them took off on Sept. 2.

A Lewisville Drone Reached the Motel Call in Under a Minute

The Oct. 20 call started behind a motel, where an officer found a man believed to be wanted and a second officer was sent to help. The drone the department calls DFR 2 launched and reached the scene in less than a minute, police said, the Cross Timbers Gazette reported.

When the man fled on foot, the drone followed him into a nearby apartment complex. Police said he tried to hide on a balcony and change his appearance before officers, guided by the drone, arrested him.

A drone over a foot chase is the same idea Spokane police used in July, when a Skydio X10 took over a vehicle pursuit after the patrol cars backed off.

Lewisville’s Drone Flights Peaked at 389 in July

Lewisville’s public dashboard lists 106 flights before the May 8 launch, then 188 in the rest of May, 289 in June, 389 in July and 322 in August, which works out to nearly 13 flights a day at the July peak.

That curve fits the department’s own description of flights rising through the spring and peaking in the summer. It also explains the six-a-day average: the 1,789 figure starts on Jan. 1 and takes in more than four months before the official launch, when the dashboard logs only those 106 flights.

Dashboard entries list a case number where there is one, usually a purpose such as emergency call for service, search and rescue or training, the flight’s length and whether the drone collected video or photos.

Lewisville’s Public Flight Log Stops at September 2

The 1,789 flights the department reported through Nov. 3 are 486 more than its public dashboard lists. The dashboard, linked from the city’s LPD Transparency page, showed no flight after Sept. 2 when I checked it on Nov. 9, so the Oct. 20 chase is not in it.

Lewisville's DFR dashboard on Nov. 9, filtered to Sept. 1 through Nov. 9: nine flights, all on Sept. 1 and 2, out of 1,303 in the log. Screenshot: DroneXL

According to police, flight activity remained steady through October. If the 486 are simply the flights from Sept. 3 through Nov. 3, that works out to about eight flights a day, a little below the dashboard’s August rate of about 10 a day. The city’s page says DFR flights update automatically and other drone activity monthly, while the dashboard itself says flights are updated monthly. Neither page, as I read them on Nov. 9, explains why nothing after Sept. 2 appears.

The transparency page that links the dashboard is what Police Chief Brook Rollins promised residents at the launch. He told the Gazette in May that the department was launching “a public-facing transparency portal” and publishing its policies so residents could see how the drones are used. The DFR policy is posted on the transparency page.

DroneXL’s Take

Lewisville put its DFR flights on a public map with case numbers attached, which is what I want every department to do, and the Oct. 20 arrest is a good example of what these programs are for. A flight log is only useful while it is current, though, and this one now runs two months behind the department’s own press figures. A resident can read about DFR 2’s chase in the paper and still can’t find that flight in the record the chief promised. Bellingham, Washington, runs the same Skydio dashboard, and when I checked it in October it showed flights from five days earlier. Lewisville should publish on the schedule its own transparency page describes, post its September and October flights, and confirm that they account for the 486-flight difference before it releases its next set of numbers.

Sources: Cross Timbers Gazette (November 8, 2026), Cross Timbers Gazette (May 12, 2026), City of Lewisville LPD Transparency page, Lewisville Police Department DFR flight dashboard.

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

Colombia Blames ELN for Drone Strike a Week After US Reapers Debut

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:59:00 GMT

Explosive-laden drones hit the Colombian Army’s compound in Santa Rosa del Sur, a gold-mining town in southern Bolívar department, around midday on Saturday, November 7. Three soldiers died and 16 were seriously wounded. Defense Minister Jorge Mora pointed to the National Liberation Army, the cocaine-trafficking guerrilla group known by its Spanish initials, ELN.

The attack came as the United States helps both Colombia and Venezuela go after that group. On October 30, according to The New York Times, US-supplied drones and intelligence helped Venezuela’s military bomb an ELN camp across the border. The next day, President Abelardo De La Espriella watched three MQ-9A Reapers that Washington is lending Colombia fly over the Tolemaida military base. Mora linked Saturday’s strike to an arrest made in Santa Rosa del Sur the day before.

Colombia’s Defense Minister Links the Attack to an ELN Finance Leader’s Arrest

Mora said the attack appeared to be the ELN’s response to the capture of Leivis Enrique Valero Castillo, alias Carrito, whom the government accuses of being a main figure behind the finances of the ELN’s Guamocó Resistance Front. He was arrested in Mina Nueva, in rural Santa Rosa del Sur.

De La Espriella announced the arrest, made during an operation called Ocaso, on Friday. The drones struck the next day while local officials held a security council at the mayor’s office, called after three people were killed in the municipality the day before, according to Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office. Mora’s remarks were reported by El Espectador. On Saturday, ColombiaOne reported that authorities had not confirmed a link between the arrest and the attack, and The Rio Times reported that no group had claimed it. DroneXL found no ELN claim or denial in Colombian or US coverage as of Monday, November 9.

Footage from the base showed smoke rising after three explosions and soldiers taking cover in sandbag shelters, the Associated Press reported. On Sunday the Army named the dead: professional soldier Jairo Lince Carvajal and soldiers Dilan Andrés Lozano León and Álvaro Pushaina. The latest official count, published by El Universal, lists 16 seriously wounded and 31 members of the unit affected in all. The mayor, Milton Olaya, put the number of injured at 35.

The compound is home to the Army’s 48th Jungle Battalion, which has come under drone attack in this municipality before. In August 2025, according to the military, the ELN’s Northeastern Front dropped explosives from drones on the battalion’s troops in La Pradera, a rural part of Santa Rosa del Sur, killing one soldier and wounding seven, Cambio reported. Drones carrying explosives killed another soldier in rural Santa Rosa del Sur and neighboring Arenal del Sur in May 2026, according to the Army’s First Division as cited by The Rio Times. The Ombudsman’s Office has had the town under an early warning since 2023 and says the government commission meant to act on such warnings has not been convened, despite worsening risks.

The Ombudsman’s Office also says the ELN is fighting the Clan del Golfo and FARC dissidents under alias Calarcá for territory and mining income in the Serranía de San Lucas around the town. Officials blamed Calarcá’s militia for the August 2025 drone attack that brought down a police Black Hawk near Amalfi.

The US Is Helping Target the ELN on Both Sides of the Border

In a November 3 report, The New York Times cited four US officials who said Washington supplied intelligence and the drones for the Apure strike in Venezuela, ColombiaOne summarized. Who flew them is unclear, though one source said the model is routinely flown by the US military.

Initial reports put the toll at eight ELN members. Fundaredes, a Venezuelan rights group, now counts 23 dead. Its regional coordinator, Juan Francisco García, says interviews with survivors and relatives show the dead included suppliers, pilots and relatives of fighters. According to Fundaredes and local sources cited by ColombiaOne, the camp was an ELN drug storage and distribution point.

Colombian authorities had said they could not defeat the ELN because its fighters often escaped to Venezuela, where officials let the group operate openly, the Times reported. Since US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas in January, Washington has had a cooperating government on both sides of the border. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in September the ELN should no longer operate in Venezuela “with impunity.”

The three Reapers arrived in Colombia unarmed and in containers, on loan, and were assembled at Tolemaida, Infobae reported. Assembly and testing are part of Vanguardia del Sur 2026, a joint exercise with US troops that runs until November 11, and Colombian troops will be trained to run the aircraft’s surveillance systems before operations start. Colombia’s military says the Reapers will support operations against the ELN and other armed groups by locating their camps. The US also handed over a Black Hawk helicopter at the ceremony, according to Noticias RCN.

De La Espriella answered Saturday’s attack with a promise of more air strikes. “For every attack, one bombardment,” he wrote, in the Times’ translation.

Colombia’s President Says Petro Left No Anti-Drone Shield Behind

The day after the attack, De La Espriella said Gustavo Petro’s January anti-drone shield produced nothing. Petro says he left the contract process ready. De La Espriella called that a lie and said Petro’s officials traveled abroad without results and left no studies behind, La FM reported.

The January plan committed about $1.6 billion to a National Anti-Drone Shield of sensors, electronic warfare and interceptors, with military bases among the first priorities. In February, Petro’s defense minister, Pedro Sánchez, said 74 companies from 20 countries wanted to take part and that the project was in its pre-contract phase, with the market study under way. The ministry also said it had detected about 9,000 drone attack attempts in 2025 and blocked about 96% of them, and that the 4% it missed killed several soldiers and civilians and injured more than a hundred people, Asuntos Legales reported.

Saturday’s strike was at least the second deadly drone attack on an army compound in nine weeks that authorities blamed on the ELN. On September 4, explosives dropped from drones, followed by a clash inside a military compound in Ocaña, Norte de Santander, killed three soldiers, the Associated Press reported. De La Espriella said on Sunday his government is working on both anti-drone defenses and offensive drones for the armed forces. He gave no amount, funding source or timeline and cited the country’s very difficult public finances.

DroneXL’s Take

The Reapers and the promised bombardments help Colombia hunt the people who launch these drones. In my view they won’t protect the next army compound, because stopping a drone over a base takes detection and defeat systems at the base itself.

The ministry’s February numbers say it blocked about 96% of the drone attacks it detected in 2025. The ones that get through still kill soldiers, three at Ocaña and three more at Santa Rosa del Sur. Ten months after the shield was announced, Colombia’s president and his predecessor are arguing over whether Petro left it ready to contract. Before the next round of air strikes, I’d want De La Espriella to put a number and a date on the base defense he promised on Sunday.

Sources: The New York Times, El Universal, El Espectador via Pulzo, ColombiaOne, ColombiaOne on Apure, The Rio Times, AP via Stuff, Infobae, Cambio, Asuntos Legales, La FM, AP via CTV

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

Russia's Geran-5 K5-K Runs on 52 US Parts, 23 From Texas Instruments

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:24:00 GMT

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR published a teardown on November 9 of the Geran-5 K5-K, a shorter and faster version of Russia’s jet-powered attack drone, and counted 93 foreign-made electronic parts inside it. Fifty-two came from US manufacturers, and 23 of those were made by Texas Instruments.

Russia started firing the K5-K at Ukrainian cities in early autumn, according to HUR. The agency examined one that came down almost intact in a field, and it now files the weapon as a small cruise missile rather than a drone.

HUR’s page for the original Geran-5, the version DroneXL first reported on in January, lists 16 foreign parts.

The Geran-5 K5-K Is 8 Feet Shorter and Climbs 3,300 Feet Higher

The K5-K is 13.1 feet (4 meters) long, against 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) for the original Geran-5, and its wingspan shrank from 10.5 to 9.8 feet. HUR lists a ceiling of 19,700 feet (6 km), up from 16,400 feet, and a cruise speed above 280 mph (450 km/h).

HUR’s statement on the teardown adds that the K5-K can reach 620 mph (1,000 km/h) during some maneuvers. That figure was carried by RBC-Ukraine and UNITED24 Media, but it does not appear in the specification table on HUR’s own portal. Range is unchanged at about 620 miles (1,000 km), and the warhead still weighs 198 pounds (90 kg). The airframe HUR examined carried a TBBCh-90 thermobaric warhead.

HUR lists a TRD-200 turbojet as the engine, assembled at Russia’s Alabuga plant in Tatarstan, the same site where teenagers build Shaheds, from Chinese components. The original Geran-5 flew on an imported Telefly TF-TJ2000A. HUR deputy chief Vadym Skibitsky put the price of each Chinese turbojet at $35,000 to $40,000 in August, Militarnyi reported.

Texas Instruments Made 23 of the 93 Foreign Parts in the K5-K

The parts list on HUR’s War&Sanctions portal names 52 components made by US companies. The rest are 10 Chinese, 10 Swiss, three Japanese, two British and one German, with 15 unidentified. Texas Instruments alone made 23, including voltage regulators, CAN bus transceivers and two digital signal processors.

Analog Devices follows with six, counting a Maxim Integrated transceiver, then Vishay with four and onsemi and CTS Corporation with three each. The Swiss column is seven microcontrollers and a voltage regulator from STMicroelectronics, which HUR files under Switzerland because the company is headquartered in Geneva, plus two u-blox satellite navigation modules.

HUR says Russia keeps trying to remove the markings from imported parts, and it names Texas Instruments signal processors and Murata inertial modules. Both TI processors appear on the portal as “DSP” with no part number, and the Murata module has none either. The first Geran-5 taken apart in January held six Texas Instruments chips and CTS clock oscillators built in 2024 and 2025. The three CTS oscillators in the K5-K are newer still: their markings read 2517, 2539 and 2603, which as year-and-week date codes put them between April 2025 and January 2026.

Texas Instruments told Bloomberg in December 2023 that it stopped selling into Russia in 2022, and that because its chips can last decades, some found there may have been in inventory before sanctions. TI vice president Shannon Thompson told a Senate subcommittee in September 2024 that the company works to prevent the illicit diversion of its parts into Russia. Western parts have reached Russia through resellers in third countries before, the route that put German parts in Gerans and that a GRU officer ran out of Tokyo.

A Chinese Raspberry Pi Clone Steers the K5-K by Matching Photos

The K5-K checks its route with Susanin, an optical-electronic correlation system HUR first found in the Geran-4. It compares pictures from an onboard camera with reference images stored on a microcomputer, and in this airframe that computer is a Chinese Coke Pi in a labeled plastic case.

The Susanin image-matching unit from the K5-K: a Coke Pi microcomputer in a black plastic case, labeled "Сусанин" (Susanin). Photo credit: HUR War&Sanctions

The camera is dual-band rather than a plain optical sensor, and HUR could not identify its maker. The parts list also carries a genuine Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, filed under Britain. HUR found a similar Coke Pi unit, labeled “Sosiska,” in the Gerbera-2 drone it published on November 2, where it detects and tracks interceptor drones.

The rest of the avionics match the latest Geran-4 Seeker: a flight controller, a SADRA Seeker inertial navigation system with a DISMAG magnetic compass module, a tracker, a mesh modem and a Russian copy of the 16-element Harxon GI-006 anti-jamming antenna. HUR’s breakdown of the original Geran-5 shows no image-matching unit: it navigated with a Kometa-M12 satellite receiver and a MINSOO inertial unit. Jamming satellite navigation is one of Ukraine’s standard defenses against Shaheds, and matching photos needs no satellite signal.

Russia Builds 4,000 Jet Gerans a Month as Ukraine Stops 76% in One Raid

Russia builds about 4,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month, up from about 3,000 in August and twice its output of propeller Geran-2s, HUR told NV in October, while Ukraine’s Air Force says it shot down or suppressed 59 of 77 jet drones in one October attack.

The production figure comes from Militarnyi’s report on HUR’s interview. Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said that attack lifted the jet-drone rate to 76%, from about 60% the month before, Odessa Journal reported. Interceptor drones are closing the gap. The upgraded ZIRKA brought down a Geran-5 at about 250 mph (400 km/h) and 11,500 feet (3,500 meters), Militarnyi reported on November 1, after the SBU released the first video of a jet Shahed kill in September. Ukraine’s Brave1 cluster is also paying companies to build drone-fired air-to-air missiles.

On October 29 a jet-powered drone got through and hit a platform at a railway station in Dnipro where a train to Zaporizhzhia was waiting, killing 14, according to regional officials and Ukrainian Railways, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Neither said which Geran variant it was.

DroneXL’s Take

The old-stock explanation that Texas Instruments offered in 2023, chips bought before sanctions and still sitting in Russian warehouses, gets harder to apply with every teardown. The CTS oscillators in this K5-K were made as recently as January, so at least part of the Western supply feeding Alabuga is new production.

I don’t think TI or CTS are selling to Russia, and nothing on HUR’s list says they are. My read is that export controls on commodity electronics fail at the distributor and reseller level. A voltage regulator that ships by the million passes through enough hands that the maker loses sight of it long before it reaches a Russian assembly line, which is how the German parts and the Tokyo pipeline worked too.

In September I argued that sanctions aim at the wrong end of the Geran, at the Western parts instead of the Chinese engine. The K5-K shows the Western end still leaking with new parts, and Washington should put at least as much pressure on the distributors that move these reels as on the chipmakers whose logos HUR photographs.

Sources: HUR War&Sanctions portal, UNITED24 Media, RBC-Ukraine, Militarnyi, Odessa Journal, Ukrainska Pravda, Bloomberg

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

West Valley Votes on Free Police Drone Trial With $874,985 Renewal

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 10:53:00 GMT

The West Valley City Council votes Tuesday, November 10, on a deal with Motorola Solutions that would give the Utah city’s police department three BRINC drones for a year at no cost. The package covers a docked drone dispatched directly to calls, a tactical drone officers launch from their vehicles, and a small indoor drone for SWAT work.

Police Chief Colleen Jacobs told the council on October 27, according to draft minutes, that the drones are meant for emergency response, not surveillance. Her issue paper lists the price if the program continues, $174,997 a year for five years, and says the city can cancel at any point in the first year at no cost.

Motorola’s quote totals $874,985, and the contract attached to it starts those paid years automatically unless the city cancels.

Motorola’s Contract Starts the Paid Years Unless West Valley Cancels

The $874,985 is the paid part of a six-year BRINC subscription Motorola quoted on September 15: nothing in year one, then $174,997 a year for years two through six. Under Motorola’s customer agreement, the paid years begin on their own unless the city gives notice that it is leaving.

Motorola’s paperwork states that exit two ways. The quote’s term note gives the city a “right to exercise termination for convenience at any point within the first year,” which matches Jacobs’s issue paper. The TAKEOFF Program Addendum attached to the same quote says the city “has agreed to a multi-year Subscription” and may terminate without penalty “up to 30 days prior” to the first paid year. Under either reading, ending the deal during the free year costs West Valley nothing if it gives notice in time. The council slide adds that the city “may terminate for non-appropriation,” which the customer agreement allows on 30 days’ written notice.

The aircraft stay BRINC’s property during the trial, and the city pays for any damage the support plan does not cover. Title passes to West Valley when the first paid year starts. Motorola is selling the package through a Sourcewell cooperative purchasing contract that the issue paper says Motorola won through competitive bidding. The quote expires November 14, four days after the vote.

The three aircraft on the quote are a station-based BRINC Guardian, a BRINC Responder and a Lemur 2, BRINC’s indoor drone. League City, Texas, approved a similar free-first-year structure in July, with up to $1,759,980 over six years.

The Trial Makes BRINC West Valley’s Only DFR Supplier

For the 12 free months, the addendum makes BRINC the city’s sole Drone as First Responder provider. West Valley may not deploy or buy any autonomous docked drone or DFR product from another company until the paid years begin. If it does, Motorola can end the deal immediately.

BRINC also runs the trial’s checkpoints. The quote commits it to quarterly check-in calls with the department and a mandatory review meeting with police leadership “to confirm trial results and determine next steps.” The latest date the quote allows for that meeting is the same 30-day mark as the addendum’s deadline for the city to cancel.

Motorola has a stake in the supplier it is selling. It led BRINC’s $125 million funding round in July, and the quote pitches integration with Motorola’s CommandCentral software, radios and license plate readers.

BRINC founder Blake Resnick with a Guardian drone at the IACP conference in Boston, October 2024. Photo credit: DroneXL

West Valley Has Held an FAA BVLOS Waiver Since April

The FAA’s Certificate of Waiver 91.113-2026-00385, effective April 1, 2026, through April 30, 2030, waives the 14 CFR 91.113(b) right-of-way rule and other Part 91 sections for the department’s public aircraft flights. It allows BVLOS flights without visual observers, generally at or below 200 feet (61 meters).

If West Valley flies the Guardian under this waiver, the document sets the conditions. On BVLOS flights the pilot must use a detection system that picks up aircraft broadcasting ADS-B Out. On every flight the drone needs anti-collision lighting visible for 3 statute miles in twilight and at night.

Motorola’s statement of work makes FAA approvals the city’s job, with help from Motorola’s managed services if agreed, along with Part 107 certified pilots, 30 Mbps of bandwidth at each launch site and an LTE fallback. West Valley’s waiver took effect more than five months before Motorola wrote the quote.

The department is not new to drones: the issue paper says the city “currently employs drones in law enforcement activity.” According to the draft October 27 minutes, posted with the November 10 study agenda, Councilmember Scott Harmon noted that these drones cost more than the ones in the city’s previous trial. Jacobs said earlier demonstrations had cut response times and avoided unnecessary officer dispatches, because staff could assess a call remotely first.

West Valley’s Camera Promise Is Not in the Council Packet

Jacobs told the council the dispatched drone’s camera faces upward in transit. The drone descends only at the scene. Neither that rule nor a retention period appears in the Resolution 26-141 documents posted with the November 10 agenda, which DroneXL reviewed on November 9.

Those documents are the issue paper, the draft resolution, a presentation slide, Motorola’s quote with its statement of work and addendum, and Motorola’s customer agreement. The statement of work leaves retention periods to a city project manager. Its data-handling clause says data “will not be intentionally deleted prior to termination; however, certain media (e.g., video/images >30 days) may be deleted per platform policy (adjust to your policy).” The packet does not say what West Valley’s policy is. Under the customer agreement, the city owns its data.

During a city meeting, West Valley City police said “These are not surveillance drones, but response drones,” FOX 13 reported. Jacobs’s own issue paper says the newer drones can provide “rapid response, surveillance,” and deliver AEDs and Narcan before responders arrive. St. Louis police make a similar camera promise in their drone FAQ, not in the order officers follow.

Indoor flights worry David Ferguson, executive director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who told FOX 13 he fears “a person in crisis reacts terribly to a mechanical device.” Police said indoor flights would be limited to legal entries, such as with a warrant, consent or an emergency.

DroneXL’s Take

I want West Valley to fly these drones. A Guardian that reaches a cardiac arrest with an AED before the first patrol car is the best case for public safety drones, and Jacobs told the council earlier demonstrations saved officer trips. I think the trial’s review is too thin. The only review the contract writes down is a meeting BRINC schedules to confirm trial results, and the exclusivity clause keeps the city from testing a rival dock alongside it. The council should set its own scorecard on Tuesday, starting with response times against patrol cars and calls cleared without sending an officer, and put the camera and retention rules in writing. Then it should publish the results before the cancellation deadline. If nobody cancels in time, the paid years start on their own and add up to $874,985. That decision should rest on numbers West Valley collected itself.

Sources: West Valley City Council (Resolution 26-141 packet: issue paper, presentation slide, Motorola quote 3818036 with statement of work and TAKEOFF Program Addendum, Motorola Customer Agreement; draft minutes of the October 27, 2026 study meeting), Federal Aviation Administration (Certificate of Waiver 91.113-2026-00385), FOX 13

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

NATO Counter-Drone Catalog: 2024 Startup Says It Won 6 of 16 Lots

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 10:21:00 GMT

NATO opened its counter-drone marketplace on November 5: a catalog of 16 systems from five companies that Allies can now buy without running a tender of their own. The five are Alta Ares, Axon, Northrop Grumman, OSL UK and Quantum Systems. Alta Ares, a French company founded in 2024, says it won six of the 16 lots, more than any other supplier.

The contracts themselves carry no money. The tender notice behind them says funds are committed only when a country or NATO command places an order, and the one common pot so far is €3.1 million for testing.

NCIA’s Shortlist Came From a Bidder List of 85 Companies

The NATO Communications and Information Agency’s tender notice of 19 December 2025 listed 85 companies as prospective bidders, a list NATO nations could add to, and admitted only systems already deployed with NATO nations or allied forces. Prototypes were barred. Neither NCIA nor NATO has said which companies actually bid.

Four of the five winners appear on that notice: Alta Ares, Northrop Grumman Systems, Operational Solutions Ltd (OSL UK) and Dedrone Defense, the counter-drone business Axon agreed to buy in 2024. Quantum Systems does not, and the notice let NCIA accept nominations after the deadline. Larger names on the list, among them Anduril, Thales, Saab and Fortem, the company Lockheed Martin picked in March for critical infrastructure work, are not in the catalog, and whether they bid is not public. The notice also left man-portable and wearable systems to a separate NATO Support and Procurement Agency contract and required bidders to hold NATO Restricted security clearances.

NCIA’s announcement says every selected system has already been deployed in Allied countries and in Ukraine. Bids were scored against four reference scenarios. Point protection covers a single site such as a command post. Area protection covers a zone up to 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) across, and border protection a 12-mile (20-kilometer) segment. The convoy scenario is a column up to 980 feet (300 meters) long moving at 31 mph (50 km/h).

Alta Ares Says It Holds Every Area Protection Lot

Alta Ares says its six lots cover area defense and border protection, and that it is the only supplier selected for area defense in all three mobility classes: static, transportable and on-the-move. NATO has not published the lot-by-lot split, so that count rests on the company’s word.

The Paris company announced the award the same day, saying NCIA picked five firms from close to 100 applicants. It raised €50 million in June and says its software is trained on battlefield data from Ukraine and from operations in the Gulf, with Shahed-type attack drones and loitering munitions as the target set. “A counter-drone system has to work end-to-end,” CEO and co-founder Hadrien Canter said.

Jamie O’Connor-Delbert, the company’s director of EU, NATO and Eastern Europe engagement, told Interfax-Ukraine the framework puts no cap on the quantity an Ally can buy and that NATO common funding will pay for test batches. Alta Ares and Quantum Systems, two of the five winners, announced at Eurosatory in June that they would explore counter-drone cooperation.

The Catalog Pays Out Only When an Ally Orders

Money reaches these suppliers through task orders. A nation or NATO command sets a requirement, NCIA asks the awardees in that category for quotes, and they get roughly two weeks to answer. Allies can buy, lease or lease-to-own, under the process the December notice lays out.

The detection and engagement radius in the requirements runs from 1.2 to 25 miles (2 to 40 kilometers), wide on purpose because no operational requirement existed yet. The more than $40 billion often attached to the marketplace is a separate pledge. NATO’s announcement describes it as Allies’ commitment under Drone Edge, launched at the Ankara summit’s defense industry forum in July, to spend that sum on counter-drone capabilities over five years. That money sits in national budgets. Bulgaria, for one, took delivery of its first two counter-drone systems, bought from Axon, in August.

The process also ran late. The December notice planned contract award for June 30 and a one-year framework re-competed annually. The awards were announced November 5, and the contracts run 18 months from signature, with an option to extend.

The US Army Plans a Rival Marketplace for the Same Allies

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll signed a statement of intent at Eurosatory on June 16 with NATO Allies including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy and Lithuania, to open the Army’s UAS marketplace to them. Each of those countries can also order from NCIA’s catalog.

Driscoll pitched it as a way to “get our government and other governments’ regulation out of the way,” according to the Army. At home, the Pentagon’s counter-drone marketplace run by Joint Interagency Task Force 401 went live for US bases and agencies in February.

DroneXL’s Take

I like the filter NCIA used. Barring prototypes and requiring systems already fielded with allied forces is the right test for a threat NCIA itself calls rapidly evolving. My read is that it’s why a company founded in 2024 sits in the same catalog as Northrop Grumman.

The catalog still has to prove it’s a buying channel and not a shortlist. An Ally in a hurry can already buy directly, as Bulgaria did, and the US Army is opening its own marketplace to the same countries. NCIA’s route gets used only if its two-week quote process beats both. No task order against these contracts has been announced, and the first one is what I’ll be watching for.

Sources: NCIA, NCIA notice of intent CO-42530191-CUAS, NATO, Alta Ares, Interfax-Ukraine, U.S. Army

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

St. Vrain Students Fly 300 Drones for Make-A-Wish Boy on a School Day

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 09:48:00 GMT

High school students on St. Vrain Valley Schools’ Drone Performance Team flew 300 drones over Holyoke, Colorado, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, in a show built for Nathaniel “Bubba” Brown, an 11-year-old Make-A-Wish Colorado recipient. The students designed it around his love of lights and set it to his favorite music.

Bubba was born with SCN2A, a rare neurological condition, and lives with multiple forms of epilepsy. The show was the finale of his wish, a community celebration called Bubba’s Bright Lights Block Party, and it was planned for a Sunday evening. It flew on a Wednesday, after the student pilots had spent the morning in class at their own high schools.

Weather Pushed the Show From a Sunday to a School Day

Make-A-Wish Colorado asked the team at the end of September to fly the finale of Bubba’s block party, a 6 p.m. show on Sunday, Oct. 25. Bad weather scrubbed it. The party moved indoors to the Phillips County Event Center, and the show was rebooked for Wednesday, Oct. 28.

Team coordinator Danny Hernandez wrote on LinkedIn that the students had the airspace checks and show designs done by Saturday night for the drive about three hours east of Longmont. The Haxtun-Fleming Herald had listed the 6 p.m. slot in its preview, and The Holyoke Enterprise reported the move indoors and the new date, when the show joined First Baptist Church’s annual Harvest Party.

Hernandez wrote that on Oct. 28 the students were in first period at 7:45 a.m., left the district’s Innovation Center at 11:30 a.m., set up and flew by 6:30 p.m., and got home around 11:30 p.m. Every vehicle carried a hotspot so they could do homework and study for the next day’s tests on the road, and they were due back in class at 7:45 the next morning. “Not once did anyone ask, ‘Why are we doing this?’” Hernandez wrote.

St. Vrain’s Students Run Every Show From Client Meeting to Flight

St. Vrain Valley Schools bills its Drone Performance Team, based at the district’s Innovation Center in Longmont, as the world’s first high school student-led outdoor drone show team. Students meet the clients, design the aerial animations, compose original music for each show and fly the drones.

The team was rehearsing for its first public show in May 2024 and was booked for a 300-drone Fourth of July show in Longmont in 2025. Washington’s Peninsula School District has since built the same kind of team. When DroneXL covered Peninsula’s 300-drone debut in September 2025, that program was described as only the second of its kind in the country.

Joe McBreen, St. Vrain’s assistant superintendent of innovation, credited the OtterCares Foundation with making the Holyoke show possible. OtterCares gave the Innovation Center a $25,000 grant in May so that its more than 20 student project teams put part of their work into nonprofit partners starting this school year. The grant grew out of “Drones for Dreams,” Silver Creek High School junior Braeden Macchia’s program of free drone services for local nonprofits.

A Pilot Whose Sister Got a Wish Helped Fly Bubba’s Show

Longmont High School senior Reese Wieder worked the Holyoke show as both a project manager and a pilot. Her older sister received a Make-A-Wish trip to San Diego as a child while she was undergoing cancer treatment, CBS Colorado reported on Nov. 8.

CBS gave Bubba’s age as 9. McBreen and the Holyoke Enterprise both put it at 11.

Bubba Brown watches the drone show with family and neighbors in Holyoke. Photo credit: St. Vrain Valley School District

Bubba’s mother, Alysha Brown, called the performance “mind blowing” in a statement McBreen posted. She said seeing all 300 drones take off to one of Bubba’s favorite songs had the family in tears again.

"A Drone Show for Bubba," St. Vrain Valley Schools

DroneXL’s Take

I’m more impressed by how these students handled the weather scrub than by the 300-drone animation. Flying a scrubbed show three days later and hauling 300 drones three hours east is the part of show work that professionals get paid for. These students did it on a school day, with tests the next morning. DroneXL’s Colorado drone coverage this year includes a talking-drone rescue in Summit County and a Colorado Springs police drone at a knife fight, and this story belongs on the same list of drones doing real work for people on the ground. A student team that can absorb a scrub without losing the date is already working like a professional crew.

Sources: CBS Colorado, The Holyoke Enterprise, The Haxtun-Fleming Herald, St. Vrain Valley Schools, Danny Hernandez and Joe McBreen on LinkedIn.

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

AirData Syncs Pilot Institute Training Records As Part 108 Nears

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 09:14:00 GMT

AirData UAV now pulls Pilot Institute course certificates straight into pilot profiles, with no file to upload. The flight-log company announced the integration with Pilot Institute, the Prescott, Arizona, drone school, on November 4. It works on every AirData plan, free accounts included, and it imports certificates pilots earned before the link existed.

Pilots connect under My Account > Pilot Institute in AirData and sign in with their Pilot Institute login. Each certificate lands on the pilot’s profile as a badge, with the skills from that course attached.

AirData already read Pilot Institute certificates before the integration. Its supported-credentials page lists the school among the training providers whose uploaded certificates it detects and tracks automatically.

AirData Shows Fleet Managers Pilot Institute Courses Still In Progress

Fleet administrators can now see which Pilot Institute courses a pilot has finished and which are still underway, something an uploaded certificate never showed. AirData says the attached skills help administrators judge what a pilot can do when assigning missions. Pilots and managers also get reminders before certificates expire.

AirData CEO Eran Steiner said the company has synced flight logs for years and “we see the same need with pilot certifications.” AirData’s announcement puts its record at more than 68 million flights from more than 470,000 pilots, up from the 65 million it reported on August 25. The company’s supported credentials page says it recognizes 883 certificate types.

Greg Reverdiau, Pilot Institute’s co-founder and head of training, said “This integration gives our students a direct way to maintain their training records.” Pilot Institute is a DroneXL partner, and Reverdiau writes the site’s weekly UAS news update, most recently on November 6. The school says it has trained more than 150,000 Part 107 students.

FAA’s Part 108 Proposal Asks Operators To Keep Training Certificates On File

The FAA’s August 2025 Part 108 proposal for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight would make operators record the training of every person the rule requires to be trained. Section 108.40(e) lists six items, including the completion date, the provider’s name and address, and a certificate copy.

The final rule has sat in White House review since July 10, and federal law requires it by December 7. Wing cited the rule’s upcoming release last week as the trigger for its next expansion. The November 4 announcement never mentions Part 108. AirData’s own August 25 post did, saying the rule shifts the burden of proving that personnel are qualified from the individual pilot to the operating organization.

Pilot Institute has pushed back on Part 108’s paperwork before. In its October 2025 comment on the proposal, the school said the rule’s reporting and recordkeeping duties would burden fully autonomous operations and could favor large companies over smaller ones.

DroneXL’s Take

I like this one because it is boring. The school’s own warning was that Part 108’s paperwork favors big operators, so putting automatic training records on AirData’s free tier helps a three-pilot inspection shop more than a utility with a compliance department. I’d stop short of AirData’s mission-assignment pitch, though. A synced badge proves someone finished a course, and a fleet manager who picks crews off a course outline is letting it stand in for a check ride. I’d use the badges for the paperwork and keep the check ride for deciding who flies.

Sources: AirData UAV, EIN Presswire, Federal Register (FAA Part 108 proposed rule).

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

Skydio Controller 2 Ships: Bigger Screen, More Runtime, 395 g Heavier

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 23:55:00 GMT

Skydio’s Controller 2, a new handheld controller for its X10, X10D and R10 drones, is going out to customers, CEO Adam Bry posted on LinkedIn on Sunday, November 8. Skydio had announced it on October 27 with a 7-inch screen rated at 2,000 nits sustained and more than 5 hours 45 minutes of battery life. It comes in the box with every new X10 and R10.

Skydio first showed the controller at its Ascend event in September, the same show where it unveiled the F10 Lightrunner, rated up to 100 mph. Bry’s post lists a bigger, brighter screen, better 5G performance, more I/O, and Skydio’s Command software on the controller for joint dock and controller missions. Skydio’s spec sheet also shows Controller 2 is 395 grams heavier than the X10 controller it replaces, with the same battery inside.

Controller 2 Weighs 395 Grams More and Runs 45 Minutes Longer

Controller 2 weighs 1,530 grams (3.4 pounds) against 1,135 grams (2.5 pounds) for the original X10 controller, per Skydio’s spec sheet. It runs about 45 minutes longer on the same 9,600 mAh battery and moves up to a 7-inch screen from 6.6 inches. It is rated IP55, up from IP54.

Skydio Controller 2 with the sun hood up and the C1 to C3 custom buttons on the left. Image credit: Skydio

The screen changes type as well as size. The X10 technical specs list the original controller with a 6.6-inch AMOLED panel at 2340 x 1080 pixels and 120 Hz, rated at 1,750 nits outdoor peak. Controller 2 gets a 7-inch LCD at 1920 x 1200 and 60 Hz, rated at 2,000 nits sustained. A peak rating and a sustained rating measure different things, so the two brightness numbers don’t line up directly.

The IP55 rating adds protection against water jets where IP54 covers splashing. Controller 2 also has a built-in kickstand, protected control sticks, customizable physical buttons and wireless screencasting alongside its HDMI output. As of November 8, none of Skydio’s Controller 2 pages explains where the extra weight comes from.

Controller 2 Lets Crews Choose Among Approved 5G Carriers

Controller 2 runs Skydio Flight Deck for the X10, X10D and R10 and takes a swappable 5G SIM, with the data plan bought through Skydio or brought from an agency’s own carrier. X10D crews who need Microhard radios get Controller 2 MH, a separate version with External Radio Kit support.

Skydio’s launch post says that lets teams switch carriers when coverage changes from one location to another. Skydio’s spec sheet rates the 5G link’s range as unlimited wherever there is cellular coverage, against 7.5 miles (12 km) on Skydio’s own radio link and 6.2 miles (10 km) on Microhard. The Controller 2 MH page pitches that version for ISR Command, the software Skydio launched in October to let one soldier fly two X10Ds from a single controller.

The spec sheet calls Controller 2 NDAA compliant, with an AES-256 encrypted data link and trusted boot. Skydio’s X10, R10 and Dock for X10 made the Blue UAS Cleared List in July, which put them in reach of police departments buying with federal grant money. As of November 8, Skydio’s Controller 2 pages describe the controller as NDAA compliant but not as Blue UAS listed.

Skydio staff on the Packout 2.0 line with Controller 2 units and cases. Photo credit: Skydio

Bry’s LinkedIn post says “controllers aren’t going anywhere.” Owners of aircraft already in the field can order Controller 2 separately. As of November 8, none of Skydio’s Controller 2 pages lists a price for it.

DroneXL’s Take

Bry’s point that controllers still matter is the part of this launch I agree with most. To me, Skydio’s growth story for two years has been docks, more than 1,000 of them at public safety agencies by the company’s own September count. But somebody still has to clear a building with an R10 or fly an X10D for a squad, and that person holds the controller for the whole shift. I’d take 395 extra grams for 45 more minutes and a screen Skydio rates for direct sunlight, and the carrier choice is a real fix for agencies whose coverage changes across a county. What I couldn’t find is a price. A department already flying X10s that wants Controller 2 can’t budget for it from Skydio’s public pages yet.

Sources: Skydio, Adam Bry on LinkedIn, Skydio X10 technical specifications.

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

Peter Ryseck's Propeller Pole Stood 3 Hours. The Motors Barely Ran

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 22:52:00 GMT

Peter Ryseck, an aerospace engineer with a master’s degree from the University of Maryland, built a carbon fiber pole that stands on a tip the size of a coin and keeps itself upright with four drone propellers. In a video posted September 2, the pole stood for more than three hours in a windy park on a single 2200 mAh three-cell battery, and the pack still read 11.1 volts at the three-hour mark.

The propellers are not holding the pole up. Ryseck says almost all of its weight goes straight down the shaft into the ground, and the motors run just above idle, making small sideways corrections whenever the pole starts to tip. Push it with a hand and it leans back to vertical.

Ryseck is the builder of the Mini QBiT, the winged quadcopter DroneXL cited in June as the hobbyist ancestor of Ukraine’s long-range winged FPV drones, and his site lists a flight dynamics role at Joby Aviation. His first version of the pole, built with larger motors and propellers, never balanced.

Larger Propellers Failed Because They Could Not Change Thrust Fast Enough

Ryseck started with big, slow propellers for quiet, efficient running, and the pole was unstable no matter how he tuned it. The motors had enough thrust. They could not change it quickly enough. He tried 3-inch props before settling on 5-inch ones, the FPV racing size.

When a pole begins to fall, the controller has milliseconds to react, and a large propeller’s rotational inertia means it cannot speed up or slow down in that time. In control terms, Ryseck says in the video, the big props left him without enough bandwidth. The hardware that survived is plain. Four motors on a 3D printed mount, a Pixhawk flight controller, a Hoovo 2200 mAh 3S pack, and a carbon fiber pole taken from a swimming pool cleaning net, attached with one screw.

The whole machine: four motors, a Pixhawk, a 2200 mAh 3S battery and a pool-net pole that attaches with a single screw. Photo credit: Peter Ryseck, video still

A Notch Filter Hunts Down the Pole’s 18 Hz Flex Every Time It Arms

The controller is a PD loop, tuned first in a simulation built from the pole’s measured mass and inertia. The same gains held across many pole lengths, but a short pole went unstable, and the simulation assumed a rigid shaft while the real one flexes.

The controller could not tell bending from falling. Flight logs showed the pole’s tilt rate concentrated around 18 Hz, while the balancing motion, he estimates, lives below 5 Hz. Left alone, the controller kept pumping energy into that flex. Ryseck added a low-pass filter, which he had to limit because it adds phase lag near the balancing frequencies, and a dynamic notch filter that measures the pole’s natural frequencies every time the system arms and notches each one out. In the video you can hear the motor tone change as the notches engage one by one.

Setting motor idle to zero worked but added small instabilities, so the motors keep spinning at minimum throttle. And because an IMU’s estimate of vertical is never perfect, the controller slowly shifts its attitude estimate until the motors stop pushing harder in one direction. In steady wind that same logic makes the pole learn to lean into the breeze instead of fighting it.

Ryseck with the pole on a riverside path. The pole stands on its own tip, and a push with a hand sends it leaning back to vertical. Photo credit: Peter Ryseck, video still

Ryseck wanted a controller that would survive a different pole length or a random weight on top, a phone for a selfie, say, without retuning, and the video shows it recovering from pushes. The endurance run in the park passed the three-hour mark with the pole where he left it and the pack at 3.75 volts per cell, down from a 12.6 volt full charge. One secondhand write-up reported the run as 3.75 hours. That figure in the video is the cell voltage, not the time.

The video does not give the pole’s length or total weight, the power the motors draw at idle, or how much wind the park test saw. Ryseck does not say what the pole is for, and asks viewers what they think of it.

DroneXL’s Take

Nothing I have watched this year explains better why a 5-inch quad feels locked in and a cinelifter on 10-inch props never quite does. The limit is how fast a propeller can change its thrust, and Ryseck shows that physics with no flying involved. FPV pilots run RPM and dynamic notch filters for exactly the resonance he hunts down here, and the notch filter section is worth the nine minutes on its own. Joshua Bird’s one-motor drone, which we covered in October, fought a 160 Hz vibration, and most makers solve that kind of problem by trial and error. Ryseck measured his and filtered it, which is why his pole stands for hours. My read is that this project has a useful life beyond a party trick, because a camera or antenna mast that holds itself up in wind is a product. I want his idle power draw next, because that number decides whether this runs for three hours or for days.

Source: Peter Ryseck on YouTube, peterryseck.com

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

Chinese Drone Swarm Maps Woods on Its Own, and Withholds the Code

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 22:15:00 GMT

Three lidar-equipped quadcopters from Tongji University in Shanghai explored a patch of park trees with no ground station and no pilot, according to a peer-reviewed paper that a science press-release site surfaced this week. Four of the same drones mapped a 39-by-98-foot (12-by-30-meter) exhibition hall with columns and a display board in their way. Each aircraft carried an Intel NUC computer and a Livox Mid-360 lidar, and every decision about where to fly and how to avoid a teammate was made on board.

The framework is called ESCAPE, and the paper describing it appeared in Autonomous Intelligent Systems, a Springer journal, on December 22, 2025. Its authors are at Tongji, Tianjin University and the Beijing Institute of Technology, and the work was paid for by China’s National Key Research and Development Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and two Shanghai municipal science programs.

The paper’s code availability statement says the code “is not available for public release” because of “the confidentiality requirements of the research.”

Three Drones Divided a Park Into Grid Cells and Negotiated Who Flies Where

The swarm splits its search area into uniform grid cells, and the drones trade cells among themselves in pairwise exchanges with no hub giving orders. Each drone then picks a visiting order for its own cells and flies it at 2.2 mph (1.0 m/s) while building a 3D map.

The routing step treats the cell assignment as a capacitated vehicle routing problem and hands it to the Lin-Kernighan-Helsgaun solver, which converts it to a traveling salesman problem with penalty terms. The one change to the routing step of the Racer framework it builds on is a continuity penalty: when a grid cell’s center sits inside a wall or a tree trunk, the drone pays an extra cost equal to the straight-line distance to that center. The point is to stop a drone from hovering in front of a big obstacle and shuttling back and forth, which the authors say Racer does when a single obstacle spans several cells.

Racer came out of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2023, and its code is on GitHub. ESCAPE reuses Racer’s frontier detection and its B-spline path optimizer.

In the outdoor test, three drones covered a 39-by-66-foot (12-by-20-meter) patch of trees to a height of 6.6 feet (2 meters). Indoors, four drones covered the hall to a height of 5.2 feet (1.6 meters). The lidar’s field of view was deliberately narrowed to 86 degrees horizontally and minus 10 to 60 degrees vertically to mimic a depth camera, and the Livox Mid-360 handled both positioning and mapping. Livox is the lidar maker DJI spun out, and it cut the Mid-360’s point rate in half in September to get the price down for exactly this kind of robot.

Four drones explore the 39-by-98-foot indoor hall, with columns and an exhibition board as obstacles. Image credit: Bao et al., Autonomous Intelligent Systems, CC BY 4.0

The Lower Drone Stops and Hovers While the Higher One Flies Around It

ESCAPE drones avoid each other without exchanging flight paths. Each broadcasts its position, and when two come within range each computes a risk score: how far inside a 4.9-foot (1.5-meter) safety bubble the other drone is, whether they are closing head-on, and how fast. A score above 1.5 triggers avoidance.

Distance counts double in that score, with heading and closing speed weighted once each. Two drones flying directly apart score zero on heading. Two drones on a head-on course score the maximum.

When the threshold trips, altitude decides who moves. The lower drone brakes to a hover and holds position. The higher drone treats the hovering drone’s actual coordinates as a no-fly zone and replans a route around it, with a wider margin vertically than horizontally, which the paper says is to give stronger vertical safety margins. The margin is padded by a 0.01-second allowance for network timing error and 2 inches (5 centimeters) for localization error. The authors argue this is safer than the standard approach, in which each drone optimizes against the flight paths its teammates broadcast, because a late packet means a drone is dodging a path its teammate left a moment ago.

ESCAPE Beat Racer in Seven of Nine Simulated Setups, With Perfect Radio Assumed

Across three simulated office maps with two, four and six drones, ESCAPE finished exploring faster than Racer on average in seven of nine combinations, and faster than ETH Zurich’s Role framework in all nine. Racer was quicker with two drones in the second office and with four in the first.

Each configuration ran 20 times, and the gains were largest on the map with the biggest obstacles. In the third office with two drones, ESCAPE averaged 98.9 seconds against Racer’s 140.4. With four drones there, its average path length was 53.9 meters (177 feet) against Racer’s 96.1 meters (315 feet). On the two simpler maps the differences were under 11 seconds either way.

The collision test defined a failure as any two drones coming within 16 inches (0.4 meters) of each other, and ran four- and eight-drone swarms 50 times each at 2.2 and 3.4 mph (1.0 and 1.5 m/s). The paper reports that success rates rose with the avoidance module switched on, and gives the figures only as a chart.

Both simulation studies assumed perfect localization and perfect communication between drones. The paper’s stated reason for building a new avoidance method is that real swarm radios drop packets and deliver flight paths late. The physical flights did run over an actual network. The team measured about 10.25 megabytes per second of traffic in a six-drone run it does not otherwise describe, and says the flights avoided collisions without noticeable network delays. It gives no collision counts, packet-loss figures or success rates from those flights.

The Money Is Chinese State Science Funding and the Code Is Locked

The paper lists seven funding sources, all Chinese and all public: the National Key Research and Development Program, four National Natural Science Foundation grants, two Shanghai municipal science projects, the Aeronautical Science Foundation of China, central-university research funds and a Tianjin transportation project.

The authors thank the Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems for facilities and computing. One coauthor, Gang Wang, is at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems. The institute is one of the seven universities under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that are known as the Seven Sons of National Defence. The paper’s contributions section credits Wang with manuscript review and revision, not with the method or the experiments. The paper describes only civilian uses: 3D reconstruction, environmental monitoring and search and rescue in forests. It says nothing about military applications, and the drones in the photos are small research quadcopters.

Withholding code is common in robotics papers, and the Creative Commons license Springer published the article under covers the text, not the software. The dataset is described as public domain. The code is withheld for confidentiality reasons the paper does not name, and whose requirement it is, a funder’s or the university’s, is not stated anywhere in the paper.

The PLA’s 200-drone swarm demo in January and the jamming-resistant hunting swarm claimed in June were military demonstrations with no published method, and this paper publishes its method in full, down to the weights in the risk formula, while keeping the code.

DroneXL’s Take

This is a solid, incremental engineering paper, and the press release built on it is not. “Autonomous drone swarms map complex environments” describes three drones crawling through a patch of park trees at walking pace. I’d call that a real distributed flight and a long way from a forest search, and the authors themselves never call it one.

The physical flights could have settled whether the avoidance logic survives a real radio link, and the paper gives no numbers from them. Stopping the lower drone dead whenever the risk score trips also suits a mapping job more than anything that has to keep moving, which the authors say themselves by listing moving obstacles as future work.

The withheld code bothers me more than the state funding does. Chinese university robotics is state funded by default, and the University of Minnesota’s wildfire swarm work runs on US federal grants the same way. But the paper’s headline result is that it beats Racer, and Racer’s authors put their code online for anyone to run. Until this team does the same, seven out of nine on their own simulator is a result nobody outside Tongji can check.

Source: Autonomous Intelligent Systems (Springer), via Scienmag.

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

Haiti's Drone War Claims a Gang Leader, and Two Death Stories

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 20:26:00 GMT

Mathias Saintil, the leader of the Boston gang in Cité Soleil, died Friday, November 6, a day after coordinated police operations swept five communes of Port-au-Prince with at least seven kamikaze drones. Haiti’s prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, confirmed the death on X with three words: “One less gang leader.” Saintil’s gang belongs to Viv Ansanm, the coalition the Trump administration designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in May 2025, and a human rights lawyer told CNN three weeks ago that no major gang leader had been killed in Haiti in years.

The two accounts of how he died do not match. The National Human Rights Defense Network, one of Haiti’s leading rights groups, says a kamikaze drone struck Saintil’s home and his vehicle in the Nan Nélio area between 9 and 10 p.m. Thursday and left him with abdominal wounds he died of the next afternoon. The Haiti National Police, in a statement issued after the prime minister’s post, says he was “struck by multiple gunshots” during a police operation and died later in a hospital in the capital.

Both Accounts Can Be True, and Neither Side Has Reconciled Them

The drones flown Thursday belong to a task force Prime Minister Fils-Aimé set up in March 2025, run from his office with Erik Prince’s Vectus Global in support, Human Rights Watch reports. It operates alongside Haitian police, and the US State Department licensed Vectus to export defense services to Haiti.

The night was not one drone and one target. The rights network counts at least seven kamikaze drones dropped across Tabarre, Croix-des-Missions, Santo, Cité Soleil and La Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, according to the Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles. Five of Saintil’s men died at the scene and around 15 were wounded, two of them losing a foot. Saintil was driving to a street party in Pierre-Six, another part of the slum, where a separate strike killed gang members and civilians, the network says.

Gunfire was part of the same action. A pickup truck carrying 15 fighters from the Brooklyn gang of Gabriel Jean-Pierre, known as Ti Gabriel, set out to reinforce Saintil, and task force members intercepted it, shooting five dead and wounding six. A man hit by a drone and then caught in that exchange would fit both statements. Neither the police nor the rights network has said so, and the Herald reports only that the accounts differ.

Saintil was taken to a hospital in Belécourt, then to a facility in Canaan, another gang-held district, where he died around 5:30 p.m. Friday while a third transfer to Carrefour was being arranged. DroneXL reported in August 2025 how far apart the task force and the police can sit when a task force drone that failed to detonate exploded at a police SWAT base in Kenscoff, killing two officers who were trying to disarm it after residents carried it in.

Prince Said Leadership Kills Do Not Win Wars. The Body Count Says What Does.

The campaign has flown more than 2,000 drone strikes since March 2025, CNN reported on October 17, and human rights lawyer Rosy Auguste Ducena told CNN that no major gang leader had been killed in years. Prince’s answer was that leadership kills are not how insurgencies are beaten.

“Wars are won by taking significant numbers of enemy manpower off the battlefield,” Prince told CNN, adding that the United States has an “obsession” with going after leaders.

The manpower count is on the record. Human Rights Watch tallied 141 drone operations between March 1, 2025 and January 21, 2026 that killed at least 1,243 people and injured 738. Among the dead were 17 children and at least 43 adults the group says were not gang members. Human Rights Watch wrote that some of the strikes “appear to be attempts to carry out extrajudicial killings,” and the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, told the Human Rights Council on October 2, 2025 that most of the drone strikes “are likely unlawful under international human rights law.” A CNN tally of UN reporting counts 85 civilians killed by the drones, a figure rights workers told CNN is probably incomplete because the targeted areas are hard to reach.

The drones themselves are armed quadcopters, the class of aircraft DroneXL described when it first covered the campaign in May 2025 and when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police objected in June 2025 that donated Canadian drones were being used lethally against the terms of the donation.

El Salvador’s 2,500 Troops Gave the Task Force Its Opening

The task force’s tempo rose after four Salvadoran aviation technicians serving with the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force were ambushed in Croix-des-Bouquets on October 18 and have not been seen since. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, sent 2,500 troops to Haiti to find them.

Bukele has made the hunt public. On Wednesday he posted aerial footage of Port-au-Prince on X with the caption “Looks like the gangs don’t want to fight us.”

During the search of the Cul-de-Sac plain for the missing men, the task force and Haitian police pushed into territory held by 400 Mawozo and bombed the home of its leader, Wilson Joseph, known as Lanmò San Jou. He survived. The rights network places him in Thor 65 in the commune of Carrefour, reportedly driven there by Ti Bwa gang leader Chrisla Chéry, and he has since appealed to the UN for peace talks. The Gang Suppression Force was not part of Thursday’s drone strikes either, and the Herald reports it has often had to deconflict after learning that another force’s operation was already underway.

DroneXL’s Take

Saintil’s gang terrorized Cité Soleil for years, and nobody in that slum is mourning him. The two death stories still bother me more than the death. I suspect the police version exists because a drone kill belongs to a contractor-backed unit the UN rights chief has called likely unlawful, while a shootout belongs to a police force that can stand behind it, and I can’t prove that. Both accounts may be true. A government that wanted them reconciled would have put out one statement, and it put out two.

I covered the Kenscoff SWAT base explosion last August as a protocol failure. It looks now like a symptom: two chains of command, one set of drones, and nobody willing to own the result when it goes wrong, or now, when it goes right.

Every US police department asking its council for an armed drone will have Haiti cited back at it, and after this week the citation comes with a gang leader’s name and a casualty ledger. The departments that want the capability should be the loudest voices demanding the task force publish who it kills, because the alternative is that Haiti writes the case against them.

Sources: Miami Herald via Yahoo News, CNN, Human Rights Watch, UN Geneva

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

Iran Never Sent Drones to California. The Barksdale Case Is Still Open

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 19:52:00 GMT

Eight months after the FBI warned California police that Iran had “allegedly aspired” to launch drones at the state from a ship off the coast, no Iranian drone has reached the United States. The war is still running. President Trump said on November 6 that the U.S. had struck Iranian air defenses again, and Tehran is weighing a Qatari proposal to end it.

The homeland drone incidents of those eight months have been tied to no one, Iran included. Drones flew over Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for a week in March. Fifteen spray drones left a New Jersey warehouse on forged paperwork. Northern Command’s deputy commander said in August that he could not stop a swarm launched inside the country, and an Army counter-drone laser now guards Mar-a-Lago.

The White House called the Iran story false the day after it ran. No agency has publicly said who flew the Barksdale drones.

The White House Answered the Iran Story Within a Day

The FBI’s Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center sent the bulletin to California police at the end of February. It said Iran had allegedly aspired, as of early February, to hit unspecified California targets with drones from an unidentified vessel if the U.S. struck first. It called the information unverified.

The bulletin said the FBI had nothing on timing, method, target or perpetrators. ABC News surfaced it on the night of March 11, twelve days into Operation Epic Fury, and its first version left out the word “unverified.” The FBI’s public affairs director, Ben Williamson, said so publicly. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded a retraction on March 12 and wrote that “no such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.” ABC added the full bulletin text and an editor’s note that day. Gov. Gavin Newsom said there was no imminent threat to the state.

The denial held up. I wrote on March 12 that the story would be a footnote by April 15, and it was. Iran’s drone carrier, the converted container ship Shahid Bagheri, was hit in the opening hours of the campaign, according to U.S. Central Command, and the footage CENTCOM released on March 5 shows it burning. Nicole Grajewski of the Carnegie Endowment told ABC that Iran “does not have the range to do this.” The same pattern played out in December 2024, when the Pentagon denied a congressman’s claim that an Iranian mothership was launching the New Jersey drones.

The Drone Cases That Did Happen Have No Public Attribution

Barksdale’s security forces counted multiple waves of 12 to 15 drones over the flight line between March 9 and 15, according to a March 15 briefing obtained by ABC News. It described non-commercial signals, long-range control links and resistance to jamming.

The base issued a shelter-in-place order on March 9, and the briefing said incursions like these require the flight line to be shut down. The base hosts B-52H bombers and the headquarters of Air Force Global Strike Command, and the command disputed parts of the coverage on March 31, saying operations from Barksdale “continue unabated” while a federal investigation runs. Sen. Bill Cassidy said after an unclassified briefing on March 27 that there had been “five or so at Barksdale from the 9th through the 15th,” one by a hobbyist and four of unclear origin, and that two recovered drones might not be connected to the incursions.

The only charges publicly reported since came in October, when prosecutors in Shreveport indicted Fuad Mousa Naji for flying an unregistered DJI Air 3 near the base from March 22 to 26. That period starts a week after the incursions ended, and neither local report on the indictment connects his Air 3 to the jamming-resistant aircraft in the briefing. He is due in federal court on December 2, and an indictment is an accusation: he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

In New Jersey, someone presented a forged bill of lading at CAC International in Harrison on March 24 and drove off with 15 Ceres Air C31 spray drones worth $58,000 each. Warehouse workers in Dover found them a month later. New Jersey State Police recovered all 15 on April 27 with Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection assisting, and announced no arrest. As of November 8, none has been reported in news coverage of the case.

Northcom Cannot Stop a Swarm, and a Laser Now Guards Mar-a-Lago

Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, told a Huntsville symposium on August 13 that his command could not defend the country against a drone swarm launched inside its borders, and he called detection the harder half of the problem.

His command is now trying to tie military radars into systems local police already run. “We are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that,” he said, in remarks reported by The War Zone. Gen. Gregory Guillot had told Congress in March that Northcom defeated about a quarter of the drones it detected over installations and had one deployable counter-drone fly-away kit. Those kits are now at Mar-a-Lago, alongside Avenger missile launchers and an AeroVironment LOCUST laser photographed on October 31. NORAD confirmed the deployment at the Secret Service’s request and would not describe the threat, and the Secret Service said only that it is operating in a heightened threat environment. The FAA’s restriction over the estate warns drone operators that their aircraft may be destroyed.

At the border, Joint Task Force-Southern Border says it defeated more than 300 drones this year. Since February, the targets of only two engagements have been identified in public: Mylar party balloons and a Customs and Border Protection surveillance drone.

DroneXL’s Take

The Iran bulletin got the fastest and loudest answer any homeland drone question has received this year, and it was the one question that did not need one. A single unverified tip in a contingency memo drew a retraction demand from the White House podium. The drones over a nuclear bomber base drew a shelter-in-place order, a senator’s briefing, a fact-check from the command and, eight months later, no name.

Leavitt was right on the merits. Iran had no way to put a Shahed over Los Angeles, and the drone carrier that might have tried was on fire by March 5. Barksdale is also a live federal criminal investigation, and investigators who name uncharged suspects lose cases. But the same government found a way to say, within hours, exactly what it knew about a threat that did not exist, and in eight months it has not told the people living under Barksdale’s flight paths whether the aircraft that briefing called jamming-resistant were hobbyist drones or something else. My read is that the speed of an answer tracks who is embarrassed by the question, and in March that was a television network rather than the Air Force.

The next date on the record is December 2, when Naji appears in Shreveport. Prosecutors there have not said what his Air 3 has to do with the week before his charged flights, if anything. I suspect the answer is nothing, and that the four flights Cassidy could not account for are still the whole story.

Sources: ABC News, Mediaite, CNN, Naval News, KSLA, March 27, KSLA, March 31, The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, The War Zone, Associated Press via CP24, New Jersey State Police.

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

Chimp Sanctuary Fed Kaleb by DJI Drone. Florida Agencies Can't Fly One

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 18:12:00 GMT

Save the Chimps, a 150-acre (61-hectare) chimpanzee sanctuary near Fort Pierce, Florida, used a DJI camera drone on November 4 to lower a paper bag of bananas and a bundle of blankets to Kaleb, a 38-year-old chimp whose outdoor area had been cut off by floodwater. Three days of rain over the first weekend of November had put the sanctuary’s internal roads under water, knocked out the golf carts that carry 3,000 pounds (1,361 kilograms) of food a day to more than 200 chimps, and stalled the swamp buggy brought in to replace them.

The sanctuary says every chimp stayed safe and no meal was missed. Kaleb later walked out on his own, across a rope strung over the standing water. The aircraft that reached him first, in the sanctuary’s own video, is a folding consumer drone with a line hanging from its belly, the kind Florida’s sheriffs and fire departments have been barred by state law from flying since 2023.

Three Days of Rain Put the Sanctuary’s Roads Under Water

Rain fell on the Treasure Coast from Sunday, November 1 to Tuesday, November 3. Fort Pierce recorded 8.36 inches (212 millimeters) in three days, with a one-day record of 5.39 inches (137 millimeters) on Monday, per FOX Weather, and WPTV put the sanctuary’s total at about 19 inches (483 millimeters).

The 200-plus residents live in groups on 12 islands of about 3 acres (1.2 hectares) each, with their indoor care houses on the high ground, and CEO Ana Paula Tavares said the care houses stayed secure on the high ground. It did cover the paths between the islands. The Header Canal that drains the property overflowed and kept the water from running off, CBS12 reported, and the South Florida Water Management District issued an emergency order during the week.

Nearly 15 golf carts failed, facilities director Mark Yohannan told WPTV, after sitting in 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of water. A donated high-clearance swamp buggy took over the food runs and broke down on Wednesday, and a staff member’s truck got stuck in a sinkhole on Thursday. Meals, medicine and enrichment went out by pickup, tractor and a maintenance worker’s personal vehicle, Yohannan told the Associated Press, and veterinarians stayed overnight on the property while flooding on the roads outside made it hard for the next shift to get in. “They haven’t missed a beat,” Yohannan said of the chimps. A small alligator turned up beside the kitchen on Friday.

The sanctuary's islands from the air after the November 1 to 3 rain, with the service roads between them under water. Image credit: Save the Chimps, video still

The water dropped noticeably overnight Friday, and by Saturday, November 7, about 20 percent of the roads were passable. Yohannan is scheduled to address the North St. Lucie River Water District at 10 a.m. on Monday, November 9, and the sanctuary plans to bring the drainage problem to the St. Lucie County Commission the same week. Its appeal for repair money, posted November 6, says every gift is matched by Susanne Damgaard of Denmark, the donor already matching up to $500,000 in the sanctuary’s year-end campaign. The sanctuary’s Facebook post puts the damage at resurfaced roads, roof repairs, mold remediation, golf carts, a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a walk-in cooler compressor.

The Drone in the Video Is a DJI Air 3-Series Camera Drone on a Drop Line

The sanctuary’s own video shows a gray DJI quadcopter with the stacked dual-camera gimbal of the Air 3 series lifting off a brick patio beside its open hard case, a paper bag swinging below on a line. No source names the model; the identification is DroneXL’s, from the footage.

The AP called it a delivery drone, and Yohannan told the wire service the sanctuary had bought it some time ago for exactly this kind of emergency. The Air 3 and Air 3S share the same body and gimbal, so the video does not settle which of the two it is. It cuts from the takeoff to the drone’s own downward view of the bag and a folded blanket on the grass of Kaleb’s island, and a photo the sanctuary gave CBS12 shows the same aircraft with the blankets slung underneath. The clip then follows Kaleb opening the bag, and later picking his way along the rope the staff had strung across the water, which the caption calls the land bridge.

The sanctuary's DJI Air 3-series drone lifting the paper bag off its hard case on November 4. Image credit: Save the Chimps, video still

In September, crews in Nepal flew four donated DJI FlyCart 100 cargo drones, each rated for 132 pounds (60 kilograms), to villages that had lost their roads and bridges. Save the Chimps flew a camera drone that carries a few pounds across a flooded path to one chimp. It worked because someone bought it before the rain and knew where the case was.

Florida’s Own First Responders Could Not Have Flown It

Florida has barred state and local agencies from flying Chinese-made drones since 2023, when the Department of Management Services limited public fleets to an approved list without DJI or Autel Robotics. The legislature put up $25 million for replacements, and the confiscated drones became target practice for Special Operations Command.

DroneXL put the cost of that policy at $200 million in working public safety drones in November 2025, with no published security analysis behind it. The agencies that replaced them went to American hardware: Palm Beach County Fire Rescue stood up a Skydio X10 fleet for this hurricane season because the law left it few other choices. A private nonprofit faces no such rule, and Save the Chimps flew what it owned.

Since December 22, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has blocked new equipment authorizations for every foreign-made drone through its Covered List, as DroneXL reported the day it happened. Drones already authorized, including the Air 3 and Air 3S, remain legal to buy, sell and fly. The November 3 midterms do not change that: as DroneXL reported on Friday, the exit from the Covered List runs through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, not through the new Democratic majorities.

DroneXL’s Take

A chimp sanctuary with a $1,000-class camera drone and a drop line did on Wednesday what a donated swamp buggy and 15 golf carts could not, and I keep coming back to who else in St. Lucie County was allowed to do the same. The sheriff’s office and fire rescue were not, because Florida took that aircraft out of their hands in 2023, and the FCC’s December order means no newer DJI model can be sold to anyone in the state. A paper bag of bananas for one chimp is not a public safety mission, and the sanctuary’s flight does not prove a sheriff needs a DJI. But the same storm flooded the same county, and the agencies paid to respond to it were working from a shorter equipment list than a chimp sanctuary, by law. Save the Chimps did what DroneXL has argued for since the ban: it bought a capable drone while the sky was clear and kept it in a case by the door, and I think Florida’s public fleets should have been allowed to do the same.

Sources: Associated Press, WPTV, CBS12, FOX Weather, Save the Chimps

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 MK30 Hangs in Seattle's Museum of Flight. It Still Flies

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 17:38:00 GMT

The Museum of Flight in Seattle hung an Amazon Prime Air MK30 delivery drone from the ceiling of its T.A. Wilson Great Gallery this week, the museum said in a LinkedIn post thanking Amazon for the aircraft. The MK30 joins the museum’s Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles exhibit, alongside a German V-1, the Insitu Aerosonde and the Lockheed Martin RQ-3A DarkStar, in a hall whose own page counts 39 full-size historic aircraft. It is also the type Amazon flies to customers today in 13 US metros, by DroneXL’s count, and plans to fly in nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of the year.

The museum’s post describes a drone built to carry packages of 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) or less to Amazon customers in under 30 minutes, with obstacle detection and flight in “extreme cold and heat.” DroneXL’s Drone Delivery Tracker lists seven US incidents for the MK30 since December 2024, and none of Amazon’s public environmental filings with the Federal Aviation Administration lists a parachute.

Amazon’s MK30 Went From Rendering to Museum Ceiling in Four Years

Amazon showed the MK30 as a rendering in November 2022 and as a finished aircraft in October 2023, and says the FAA cleared it for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights in October 2024. As of November 8, neither the museum’s post nor Amazon’s newsroom says whether the Seattle airframe flew a delivery.

Amazon’s FAA filings describe a six-motor aircraft that takes off vertically, cruises on a wing, descends to 13 feet (4 meters) over a yard and drops the package through doors in its belly. It weighs 77.9 pounds (35.5 kilograms) empty and 83.2 pounds (37.8 kilograms) at takeoff with its 5-pound cargo, figures the FAA carries in its national environmental assessment for drone delivery, and none of Amazon’s public environmental filings lists a parachute or other recovery system. Amazon says the MK30 has a fully redundant system for all safety-critical features, including a separate monitoring computer. Amazon’s own 2022 reveal promised increased range, expanded temperature tolerance and flight in light rain, and its 2023 page says the MK30 flies twice as far as previous models, cuts perceived noise by almost half, and detects and avoids people, pets and property. Neither Amazon page gives a temperature range in degrees, and DroneXL found none in Amazon’s newsroom or its public FAA filings on November 8. In May 2024, Calsee Hendrickson, then a director of product and program management for Prime Air, said the Tolleson, Arizona, operation would not take orders above 104°F (40°C).

Amazon's MK30 on the Prime Air stand at Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas, September 2026. Photo credit: DroneXL

Amazon’s earlier museum drone was a different aircraft. In August 2018 the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum said it would display an Amazon Prime Air hybrid drone, a demonstration model, in its We All Fly gallery, and Amazon drove it 2,700 miles to the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The MK30 in Seattle is the aircraft Amazon has flown to customers since November 2024 and is still building its network on.

Seven MK30 Incidents Sit on DroneXL’s Record Through September 2026

The tracker’s seven US incidents run from December 2024 to September 11, 2026. They include a crash at Amazon’s Pendleton, Oregon, test range. Two drones hit a crane in Tolleson on October 1, 2025, and one made a precautionary landing in Baton Rouge on September 11.

The Tolleson crane strikes paused Prime Air for the second time in 2025 and drew investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA. Ten days after Baton Rouge, another MK30 set itself down on a Waco lawn, wheels out, and as of DroneXL’s last reports Amazon had not said what triggered either landing. Amazon has also not explained the absence of a parachute since DroneXL asked for an engineer on the record at Commercial UAV Expo in September and published its questions on September 6. Zipline’s P2, the aircraft DroneXL measures delivery drones against, weighs 55 pounds (25 kilograms) empty and 63 pounds (29 kilograms) at takeoff, carries 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms), lowers the package on a tether from 300 feet (91 meters) and carries a parachute it has deployed twice over Texas.

Amazon Added Nampa as Its 13th Metro in October and Claims a UK First Now

Amazon began MK30 deliveries in Nampa, Idaho, on October 30, and the FAA’s environmental index carried no Idaho document when DroneXL checked it on November 2. Markham has flown since October while the FAA’s Chicago environmental review remains a draft, and Tallahassee is due in mid-November.

The expansion is drawing resistance as it goes. Fifteen states sued the FAA in September over the nationwide environmental clearance Amazon’s newest hubs run on, and on November 2 Westborough’s building commissioner withdrew the zoning ruling behind Amazon’s planned pad in Massachusetts. Residents under a new 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle who want to reach Amazon can call 1-888-280-4331 or use the customer service chat, choosing “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery”; DroneXL’s guide for residents covers both and what a town can still do.

None of those circles is in Washington. Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, and neither its FAA filings nor DroneXL’s tracker shows a Prime Air hub anywhere in the state. Wing named Seattle for 2027 in its October Walmart expansion, and Zipline has proposed up to 75 sites around the city, a plan still in FAA review.

In the UK, David Carbon, Amazon’s vice president of Prime Air, said on LinkedIn on November 7 that Prime Air had received what he called the world’s first SAIL IV operating authorization and flight worthiness validation from the Civil Aviation Authority. “This is a genuine global first,” Carbon wrote. SAIL, the Specific Assurance and Integrity Level, is the risk tier a drone operation is assigned under the SORA framework that European and UK regulators use, and Carbon described level IV as one of the highest levels of operational and safety assurance in drone aviation. The CAA’s newsroom carried no matching announcement when DroneXL checked it on November 8, and Carbon’s post names no site, document or flight cap. Amazon’s only UK operation, in Darlington, has flown since May under a trial permission that expires at the end of 2026. Carbon also wrote that Prime Air would pass a run rate of 4 million deliveries a year by the end of this year.

DroneXL’s Take

I’m fine with the MK30 in a museum. It is a serious piece of engineering, and a Seattle schoolkid looking up at it under the same roof as a V-1 and a DarkStar should see what the city’s best-known company built. My quarrel is with the label, if it reads like the museum’s post, which so far repeats Amazon’s pitch. The facts that matter to anyone living under a Prime Air circle are the ones in the filings: 83 pounds at takeoff carrying 5 pounds of cargo, a 13-foot drop, and no parachute or other recovery system in any public filing. I’m for drone delivery when the cargo justifies the flight, and a shoebox from a warehouse does not justify that aircraft over a backyard in Nampa or Markham when Zipline has shown that a lighter drone with a parachute does the job. If the museum wants the exhibit to teach something about delivery drones, the weight, the payload and the missing parachute belong on the placard next to Amazon’s 30-minute promise.

Sources: The Museum of Flight, Museum of Flight exhibit page, Amazon, FAA, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, David Carbon on LinkedIn

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

Mar-a-Lago Gets the Laser Family Behind El Paso's Airspace Shutdown

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 17:04:00 GMT

An AeroVironment LOCUST counter-drone laser is now part of the air defenses around President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Getty photographer Andrew Harnik caught it on October 31, mounted on a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and parked between two palm trees behind a pair of Avenger missile launchers on a floating platform in Lake Worth Lagoon. NORAD and U.S. Northern Command have confirmed that they deployed ground-based air defense and counter-drone systems around Mar-a-Lago at the request of the U.S. Secret Service.

The vehicle and the beam director on its roof match the 20-kilowatt Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser, the system family behind the test that made the FAA shut down El Paso’s airspace in February and that destroyed a Customs and Border Protection drone near Fort Hancock two weeks later. Those shots happened over a military range and a border strip. This one sits in a residential town, three miles (4.8 kilometers) from a commercial runway.

The FAA’s flight restriction over Mar-a-Lago already warns drone operators that the Department of War may destroy unmanned aircraft deemed a credible safety or security threat. Neither NORAD nor the Secret Service has tied the laser to a specific threat.

NORAD Confirms the Deployment but Will Not Name the Weapon

“Due to operational security, we are unable to provide additional details,” NORAD and U.S. Northern Command said, and referred further questions to the Secret Service. The Secret Service said it is operating in a heightened threat environment and continuously adapts its protective operations, without naming a weapon or a threat.

The Secret Service’s late-October statement to CBS12 did name one item: NORTHCOM’s counter-small Unmanned Aircraft System Fly-Away Kits. NORTHCOM fielded those kits to rush to bases with drone incursions, and The War Zone reports the ones at Mar-a-Lago carry Ku-band radar, electronic support measures, jammers and 360-degree infrared search-and-track sensors. The LOCUST can be cued by offboard sensors like those.

The War Zone’s Joseph Trevithick reported the laser on November 2, after Jared Keller’s Laser Wars newsletter picked it out of Harnik’s frame and identified it as a 20 kW AMP-HEL. The Avengers came first: NurPhoto’s Christopher Beckett photographed them on the shoreline on October 16 and on the ramp at Donald J. Trump International Airport the day before. In August, Avengers covered Trump’s Bedminster club during the LIV Golf final, and NORAD said then that the 263rd Army Air and Missile Defense Command runs them for the Secret Service. The command would not say whether that is the case in Palm Beach.

The JLTV Points to the 20 kW LOCUST, Not the New X3

AeroVironment delivered two JLTV-mounted LOCUST lasers to the Army in December 2025 under AMP-HEL, a 20 kW-class system with a larger beam director than the Infantry Squad Vehicle version. The 30 kW LOCUST X3 won its first production contract in September, and NewsBytes labeled the Mar-a-Lago unit an X3.

Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Joint Task Force-Southern Border, work on an AMP-HEL laser near Rio Grande City, Texas, on August 31, 2026. Photo credit: Department of War / Spc. Adrianna Douglas

Neither NORAD nor AeroVironment has confirmed the variant. The JLTV in Harnik’s photo is the December hardware: AeroVironment’s own release describes it as “the same 20kW-class LOCUST LWS” as the ISV version, and the Army captions its border photos of the vehicle the same way. The $464.8 million X3 contract pays for deliveries over the coming years.

That 20 kW family has a US record. On February 10, CBP officials fired a Pentagon-owned LOCUST at what turned out to be Mylar balloons near Fort Bliss, and the FAA closed El Paso’s airspace over the test. On February 26 soldiers used the same system to destroy a CBP surveillance drone the Pentagon had not been told about. The FAA and the Pentagon then signed a safety agreement on April 10 that cleared the lasers for US airspace, and in October the Pentagon picked AeroVironment’s laser for a year-long pilot at US bases, citing an FAA safety finding that covered that one laser family.

The Mar-a-Lago TFR Already Threatens to Destroy Drones

NOTAM FDC 6/0100 was issued October 18, 2026. It closes a one-nautical-mile circle around Mar-a-Lago from the surface to 2,000 feet AGL until October 20, 2027. Drone operators are warned the Department of War, DHS or DOJ may take action resulting in the “seizure, damaging, or destruction” of their aircraft.

The NOTAM extends a restriction in place around the clock since October 20, 2025, whether or not Trump is in residence. The Secret Service asked for it in a September 16, 2025 letter from Director Sean Curran to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, citing “adverse threat intelligence” and the “persistent risks posed by unauthorized aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems.” On September 2 the FAA proposed making it permanent as a Special Flight Rules Area under Part 93, the same instrument that covers Washington, D.C. The comment period closed October 2.

Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach and the Town of Palm Beach took the restriction to the D.C. Circuit over the noise from rerouted airliners, and the county commission voted 4-3 in September to pause its case rather than drop it. In an August 11 filing in federal court, the FAA counted more than 160 planes and drones that had breached the airspace since the restriction began, a figure The War Zone attributes to the filing as first reported by the Palm Beach Daily News. NORAD F-16s intercepted a general aviation aircraft over Palm Beach as recently as October 24. The FAA’s own proposal notes that the airport’s primary runway averaged 86 airline operations a day in 2025, and that arrivals and departures have to pass through the restricted circle.

DroneXL’s Take

The Secret Service has a real problem at Mar-a-Lago. More than 160 aircraft and drones have crossed a line every Part 107 operator is supposed to know about, and a laser is the cheapest way to enforce it without raining shrapnel on Palm Beach the way a Stinger would.

But the FAA’s clearance for these lasers came out of a White Sands test, on a range, after El Paso showed what happens when a laser fires near a civilian airport without the FAA in the loop. At White Sands the laser’s automatic cutoff stopped the beam when an airliner strayed into its track, and that result is what the clearance rests on. The airliners into DJT fly through the same one-mile circle the laser is guarding, and the FAA’s own rulemaking notice says 86 of them a day use that runway. I’d want the FAA to say in public whether its April agreement covers a laser parked under an approach path, the way it said so for the border, because the people in those seats are not Secret Service protectees.

For anyone flying a drone in Palm Beach, the practical read is simpler. The restricted circle has been there since October 2025, a 20 kW laser with a radar feeding it now sits inside it, and the agencies running it will not say what it is there to shoot at.

Sources: The War Zone, Laser Wars, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Secret Service via CBS12, AeroVironment, FAA NOTAM FDC 6/0100, Federal Register (Docket FAA-2026-10827), WPTV, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

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

Pentagon Counts 300 Border Drone Defeats. Two Were Publicly Identified

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 16:31:00 GMT

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division trained with the Army’s 20-kilowatt counter-drone laser near Fort Hancock, Texas, on November 2, in photos the Department of War posted the next day. Fort Hancock is where a military laser destroyed a U.S. Customs and Border Protection drone on February 26, after CBP, by the Pentagon’s preliminary account, had not told the military it was flying. Joint Task Force-Southern Border said in September it had defeated more than 300 drones along the US-Mexico border this year, 11 of them with the AMP-HEL, the laser in the new photos.

Since February, the targets of only two engagements have been identified in public, and neither came from an on-the-record agency statement. One was a set of Mylar party balloons over El Paso. The other was the CBP drone.

The Laser Is Training At Fort Hancock Eight Months After The CBP Shootdown

Soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, operated an Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser mounted on an Infantry Squad Vehicle near Fort Hancock on November 2, according to the captions on four Department of War photos by Sgt. Michael Graf, posted to DVIDS on November 3.

The captions say the system is now in use for counter-UAS operations, and that U.S. Northern Command works with DHS and CBP “within narrowly defined authorities” to protect the border.

The AMP-HEL turret on the Infantry Squad Vehicle near Fort Hancock, Texas, November 2, 2026. The 20-kilowatt laser is the Army's vehicle-mounted version of AeroVironment's LOCUST. Photo credit: Dept. of War / Sgt. Michael Graf

The AMP-HEL is the Army’s vehicle-mounted version of AeroVironment’s LOCUST laser, the same weapon family that fired in February. Northern Command dates the AMP-HEL’s first border employment to August 24, so the February shots fall outside its 11 laser kills. Whether they sit inside the 300 calendar-year count, the release does not say. The February 10 shot came from a LOCUST the Army had lent to CBP, and the joint statement attributes the February 26 shot to the Department of War without naming a unit. The FAA’s flight restriction over Fort Hancock, imposed after the shootdown, ran through June 24, and the FAA’s TFR list on Sunday had no Fort Hancock entry. The only Texas border entries now are the three NOTAMs that ban civilian drones along the whole line.

NORTHCOM’s 300 Defeats Come With No Targets And No Baseline

U.S. Northern Command said on September 4 that Joint Task Force-Southern Border had defeated more than 300 unmanned aircraft in 2026, more than 100 of them in August, and 11 with the AMP-HEL laser. The release does not define a defeat and names no drone type or location.

The defeats came from kinetic and non-kinetic systems, and the aircraft “were assessed to be associated with illicit activity,” the release says. Gen. Gregory Guillot, who commands NORAD and Northern Command, said that “frontline troops have the right authorities.” When the task force announced its first three laser kills on August 27, it said the drones were declared hostile because of “their use in direct support of activities posing a physical threat” to troops and CBP agents, and it would not say which side of the border they fell on. On September 7, military officials told CBS News that drone flights over the Rio Grande Valley had dropped about 75% since the laser arrived, without disclosing a before or after count, and they allowed that cartels may simply have moved.

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the task force commander, gave DefenseScoop the most detailed accounting on September 29: at least 378 drones detected between August 22 and September 22, of which 75 were turned back, 15 were engaged and one was captured. He also said “we have not, to date, seen any lethal drones along the southern border.” Taylor attributed 95% to 98% of the activity to reconnaissance for human smuggling. His deputy, Air Force Brig. Gen. Brian Filler, credited an intelligence process for that characterization without explaining how a given drone gets tied to trafficking, and said the drones are “largely commercial off-the-shelf.” One target in Army photos from its Yuma counter-drone trials was a DJI Mavic 3 Classic. Five days earlier at the same range, task force officials told DefenseScoop they were not permitted to discuss drone types, ranges, routes or payloads, citing operational security.

The Two Engagements On The Public Record Hit Balloons And A Government Drone

On the night of February 10, CBP fired a Pentagon-owned LOCUST laser at objects near Fort Bliss that were Mylar balloons. The FAA shut El Paso’s airspace for eight hours. On February 26, the military destroyed a CBP drone over Fort Hancock that CBP had not told it was flying.

The El Paso closure canceled 14 flights and diverted medevacs 45 miles to Las Cruces. The balloons surfaced through officials speaking to NBC News and other outlets, and the CBP drone through congressional aides and officials speaking to Reuters, The New York Times and The War Zone. The joint statement from the Pentagon, CBP and the FAA described the February 26 target only as “a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system” in military airspace. It still has not named the aircraft. Congressional aides told Reuters the drone cost about $30 million, a figure DroneXL carried in February. The War Zone reported it was small. In my reading those two facts do not describe the same aircraft, and no public statement DroneXL has found reconciles them. Nor has any other engagement’s target been identified: DroneXL found none in NORTHCOM and JTF-SB releases, DVIDS posts or press coverage through November 8.

The response in Washington split along the question of whose permission the shooters needed. Pentagon nominee Mark Ditlevson told the Senate Armed Services Committee the day of the shootdown that the law requires DoD to coordinate with the FAA, not to get its approval. The FAA ended the standoff on April 10, when it cleared military lasers for use in US airspace after White Sands tests of the beam against aircraft materials and of its automatic cutoff when an airliner crossed the tracking angle. That clearance answers whether a laser can safely miss a passenger jet, and it is silent on how the crew decides what to hit.

Duckworth’s Inspector General Request Has Produced Nothing Public

Senator Tammy Duckworth asked the Defense, Transportation and Homeland Security inspectors general on March 13 to jointly investigate the two laser incidents and whether any federal law was broken. Nearly eight months later, DroneXL found no report or project announcement from any of the three that names those incidents.

Duckworth’s letter also asked the watchdogs to assess the risk the systems pose to civilian, commercial and medical aircraft, The Hill reported. DroneXL searched the three inspectors general’s websites and eight months of news coverage on Sunday. The closest match is a DoD inspector general evaluation announced April 20 and retitled June 8 to study gaps in the interoperability of the department’s counter-drone systems. Its announcement mentions neither the border nor the February shots. Representatives Rick Larsen, Bennie Thompson and André Carson, the top Democrats on the House Transportation, Homeland Security and aviation panels, said in February that “our heads are exploding over the news” and blamed the administration for sidestepping a bipartisan counter-drone coordination bill. Democrats won both chambers on November 3, which puts those panels under Democratic chairs when the new Congress is seated on January 3.

The one structural change that did ship landed on civilians. Three FAA NOTAMs ban every drone within one nautical mile of the border from October 20 through October 19, 2027, from the surface to 400 feet (122 meters), taking in downtown El Paso and Laredo. Permission runs through a CBP mailbox with 48 hours’ notice, the FAA’s Domestic Notice says, and each request must carry the drone’s Remote ID and serial number. There is no category for routine commercial or recreational flying. The agency that, by the Pentagon’s account, did not file its own flight notice in February now receives everyone else’s.

CBP’s aircraft are not the only government drones in that band. Texas DPS more than doubled its drone fleet under Operation Lone Star, and the El Paso County Sheriff runs a drone first responder program one county west of Fort Hancock.

DroneXL’s Take

The border drone war is being scored by the people doing the shooting, and the two times outsiders learned what a shot hit, it was party balloons and a US government aircraft. That is my problem with the 300 figure. I don’t doubt soldiers engaged 300 aircraft, and I don’t doubt most were cartel spotters. Taylor’s own detection count, 378 in a month, says the cartels fly plenty. But “assessed to be associated with illicit activity” is the shooter grading the shooter, and the two February shots that did get checked turned out to be balloons and a CBP drone, with the public learning both from leaks.

The Fort Hancock crew fired on an aircraft it could not identify, by the Pentagon’s own account, and what that crew needed was a shared air picture, not a safety clearance. April delivered the clearance. Neither the September 4 release nor the CBS and DefenseScoop interviews says whether CBP’s drones, Texas DPS’s drones and the El Paso County Sheriff’s drones now show up on the same screen as the laser crew’s tracking display, and in my judgment that is the question that mattered on February 26.

My read is that the agencies’ silence on the February incidents has done what secrecy usually does: the explaining stopped and the counts kept growing. The House Democrats who demanded answers in February will hold subpoena power in January. Until then, a Part 107 pilot in El Paso emails CBP two days ahead to fly over their own downtown, while the targets of 300 military engagements along the same border stay a secret.

Sources: U.S. Northern Command, DVIDS, Joint Task Force-Southern Border, DefenseScoop, CBS News, The Hill, The War Zone, Reuters via CNBC, FAA Domestic Notice.

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

Indiana FAA Drone Test Site Plans Kinetic Tests Under A Civil Program

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 15:57:00 GMT

A Purdue University-owned Windracers ULTRA flew the first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight in the Indiana Drone Corridor on October 29, covering more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) out of Terre Haute Regional Airport while Governor Mike Braun, Senator Todd Young and Representative Mark Messmer watched it drop parachute boxes from its cargo bay. The flight opened the Midwest UAS Test Site of Indiana, one of two sites the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) designated in January, bringing its test-site network to nine after nearly a decade without additions.

Windracers’ announcement says the aircraft will now be tested as a way to drop emergency supplies to Indiana communities affected by seasonal flooding. The FAA describes the program the site belongs to as support for public and civil unmanned aircraft and for the safe integration of drones into the National Airspace System.

Dale Lyles, the test site director, told WTHI that the site is partnered with the Indiana National Guard and will use the special-use airspace over Camp Atterbury for “kinetic testing as well as counter-UAS testing,” which he said will make it completely different from any other test site in the United States.

Purdue’s Flood-Relief Drone Has Flown Military Logistics For Ukraine

Windracers, the ULTRA’s British maker, has had the aircraft flying in Ukraine since 2023 and in April was named one of three primary suppliers under the United Kingdom’s £752 million drone package for Ukraine, as DroneXL reported. Purdue owns the aircraft that flew on October 29, registered N90PU.

The aircraft has an aluminum airframe, a 33-foot (10-meter) wingspan and a cargo floor that drops loads from three separate bays, according to Windracers’ announcement.

The ULTRA's three-bay cargo floor loaded with parachute boxes for the Terre Haute demonstration. Photo credit: Windracers / Applied Research Institute

The current ULTRA Mk2 carries 441 pounds (200 kilograms) over 1,242 miles (2,000 kilometers), a range Windracers announced in January. Purdue is the company’s main university partner in the United States: its AIDA3 center, the Center on AI for Digital, Autonomous and Augmented Aviation, was launched in partnership with Windracers, and Damon Lercel, a Purdue Polytechnic associate professor on the AIDA3 team, called the opening a milestone for the Midwest in Windracers’ announcement.

The Indiana flight was the ULTRA’s second BVLOS flight in the United States. The first was a flight of about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from Nenana, Alaska, on August 19, carrying anti-doping blood samples for the International Testing Agency under the University of Alaska Fairbanks test site. Windracers’ Indiana release calls that flight 670 miles, while its own Alaska post and the university put it at 1,000 kilometers. Neither Windracers nor Purdue named the FAA authorization for the Indiana flight in their announcements as of November 8.

That authorization still matters because the FAA’s Part 108 BVLOS rule has been in White House review since July 10, 121 days as of Sunday. Until it is published, a BVLOS flight needs a Part 107 waiver, a Section 44807 exemption or a certificate of authorization, and the test site has not said which it holds. In September the FAA’s Robert Reckert said the agency hopes to publish by year-end.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s release on the designation said the job is to make sure the United States leads in drones, “not China.” The aircraft that opened the corridor is British.

The Site’s Director And Its Own Website Put Kinetic Testing First

The test site’s website lists Defense and Counter-UAS first among its capability areas. It defines them as kinetic testing, electronic warfare and threat mitigation, ahead of public safety and agriculture, and promises access to Camp Atterbury, Muscatatuck and Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane. A 225-plus-mile BVLOS corridor has preliminary approval.

On October 28, the day before the ribbon-cutting, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle designated Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck as “premier, permissive sites” for commercial drone and counter-drone testing, run through Army Test and Evaluation Command with the Indiana National Guard. Camp Atterbury brings more than 34,000 acres and restricted airspace up to 40,000 feet (12,192 meters). Young told WTHI his goal is for Indiana to lead in testing, fielding and manufacturing drones at scale “for the Department of War” and for commercial customers.

None of this was hidden in the bid. Indiana’s congressional delegation pitched the state’s military infrastructure in its December letter to the FAA, and DroneXL wrote in June that Indiana won the designation largely on defense infrastructure, with the Army’s counter-UAS experimentation work at Camp Atterbury already in place.

The FAA describes the program in civil terms. Its January 8 release says the UAS Test Site program supports the testing of public and civil unmanned aircraft and advances the safe integration of drones into the National Airspace System, with a focus on BVLOS and autonomous operations. Kinetic testing does not appear in it. Andrew Kossack, president and chief executive of the Applied Research Institute (ARI), the Bloomington nonprofit that runs the site with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), framed the opening around the region’s defense expertise and the strengthening of America’s “defence and industrial base.”

The IEDC And ARI Run The Site Under A Law Signed In March

The IEDC and ARI run the site under House Bill 1268, signed March 4, which puts the test site in state law as a program the IEDC administers with an “operating partner.” Both bodies were subjects of FTI Consulting’s forensic review of the IEDC, published 98 days before the designation.

Braun promised the review in April 2025 after Indiana Legislative Insight reported allegations of self-dealing at the agency, and FTI published it on October 2 with 45 findings and observations on conflicts of interest, compliance and financial oversight across the IEDC and four affiliates. On ARI, the report says the IEDC’s award grew from $2.5 million at the end of 2022 to $17.5 million in 2023, that the agreement was “drafted in broad terms,” and that the contract and progress reports did not let FTI determine how the money was used. Of the $10.6 million paid under that award by the end of 2024, ARI had spent $4.4 million. ARI told FTI the award was a fixed-fee contract and that the balance funds its mission rather than profit.

FTI said its review of ARI was limited by the security requirements of ARI’s defense work, with read-only access to documents tied to IEDC funding, and it noted that the entities had begun reforms while the review ran. Braun said the state would “take every recommendation,” the Daily Journal reported.

DroneXL’s Take

The FAA’s own words make this a civil program: public and civil aircraft, safe integration into the national airspace. Indiana’s site director and the site’s own website describe a kinetic and counter-UAS test range, and neither is hiding it. The gap sits in the FAA’s description, not in Indiana’s conduct, and I think the agency should close it. If the test-site program now hosts weapons testing over a Guard base, its public description should say so, because nobody reading the January release would guess it.

Counter-drone systems have to be tested somewhere, and restricted airspace over Camp Atterbury is the right place for it. The ULTRA has hauled real supplies for Ukrainian units for three years, so the parachute drop over Terre Haute showed a working capability rather than a prop. My objection is the label on the federal side. The FAA designated this site under a program it describes as civil integration, and the site describes itself as a kinetic and counter-UAS range. One of those descriptions has to change, and it should be the FAA’s.

Sources: Windracers, WTHI, FAA, U.S. Army, FTI Consulting, Midwest UAS Test Site of Indiana

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

Houston Approves Counter-Drone Bid on Consent, Use Rules Unfinished

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:33:00 GMT

Houston City Council approved the city’s application for FEMA’s second $250 million counter-drone round on Wednesday, as Ordinance 2026-0982. The item sat on the 47-item consent agenda and passed in the block vote, with no council member tagging it, according to the city secretary’s agenda with notes of action taken.

KPRC 2 reported the vote on Wednesday evening as Houston getting “one step closer to putting drone technology in the hands of public safety officials,” with the money going toward aerial monitoring at large events. The vote authorizes an application, not a purchase. The filing behind the ordinance says the grant’s purpose is to “enhance law enforcement detection and mitigation capabilities.”

Houston’s Filing Describes Gear That Finds Drones, Not Drones That Watch Crowds

The request for council action behind item 36 says the money will pay for detection, identifying, monitoring, tracking and mitigation technology for every SEAR-rated special event in the Houston region. It lists the amount as unknown and projects a performance period from December 2026 to December 2029.

That matches the federal program. FEMA’s program page defines the Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Grant Program, created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as funding to “detect, identify, track, or monitor unmanned aircraft systems.” The equipment list DroneXL went through when Houston’s bid first surfaced on Monday runs to radar, radio-frequency direction finders, cameras, acoustic sensors and Remote ID receivers on the detection side, and jammers and takeover systems on the mitigation side. Neither the city’s filing nor FEMA’s program page mentions buying drones.

Larry Satterwhite, who runs the mayor’s public safety office, described the purchase to KPRC 2 as a way to see more and cover more ground, and his office told the station officers cannot watch a large event from every angle. “Houston is a big city, and we do big things here,” Satterwhite said. Much of the operational capability, he told the station, would end up with the Houston Police Department.

The Use Policy Comes After the Vote, and the Awards Land December 10

City officials are still working to establish guardrails for how the technology is used, KPRC reported on Wednesday, hours after the vote it said the guardrails waited on. The agenda shows no amendment, no tag and no pulled item on 36, so the application goes to the state as written.

The sequence repeats Houston’s first round. Council approved the World Cup application in February as Ordinance 2026-0135, the prior action the new filing cites, and in May agreed to reimburse the Harris County Sheriff’s Office up to $1,254,000 for detection and mitigation systems. Texas DPS seized eight drones around Houston’s World Cup venues in the first week of the tournament, and a church videographer who flew a DJI Mavic 3 near the downtown fan festival faces federal charges.

The rules on the mitigation side are federal. Only an accredited law enforcement or correctional agency may operate a jammer, through officers certified at the FBI’s counter-drone school, under the Safer Skies Act. Any agency that buys detection gear with this money must give DHS access to its flight tracks and Remote ID data, a condition DroneXL reported when FEMA opened the round in October. Texas has $10,508,140 to split among local agencies, less up to 20% the state may keep for its own equipment, and the governor’s Public Safety Office files one package with FEMA by November 16, and FEMA expects to issue awards on December 10.

DroneXL’s Take

Wednesday was the moment to ask what Houston is buying, and the consent agenda is built to skip that moment. The item passed in a block with a cold-case DNA grant and five landmark designations. The vote commits no money, and Satterwhite’s office says the use rules are coming, so the city can fairly call the order normal. The detection gear is easy to defend. Radar and a Remote ID receiver find the pilot, and the Houston cases from the World Cup were a videographer and a real estate pilot, so finding the pilot fast is the whole job. My problem is the framing, and I’d put it to Satterwhite directly. “Eyes in the sky” sells this as drones for officers, and the filing says sensors and jammers. The council members who let item 36 through should ask Satterwhite for the written policy before December 10, because once the award lands the city spends the money on FEMA’s terms.

Sources: City of Houston council agenda with notes of action taken, November 4, 2026, City of Houston request for council action, item 36, KPRC 2, FEMA C-UAS Grant Program.

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

Wing's $125M Texas Plant Can Build Tens of Thousands of Drones a Year

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:33:00 GMT

Wing said Friday it will invest up to $125 million over the next two years in a 15,000-square-foot drone factory in Fort Worth, Texas, with up to 100 manufacturing jobs and the capacity to build tens of thousands of aircraft a year. The Alphabet-owned company will build its next-generation delivery aircraft there for a Walmart network that is contracted to reach more than 270 stores by 2027.

The announcement comes one day after Zipline, Walmart’s other drone partner, raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion valuation and signed Walmart for 300 more sites, with its money also earmarked for US manufacturing. Both companies fly Walmart orders in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro today.

Wing’s plant covers about a quarter of a football field. Wing has not said how many aircraft fly its 70-plus sites today.

Wing’s $125 Million Is an “Up To” Figure That Also Covers California

Wing’s own post describes “up to $125M in direct manufacturing over the next two years” at the Fort Worth plant, alongside unspecified spending on research and engineering in California. It gives no split between the two, no street address, no production start date and no name for the next-generation aircraft.

The Dallas Morning News, citing a statement made on Wing’s behalf, reported that the Fort Worth operation opened early this year. Wing’s announcement calls it “our newest” facility and leaves the opening date out. The Texas governor’s office had posted no incentive announcement by Friday evening, and Wing’s post names none.

“The U.S. is our focus for growth,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said in the post.

The Plant Sits in the Metro Where Wing Flies 19 Walmart Stores

Wing has flown from Fort Worth Walmart stores since it opened its first local site at 8520 N. Beach St. in June 2024. The Fort Worth Report counts 19 local Walmart locations today, two of them in North Richland Hills, and Walmart also contracts Zipline for North Texas deliveries.

Nationally, Wing says it serves more than 70 sites, has made more than one million US home deliveries this year, and plans to reach 40 million Americans across nearly 20 metros by 2027. The seven markets named in June, San Diego, Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and the San Francisco Bay Area, are still waiting for aircraft, and Denver and Seattle were added in October for 2027.

The aircraft Wing flies today, its two Hummingbird variants, cruise at up to 60 mph (97 km/h), carry up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms) and lower the package on a tether. Heather Rivera, Wing’s chief business officer, said in the statement that “drone delivery isn’t just a novelty” and that customers use it several times a week.

Finished Wing aircraft stacked on a pallet on the factory floor. Photo credit: Wing

Part 108 as Drafted Favors US-Built Aircraft, and It Is Still Unsigned

The FAA’s Part 108 rule has sat in White House review since July 10, 119 days as of Friday, and Wing’s post cites its “upcoming release” as the trigger for expansion. The 2025 draft ties airworthiness acceptance for foreign-built aircraft to a bilateral agreement with the country of origin.

A factory in Texas sidesteps that clause entirely. Wing and Zipline both fly today under Part 135 air carrier approvals, site by site, and both have now put their 2026 spending into domestic production before the rule that would make routine BVLOS flight legal is signed.

DroneXL’s Take

Wing’s output figure matters more than its dollar figure. Wing left 30 written safety questions from DroneXL unanswered in September, and its announcements this fall have carried store counts, metro counts and delivery totals but never an aircraft count. A plant sized for tens of thousands of aircraft a year, feeding 270 stores, is the first hard figure anyone has seen on where Wing’s fleet is going. It is also far bigger than anything a city council has been shown. Northglenn, Colorado drafted an ordinance in September that would make aircraft count, altitude and flight frequency a condition of any drone hub permit, and I think every city on Wing’s June list should copy it. Wing just published a production number for Fort Worth, so it can put a fleet number in the next permit file it hands a city.

Sources: Wing, Fort Worth Report, The Dallas Morning News

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

Kilgore Drone Finds Alzheimer's Patient on an Oil Lease in 90 Minutes

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:07:00 GMT

A Kilgore Fire Department thermal drone found a missing elderly woman on an oil lease site in northern Rusk County, Texas, on November 4, about three-quarters of a mile from the home she had walked away from. Kilgore Fire Marshal Terry Linder was flying it, and he spotted her roughly 90 minutes after launch. The Kilgore News Herald, which dates the search to November 4, reports she has Alzheimer’s disease.

The Elderville-Lakeport Volunteer Fire Department took the call near County Road 2126 and County Road 2126A and reached the scene at about 2 p.m. By then she had been gone for close to two hours. Deputies from the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office, the Rusk County Rescue Unit and firefighters from both departments searched on the ground while Linder flew. Christus EMS evaluated her at an ambulance staged nearby and took her for treatment.

The departments have not released her name or said how she was doing when deputies reached her.

Linder Found Her Heat Signature at an Oil Lease Three-Quarters of a Mile Out

Linder launched Kilgore’s drone to cover ground faster than deputies and firefighters could walk it. After about 90 minutes he picked up the woman at an oil lease site roughly three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) from the residence and relayed her position to deputies, who reached her on foot.

The Elderville-Lakeport department said in a statement reported by the Kilgore News Herald that the thermal camera let crews search a large area and pick out heat signatures, and that without it “the outcome of this incident could have been significantly different.” CBS19, which broke the story on the evening of November 4, puts her time missing before crews arrived at close to two hours. Add Linder’s 90 minutes in the air and she had been outside for more than three hours by the time deputies walked her out.

Kilgore Flies a DJI Mini 5 Pro Beside the Thermal Drone That Made the Find

The Kilgore Fire Department operates two multi-mission drones for fire suppression, fire investigations and searches, per the Kilgore News Herald. Its photo shows both on a department vehicle’s hood. A DJI Mini 5 Pro labeled KILG_FD_UAS1 sits in front, with a larger folding aircraft carrying a thermal payload behind it.

None of the three local reports name the second aircraft, and the department describes the one that found her only as its thermal imaging drone.

The man flying it has worked both sides of this call. The City of Kilgore announced Linder’s hiring as fire marshal on December 29, 2025 after Ryan Riley moved up to chief. He retired from the Kilgore Police Department as a lieutenant in 2022, previously served as Rusk County’s fire marshal, spent 2022 to 2025 as a deputy fire marshal in Smith County, and still volunteers part-time with Elderville-Lakeport, the department that put out the call.

DroneXL’s Take

Kilgore joins a run of missing-senior finds DroneXL has covered this year where a drone did in minutes what people on foot could not do in hours. Commerce City’s Skydio X10 found a 76-year-old in 24 minutes in February, Portage County’s thermal drone found a 91-year-old in 43 minutes in May, and St. Cloud’s found a 73-year-old in a cornfield after a State Patrol plane and a DNR helicopter had searched for hours without him. The hood of that Kilgore truck shows what a working search program looks like in a Texas city of 13,000. It is a consumer DJI and a thermal aircraft, flown by a fire marshal who knows the county roads. The FCC’s Covered List decision of December 22 bars new authorizations for foreign-made drones, and as I wrote this week, no Congress can lift it before 2029. Kilgore gets to keep flying what it owns. My read is that when UAS1 eventually goes down hard, Kilgore will want to replace it with the same kind of affordable aircraft, and Washington has just taken that aircraft off the shelf.

Sources: CBS19, Kilgore News Herald, KETK, KLTV

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

DJI Ban Outlasts the Midterms: Democrats Can't Lift It Before 2029

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 22:38:00 GMT

Democrats won the House and the Senate on November 3, and the first question in my inbox the next morning was whether that brings DJI back to the United States. It does not, and the reason is not a shortage of votes. DJI sits on the FCC’s Covered List under a law that President Biden signed, enforced by an FCC chairman Biden renominated, with a Republican president holding the veto pen until January 20, 2029.

NBC News projects Democrats will hold at least 258 House seats, and CBS News puts them at 54 Senate seats or more. The new Congress is seated on January 3, 2027. Until then, the Republican majorities finish this year’s defense bill in a lame-duck session. The law that put DJI on the list also wrote its own exit, and that exit runs through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, not through Congress.

Biden Signed the Law Behind the Ban, and Senate Democrats Co-Wrote Its Predecessor

Section 1709 of the FY2025 defense bill set the December 23, 2025 deadline that put DJI on the Covered List. President Biden signed it on December 23, 2024. A year earlier he signed the FY2024 bill carrying the American Security Drone Act, written by Senators Rick Scott and Mark Warner.

Warner is a Democrat from Virginia, and the House version DroneXL covered in November 2023 listed Democrats Joe Courtney and Raja Krishnamoorthi among its sponsors. The act bars federal agencies from buying or flying Chinese-made drones. Montana Democrat Jon Tester then co-introduced the Senate version of the Countering CCP Drones Act with Scott in June 2024, and Elise Stefanik’s House version passed on September 9, 2024 with what her office called unanimous bipartisan support.

The final FY2025 bill dropped Stefanik’s text and put Section 1709 in its place: a one-year security audit of DJI and Autel, with the Covered List as the default if no agency did the work. No agency did the work. The FCC listed DJI on December 22, 2025 on a White House interagency determination it had received the day before, per the agency’s own public notice.

The chairman who signed that notice got his current term from a Democratic president. Biden renominated Brendan Carr in 2023, the Senate confirmed him unanimously, and the term runs to June 2028. Trump made him chairman in January 2025, which took no new confirmation.

Repeal Needs Trump’s Signature, and Democrats Are 13 Senators Short of an Override

Removing DJI from the Covered List by statute takes a bill through both chambers and the president’s signature, or two-thirds of each chamber to override his veto. That is 67 senators and 290 representatives. Democrats are projected at 54 and 258. Trump’s term runs to January 20, 2029.

The next defense bill is already out of their hands. The House passed its FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), H.R. 8800, on July 22, 2026 by 216 to 212, and a Senate motion to proceed to the companion bill, S. 4784, failed 50 to 46 on July 14. Reed Smith’s trade group expects the Armed Services leaders to negotiate a compromise in the lame-duck session, competing for floor time with government funding that expires December 11. The Republican Congress writes that compromise, and Reed Smith’s rundown of the two bills’ China provisions names no change to Section 1709.

The first defense bill a Democratic Congress writes is the FY2028 NDAA. The last two were signed on December 23, 2024 and in December 2023, so by that calendar the earliest a Democratic drone provision reaches a president’s desk is December 2027, and the president at that desk is Trump.

The FCC Keeps Its Republican Majority Through 2028, and the Senate Can Only Block New Seats

The commission has three sitting members. Carr’s term ends in June 2028. Olivia Trusty was confirmed 53 to 45 in June 2025 to a term ending in June 2030. Anna Gomez is the lone Democrat. A Democratic Senate can refuse to seat new commissioners. It cannot remove the two Republicans.

Trump nominated Danielle Thumann Severs, Carr’s senior counsel, for one of the two vacant seats in August 2026. The incoming Senate can sit on that nomination, and the result is the same two-to-one commission that listed DJI.

That commission has DJI’s petition for reconsideration in front of it, filed January 21, 2026 in ET Docket 26-22 and still undecided. The Pentagon filed against it by the April 6 deadline with a classified annex, and Senator Scott’s October 14 letter asked Carr to reject it. The public pages of the Pentagon’s Section 1709 letters, which the FCC filed in October, name no specific threat from DJI, and the agency’s own bureau wrote that it did not rely on the Pentagon’s letters when it made the listing.

The same FCC is weighing a second cut. Its July 21 notice in PS Docket 26-189 proposes ending the import and sale of already-approved foreign thermal, LiDAR, spray, swarming and docking drones, and Adam Chan, the agency’s senior national security counsel, said on The Drone Ultimatum podcast on October 30 that the ban is still on the table. Spray drone sales fell 59% in 2025 before that notice existed.

DJI’s Ninth Circuit case, No. 26-1029, survived the government’s first motion to dismiss on May 28, and the court held it until November while the FCC acts on the petition. The government renewed the motion on October 16, and its answering brief is due December 2. In the other DJI case, Judge Paul Friedman rejected most of the Pentagon’s allegations in September 2025 and left DJI on the Chinese Military Company list anyway, on deference to the department.

The Exit the Law Built Runs Through a Pentagon That Already Filed Against DJI

The FCC’s December 22 notice says the Department of War or Homeland Security can determine that a specific drone, a class of drones or a component poses no unacceptable risk, clearing it for authorization. That decision is the executive branch’s. The Pentagon instead opposed DJI’s petition and sealed its reasoning.

DJI told the Ninth Circuit in April that 25 unreleased products sit in limbo and that it expects a $1.56 billion loss for 2026. The Matrice 5T launched on November 5 with a spec sheet that rates its radio for Canada, Europe, China and Japan and not for the FCC. Every DJI drone that reached the US market before December 22, 2025 stays legal to buy and fly, and the FCC extended its firmware waiver for those models to 2029.

DroneXL’s Take

This ban was never a Republican project, and the election changed Congress, not the government that runs the list. A Democratic majority can hold hearings and demand the classified annex behind the Pentagon’s three public paragraphs. Hearings do not issue equipment authorizations. Carr’s commission keeps the list until mid-2028, and the one fast exit runs through a Pentagon that already filed on the other side.

I expect no relief in the short run. The lame-duck Republican Congress writes the FY2027 NDAA in December, and the first defense bill the new majority controls does not reach a president’s desk before late 2027. The FCC’s reconsideration ruling is the one act that could change the picture sooner, and it has been pending for nine months. Watch the December conference text for anything that touches foreign drones, and watch that ruling.

I’d put money on Americans who want a Mavic 4 Pro or a Matrice 5T buying them grey market or not at all through the end of this presidential term. I would rather be wrong. The drones with FCC grants from before December 22, 2025 are still yours to buy and fly, and that is the one thing the election did not touch.

Sources: NBC News, CBS News, FCC Public Notice DA 25-1086, Rep. Elise Stefanik, TV Technology, RCR Wireless, The Desk, Reed Smith Trade Compliance Resource Hub, Drone U.

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

Axon Puts $1.2B Into Skydio, and US Police Now Buy Only Through Axon

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 18:12:00 GMT

Axon announced a $1.2 billion investment in Skydio on Thursday that will lift its fully diluted stake in the drone maker from about 15% to about 37% once every tranche closes, at a $5.2 billion pre-money valuation. The same agreement makes Axon the exclusive distributor of Skydio drones to public safety agencies in the United States and Canada. Axon calls it the largest single investment in its history.

The deal lands six months after Skydio’s $110 million Series F at a $4.4 billion post-money valuation, the round CEO Adam Bry kept small on purpose while existing investors asked to put in more. Most of the new money does not go to Skydio. Axon is buying shares from those investors, and Axon’s own stock was down about 18% in Friday trading.

Only the $255 Million Primary Purchase Is New Money for Skydio

Axon’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission puts the mix at about 60% cash, roughly $720 million, with the rest in Axon stock. The one tranche that closed Thursday was a $254.9 million purchase of 25 million new non-voting Series G preferred shares at $10.19617 each.

That first tranche was paid half in cash and half in stock. The rest is a tender offer for up to 68.45 million more Series G shares held by existing Skydio shareholders, plus further secondary purchases, which Axon expects to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027. The 8-K describes every remaining tranche as a purchase from existing stockholders. In April, Bry turned away most of the investors who wanted to put more money in. The filing now gives the ones already on his cap table a buyer, at a $5.2 billion pre-money valuation, about 18% above the Series F’s $4.4 billion post-money.

Axon pre-funded the purchase. It priced $1.15 billion of zero-coupon convertible notes due 2031 on September 15, and chief financial officer Brittany Bagley told analysts on Thursday’s call that the proceeds add cash to the balance sheet and fund part of the Skydio investment. The shares are non-voting, and Bagley said Axon has neither control nor the kind of influence that would make it consolidate Skydio’s results. Asked whether the deal is a path to full ownership, founder and CEO Rick Smith said the two sides looked at other structures and settled on this one for now. “We’ll see what the future holds,” he said.

Axon Becomes the Only Way for US and Canadian Police to Buy Skydio

Skydio’s public safety sales in the United States and Canada now run through Axon alone. Skydio counts more than 1,500 public safety customers and expects about $1 billion in bookings this fiscal year. It says 28 million Americans live within two miles of a Drone as First Responder dock.

Axon sizes the DFR market in both countries at $13 billion, and the dock count has moved fast. At the Series F in April, Skydio put the figure at 16 million Americans within two miles of a dock. Axon’s shareholder letter says the docks deployed through its Axon Air program more than doubled year over year, and its press release credits Skydio DFR with cutting priority response times by as much as 65%, with the drone arriving before officers on roughly 80% of the calls it flies. Those are the companies’ own figures.

Axon has sold Skydio drones through Axon Air since 2021 and added the docked DFR package in June 2024, so Thursday’s exclusivity formalizes a channel that already existed and shuts the others. Axon president Josh Isner called the exclusivity one of the most valuable parts of the deal on the earnings call. “Whenever Skydio is in a deal, they generally don’t lose it,” he said. Axon books the drone revenue on a net basis in its Software & Services line, which its shareholder letter calls “pure-margin revenue.” Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Ng asked whether the take rate beats the low-to-high single digits typical of IT distribution. Nobody answered with a number.

Neither company has said what happens to agencies that bought Skydio directly or through another reseller. The press release, the SEC filing and the earnings call do not mention existing channels, and Skydio’s blog listed no post on the deal as of Friday morning. Bry’s statement in the release says only that Axon is “becoming our exclusive channel for U.S. and Canadian public safety.”

Bry’s statement describes the existing partnership as bringing drones to customers across the U.S., and the new agreement adds Canada. Vancouver Police launched Canada’s first docked DFR program in June with six Skydio X10 aircraft, and Skydio’s public safety sales in Canada now run through Axon as well. The deal also hardens three camps, and Utica’s choice last week of Axon and Skydio over a free Flock pilot shows how they line up. Motorola Solutions backs BRINC Drones, where it led a $125 million round in July, and Flock Safety builds its own after buying Aerodome in 2024.

Axon Shares Fell 18% After Three Federal Dedrone Deals Slipped Out of 2026

Axon reported record third-quarter revenue of $909 million, up 28% but below the $934 million analysts expected, and cut its full-year outlook to $3.61 billion to $3.63 billion. Dedrone counter-drone orders worth $130 million slipped out of 2026, and the stock closed at $382.56 Thursday before trading near $314 Friday.

Isner said the three deployments were worth $200 million in bookings, one $30 million order expected in the third quarter and two more totaling $100 million in the fourth, and blamed federal procurement cycles around funding and elections. Bagley said demand for the product is intact. “It truly is just a timing piece,” she told analysts. Adjusted earnings came in at $1.72 a share against the $1.89 analysts expected, per MarketScreener, and UBS cut its price target to $380 from $470 while Craig-Hallum downgraded the stock to Hold.

Axon bought Dedrone in 2024. The Q3 shareholder letter now sells the two drone businesses as a pair, Dedrone for airspace security and Skydio to answer the call, and Smith told analysts Axon now covers both sides of the airspace.

DroneXL’s Take

The “non-voting minority stake” language is for the accountants. A company that will own 37% of Skydio and holds the only sales channel to US police controls Skydio’s public safety business in everything but the org chart. Smith told analysts the exclusivity protects Axon’s core market. I believe him.

For a city, the practical change is that a Skydio DFR program is now an Axon contract. Lakeland’s $22 million Axon deal already bundled drones with body cameras and Fusus, and that bundle is the sales motion: once an agency runs Axon Evidence, the sole-source justification for the drones writes itself. The bundle also works. Orlando’s trial drone beat officers to the scene on a third of calls, and agencies are buying that outcome, not an aircraft.

The price of that outcome depends on something neither the release, the letter nor the call mentioned. An X10 costs $16,000 to $25,000, and the comparable DJI Matrice 4TD sells for a fraction of that. My read is that a large share of Skydio’s $1 billion in bookings exists because federal and state restrictions on Chinese-made drones, now including the FCC’s Covered List, keep DJI out of much of American police procurement. Axon, as I see it, just paid $1.2 billion for the only door into a market those bans built. If DJI’s Ninth Circuit challenge to that designation, Case 26-1029, narrows it, that door is worth less, and so is every DFR contract a city signs at today’s prices between now and then.

Sources: Axon press release, Axon Form 8-K, Axon Q3 2026 shareholder letter, Axon Q3 2026 earnings call transcript, MarketScreener.

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

Skyrover V1 Flies in Half Chrome Test, but Skyrover Doesn't List It

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 17:55:00 GMT

Half Chrome published its first look at the Skyrover V1 on Thursday night. Jack Towne says he has flown the sub-250-gram drone for a couple of weeks, and his video covers an advertised 40 minutes of flight time, an advertised 20 km (12.4 miles) of range, front and rear obstacle sensing, 40 GB of onboard storage and a controller with a built-in touchscreen. He calls it a first impression rather than a review, because he does not know what the V1 costs.

Skyrover’s own store carries no V1 at all. It listed only the S1 and the X1 when I checked on Friday morning, a search for “V1” there returns those two drones, and the product page a V1 would sit at returns a 404. Half Chrome’s video description links to an Amazon listing for the V1, and Towne says the drone has been talked about for a while.

The V1 Sits Between the S1 and X1 and Flew More Than 30 Minutes Per Battery

Towne places the V1 between Skyrover’s two existing drones: better than the $279 Skyrover S1 on camera, flight time and obstacle avoidance, and trading advantages with the $459 Skyrover X1. His flights ran past 30 minutes per battery with charge to spare, against Skyrover’s advertised 40.

The obstacle sensing comes from a camera on top and one underneath, both angled to see ahead and behind, plus two sensors on the front for low light and one on the belly. The sides are blind spots. Towne flew it at a bush, and the drone avoided it. His unit came with three batteries and a charger, and the S1’s battery fits the V1 and charges on the same hub. Video records to a microSD card or to the 40 GB inside, and the flight modes include follow me, orbit, rocket and dronie.

The gimbal does not rotate for vertical video. The V1 crops the frame instead, where the DJI Mini 5 Pro turns its camera to shoot 9:16 at full resolution. The controller has a color touchscreen, sticks that store in the back, wheels for the gimbal and zoom, and a record button on the shoulder. Towne’s verdict is that the V1 is stable, easy to fly and a good drone for a beginner. “It’s super well put together, almost like a DJI drone,” he says, and he promises a comparison against the Mini 5 Pro.

Towne says the sub-250-gram weight means no FAA registration and no Remote ID, and Half Chrome’s own description adds that the requirements depend on how and where you fly. A recreational flyer skips both. A Part 107 operation registers every aircraft and needs Remote ID whatever the weight. In October 2025, Towne weighed the Mini 5 Pro, the Mini 4 Pro and the X1, and none came in under 250 grams. The V1 does not go on a scale in this video.

The V1 Needs a Pre-December FCC Grant, and Towne Never Mentions Its FCC ID

Since December 22, 2025, foreign-made drones cannot receive new FCC authorizations, so a V1 sold in the US has to ship under a grant issued before that date. WaveGo Tech, the S1’s grantee, holds two FCC IDs, both from July 2025. Towne does not mention the V1’s FCC ID.

The S1’s own FCC ID sits in the July 17 proposal to halt imports and marketing of previously authorized drones from nine companies, as DroneXL reported in August, and comments closed on August 31. Skyrover told its US customers in April that it is here to stay, with FCC compliance and US support as two of that letter’s four pillars.

Under the video, security researcher Konrad Iturbe, whose FCC scanner put Skyrover on a list of a dozen suspected DJI-linked brands, commented that the V1 “is the Voomax Breeze in black livery.” In April, Iturbe matched the Voomax Breeze on Amazon to FCC paperwork filed by Fikaxo Technology, another company on that list. The Breeze’s Amazon listing claimed 40 minutes of flight time, 35 GB of storage and omnidirectional obstacle sensing. The V1 carries 40 GB, and Towne found side blind spots.

DroneXL’s Take

Towne’s line that the V1 flies almost like a DJI drone is no surprise. Iturbe’s research and DroneXL’s own reporting have documented for over a year that Skyrover’s hardware carries DJI’s OcuSync fingerprints, so of course it flies well. My hesitation is the paperwork, not the aircraft. Review units routinely go out before store pages, and Skyrover may well list the V1 with a price next week. Until it does, a buyer is paying for a drone whose FCC grant DroneXL has not been able to identify, while the FCC weighs cutting off sales of the S1 that shares its battery. Towne is right that it’s a good beginner drone. I’d wait for the store page, the price and the FCC ID on the label. The FCC says drones already bought stay legal to fly, so the exposure is support and replacement, the two things Skyrover promised in April.

Sources: Half Chrome, Skyrover, FCC equipment authorization records.

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

FCC Ban Still Alive, Rick Scott Backs DJI Ban, Westborough Says No

Greg Reverdiau — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 14:54:00 GMT

Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have three stories for you this week, and yes, unfortunately a lot about the FCC again. First, the FCC is still thinking about a potential ban on thermal and spray drones. Then a Florida senator is pushing back on DJI and Autel’s appeals with the FCC. And finally, a Massachusetts town is shutting the door on Amazon drone deliveries. Let’s get to it.

The FCC Says a Ban on Thermal and Spray Drones Is Still on the Table

First up, the FCC says a ban on foreign drones is still on the table, according to Adam Chan, the agency’s senior national security counsel, on The Drone Ultimatum podcast published October 30. The ban would cover the import and sale of previously approved foreign drones in the military-grade category.

We have talked about this at length if you have been following us for a while. We even made a video on the actual comments that were left on this proposal from the FCC. The category includes thermal, LiDAR, spray, swarming and docking drones. It also includes anything that weighs 55 pounds or more.

Chan said a transition period is possible. But the FCC’s July 21 notice already proposes one: 180 days after the order is published in the Federal Register, which it has not been at this stage. Blue UAS would still get an exemption, and of the 443 filings on that window, 439 asked for more time. Drones you already own would not be affected. I want to be very clear here: this would be for the sale of future drones, and even drones that have already been approved by the FCC.

Chan also pointed to $5 billion to $6 billion in new investment because of all this. The FCC’s own fact sheet said over $4 billion, and if you believe that, well, we have got other issues. Spray drone sales fell 59% in 2025, according to the American Spray Drone Coalition. Chan obviously did not watch the video we made analyzing all of the comments on the FCC’s own proposal. Feel free to send it to him. Maybe he is watching this, because we are talking about him.

Senator Rick Scott Backs the Government’s Case Against DJI and Autel

Next up, Senator Rick Scott backs the government’s case against DJI and Autel. His letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last month asks that both companies stay on the Covered List. The FCC has placed it in the record for DJI’s petition for reconsideration and Autel’s application for review.

Scott, a known opponent of drones, sponsored the bill behind Section 1709 of the 2025 defense law. He says he read a classified report that finds both companies pose an unacceptable national security risk. Of course, that report is not available to the public. But keep in mind that the risk is high enough that you cannot know about any of it, yet low enough that current models are not a threat. Only banning future models would solve this issue. I guess Rick Scott and the FCC think we are idiots in this case.

Meanwhile, DJI argues Congress did not review the technology thoroughly enough before it made the decision. Bottom line: this letter is not a new FCC ruling. It does not change anything for drones you already own. It adds political weight to a fight that is still playing out, and the FCC has not decided either challenge.

Westborough Voted 510 to 13 Against Amazon Drone Delivery Infrastructure

Finally, a Massachusetts town just said no to Amazon drone delivery. Westborough residents voted 510 to 13 at a special town meeting, about 97.5% in favor, or against drone delivery in this case. The bylaw bars ground-level delivery drone infrastructure: launch pads, landing sites, staging hubs and residential drop zones.

I am going to say that again: 510 to 13. The fine is $300 per violation. Residents cited noise, privacy concerns over navigation cameras, and the town’s character. On October 30, Amazon withdrew its site plan, and it did so without prejudice. A spokesperson said the company plans to re-engage and submit a revised bid later. Not sure how that is going to be possible, but anyway, the bylaw still needs to be signed off by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.

If you are wondering whether this is actually legal: notice how this is land use on the ground, not in the airspace. That is really the only way these towns can prohibit any kind of drone activity, and I think this could set a precedent beyond drone delivery. Other communities are going to be watching. Delivery operators may find that local approval is the hardest hurdle to get past in order to keep these operations going.

As always, the conversation continues on Post Flight, where we discuss these stories uncensored in the Pilot Institute Premium Community. We will see you again on Monday for the live Q&A. Have a good weekend.

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

Sources: Pilot Institute / YouTube, The Drone Ultimatum, FCC DA 26-758, Senator Rick Scott’s letter to the FCC (PDF), FCC ECFS record of the letter, Telegram & Gazette.

TSA's 'Drone Drone Drone' Post Hits 736K Views And A Six-Figure Threat

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 01:42:00 GMT

The Transportation Security Administration posted the word “drone” 46 times in a row on X on Thursday afternoon, and by the evening the post had 736,000 views, 2,700 likes and nearly 300 replies. The agency’s follow-up explained the joke: “Droning on about it… because flying a drone in a no drone zone near an airport could quite literally cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.” It pointed readers to the Federal Aviation Administration’s “Where can I fly?” page.

The post went up at 2:57 p.m. Eastern on November 5 from the TSA’s main account, which has 297,000 followers. Twenty-four of the 46 words are spelled “dr0ne” with a zero, and the follow-up carried a “No Drone Zone” graphic with the TSA seal between three drone silhouettes.

The FAA has proposed a six-figure drone penalty four times on the public record, and the two against individual pilots were built from months of repeated flights. The pilots charged over one or two flights at Charlotte Douglas and Dallas Love Field this year are not looking at an FAA bill. They are looking at federal prison time.

The graphic TSA attached to its "Droning on about it" follow-up post on November 5, 2026. Image credit: TSA / X

TSA Reran A World Cup Gag That Drew 260,000 Views In July

The TSA first posted “drone drone drone” on July 2, 2026, during the FIFA World Cup, while its Federal Air Marshals were seizing drones around stadiums. That version ran 24 words and drew 260,000 views and 799 likes. Thursday’s rerun nearly doubled the words and almost tripled the views.

The World Cup is the reason the TSA has a drone message at all. The agency does not write drone rules, the FAA does, but its air marshals worked the counter-drone details at the tournament, and by July 5 the FBI and its partners had seized more than 600 drones at World Cup venues. Thursday’s follow-up links to the FAA’s airspace page instead of making any claim of its own about where pilots can fly.

The FAA Reached Six Figures Four Times, Never For One Airport Flight

The largest drone penalty the FAA has proposed against an individual is $270,000, sought in 2024 from a Pueblo, Colorado developer who flew over unhoused people: 232 alleged violations across 16 months. The $182,004 proposed against Philadelphia YouTuber Michael DiCiurcio in 2020 covered 26 flights over nine months.

Both men flew on camera, for months, and the FAA counted every flight. DiCiurcio’s case closed in January 2025 with a consent judgment that bans him from flying drones in the United States for life. The other two six-figure cases were against companies: the FAA settled with SkyPan for $200,000 over its commercial photo flights, and this August it proposed $289,215 against Gorge Drones.

The fines the FAA hands individual pilots for a single bad flight run far lower. Its $341,413 announcement in August 2024 was the total across 27 operators over 20 months, and the biggest share was $32,700, for a night flight that nearly hit a sheriff’s helicopter in Florida. The February 2026 batch topped out at $36,770, for flying near a wildfire response aircraft. Since the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 the civil ceiling is $75,000 per violation, and one flight can stack several: no authorization, no registration, no Remote ID, over people, at night without lighting. On paper, the TSA’s number is reachable from one afternoon at the fence. In the record, it has taken months.

Airport Cases Now Go To Federal Court, Where The Price Is Measured In Years

The two airport cases DroneXL covered this fall skipped the FAA fine letter. A Charlotte pilot pleaded guilty on September 22 to one federal count of unsafe drone operation for flying between two active runways at Charlotte Douglas. He faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

In Dallas, a 24-year-old was indicted on four counts over flights into Love Field and DFW airspace on consecutive nights in June 2025, and faces up to eight years. Those are criminal statutes, enforced by U.S. Attorneys with FBI agents doing the seizing. The FAA, for its part, launched the DETER program on April 16 to speed up its civil side: first-time violators can take a reduced fine within 10 days if they admit liability and give up their right to appeal.

DroneXL’s Take

I like the post. A federal agency with 297,000 followers found a way to get three quarters of a million people to read the words “no drone zone near an airport,” and the reply pointed at the FAA’s own airspace page rather than inventing a rule. That is better outreach than most of what the FAA itself publishes. The dollar figure is the weak part, because it describes the wrong pilot. The FAA’s six-figure cases went to people who flew for months on video and racked up more than a hundred violations each, and the operator who makes one dumb flight at the airport fence gets a letter in the low five figures. I’d rather the TSA had said what the Charlotte and Dallas dockets say: fly into a runway exclusion zone and you are dealing with a U.S. Attorney, and the number to look at is the one with “years” after it. A pilot who checks B4UFLY before every flight never meets either number, and that check takes less time than reading the post did.

Sources: TSA on X, FAA airspace page

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

Walmart Cut a Drone Delivery Ribbon in West Memphis. Nothing Flies Yet

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 01:41:00 GMT

Walmart and Wing cut a ribbon in West Memphis, Arkansas, on Monday, November 2, with Mayor Marco McLendon, city officials and community leaders, and the city announced what it called the arrival of the Mid-South’s first drone delivery service. It is the first Arkansas city to claim a Wing and Walmart service, in the state where Walmart’s hometown is still missing from Wing’s map.

The city said standard delivery fees apply per order and that Walmart+ members get free drone delivery on eligible orders for a limited time. WREG pointed readers to wing.com to check whether their address qualifies.

Wing’s own site, checked November 6, lists 19 Walmart metros and none of them is in Arkansas. Memphis, the metro West Memphis belongs to, is still marked “Coming soon.”

Wing’s Map Still Shows Memphis as Coming Soon Days After the Ribbon

Wing’s Walmart page lists five metros as “Now serving”: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Orlando. Memphis sits among the 14 marked “Coming soon,” and the page does not mention West Memphis, Arkansas or Tennessee. Wing’s Memphis page, as of November 6, offers a waitlist and nothing else.

The ribbon-cutting produced no announcement from either company. Wing’s newsroom has published nothing about Walmart since its Denver and Seattle release on October 5, and Walmart’s corporate newsroom has no West Memphis item. The only account is the city’s social media post, which WREG quoted on Monday, and which the station checked against the service itself: at about 3 p.m. that day, drone delivery was not available at West Memphis addresses.

The post’s own tense was future. “Soon, your Walmart orders will be delivered right to your doorstep by a DRONE!” the city wrote. It did not name the store, the launch date, the delivery radius or the number of aircraft. It did name Google’s $4 billion investment, the data center Google broke ground on in the city in October 2025, as the start of a run of technology wins. Wing began in Google’s X lab and is an Alphabet subsidiary, which the post did not say.

Walmart and Wing named Memphis among seven new metros in June, with delivery in as fast as 30 minutes, up to five pounds per order, and $19.99 per order for customers without Walmart+, per WMC’s June 10 report. That announcement listed no stores. The Monday post is the first time a specific city in the Memphis metro has claimed the service, and it sits on the Arkansas side of the river.

The Memphis-Side Stores Were Still in Planning Review in August

Walmart asked Memphis and Shelby County planners in August for fenced drone areas at two stores, 6727 Raleigh LaGrange Road and 577 North Germantown Parkway in Cordova. The Raleigh LaGrange enclosure would hold a kiosk, battery generator and nest for up to 18 aircraft, WREG reported on August 3.

Bartlett’s city leaders told WMC in June that Walmart planned to fly from the Supercenter at 8400 U.S. 64, and the Daily Memphian reported the same store on June 15 with no launch date. None of the three Tennessee stores has been reported approved or live since. June also put a second operator in the same metro. Amazon parked an MK-30 inside the Renasant Convention Center the following week for a meet-and-greet with no launch date, and Prime Air has announced nothing for Memphis since. As of Monday, neither company delivers a package in the Mid-South, and one of them has a ribbon.

DroneXL’s Take

A ribbon-cutting for a service that does not exist yet is a press event, and West Memphis got one. I don’t blame the city for taking it: a Google data center and a Google drone in the same year is a story a mayor wants to tell. But Walmart and Wing let a city declare the Mid-South’s first drone delivery service without saying a word themselves. The two of them have 14 metros marked “Coming soon” and have added names to that list faster than they have moved any to “Now serving” since Orlando in July, and on Thursday Walmart signed Zipline for 300 more sites while Wing’s list sat still. My read is that the store count on Walmart’s third-quarter earnings call this month will say more about the pace than any ribbon. The last verified number was 66 stores in four states, in May. If you live in West Memphis, the eligibility check at wing.com is the launch announcement. The ribbon isn’t.

Sources: WREG, November 2, WREG, August 3, WMC, June 10, Wing’s Walmart page, Wing’s Memphis page.

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

SkyeBrowse Measures a Roof and Flags Hail Hits From One Drone Flight

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 21:06:00 GMT

SkyeBrowse released a roof inspection tool on Thursday, November 5, that measures a roof and screens it for storm damage from one drone flight. On the finished 3D model, Roof Damage Analysis finds the roof, outlines every facet and reports squares, area, main pitch and the ridge, hip, valley, eave and rake lengths. An AI scan then pins hail hits and wind creases on the model, and the inspector approves or rejects each one before anything reaches the PDF report.

It runs on SkyeBrowse Pro, at $49.99 per model or $39.99 on annual billing, and on the Public Safety & Enterprise plan. The same release adds a 2D map export built for SARTopo and ArcGIS, a contour DXF, and survey correction with ground control points.

The Weather tab also pre-fills a date of loss from the nearest NOAA hail report. NOAA labels every report on that list preliminary.

The AI Scan Reads Up to 24 Images in 20 Seconds, and the Inspector Signs Off on Every Pin

“Run AI damage scan” reviews up to 16 flight frames and 8 gallery photos in about 20 seconds and marks each finding Likely or Possible. It looks for hail hits, wind creases, lifted shingles, granule loss, cracked tiles, ponding, membrane tears and tarps, and only approved findings reach the report.

SkyeBrowse calls the scan a screening aid and says it does not determine cause, coverage or repair scope. The company has put AI on the processing side before, with the January quality check that reprocesses a crash-scene model when the first pass falls short, and this one sits in front of the inspector instead. The measurements are the inspector’s to correct too: corners drag, corners can be added, and facets can be added or deleted before the numbers are final.

The house from SkyeBrowse's demo video: 13 facets, 35.7 squares, 3,573 square feet and an 18% suggested waste figure, with hip, valley and eave lengths listed under the facets. Image credit: SkyeBrowse

On the commercial building in the cover image, the tool found 17 facets over 4,665 square feet (433 square meters), 46.7 squares at an 8/12 main pitch, with 249 feet (76 meters) of eave and a suggested waste of 17%. SkyeBrowse overhauled its pricing in September, and it aims this tool at roofing contractors and insurance adjusters, two trades outside the public safety agencies that fill its customer list and the crash-scene work DroneXL has covered since August 2021.

The Date of Loss Comes From a NOAA List That NOAA Calls Preliminary

The Weather tab lists Storm Prediction Center hail, wind and tornado reports within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the model over the year before the flight. It sets the date of loss from the nearest hail report. The SPC says that list “likely does not contain all severe weather reports.”

The SPC compiles the list from the local storm reports National Weather Service offices send out. In SkyeBrowse’s demo, clicking a June 2, 2026 hail report near the house sets the date of loss. The Report tab then builds a Roof Damage Report PDF with a cover summary, per-facet measurements, a top-down roof diagram, a damage summary with test squares, photo evidence, the storm history, the methodology and a reviewer sign-off.

The 2D Map Now Builds Itself for SARTopo or AutoCAD, and GCPs Move the Model

Download on the 2D map of any georeferenced model now asks where the map is going and builds the matching file in the browser, for SARTopo and CalTopo, ArcGIS Pro and Online, Google Earth, AutoCAD and Civil 3D, or Global Mapper. SkyeBrowse remembers the choice for the next model.

Bare-earth contours every 1.32 feet on a construction site in SkyeBrowse's Topographic Map, with the new Contours DXF export beside the DTM GeoTIFF and ground LAS. Image credit: SkyeBrowse

Topographic Map exports a Contours DXF next to the DTM GeoTIFF and ground LAS, with every elevation label matching its line. With Bare earth on, the contours follow the ground under vehicles and trees. Heights run from the scan’s lowest ground rather than a survey datum, so a crew ties them to its own datum before design work.

The GCPs tool used to report how far a model sat from surveyed points. Now each point can be set to Control or Check, and Apply correction fits a vertical offset, a 3D shift or a seven-parameter correction. The point cloud, mesh, measurements, annotations and every LAZ, GeoTIFF, GLB, OBJ, USDZ and CAD download move together, and check points stay out of the fit so the accuracy report stays independent. GCPs and the topographic exports are included in the $5 first Commercial model SkyeBrowse offers new organizations. Smaller additions: two-finger panning on phones, HEIC and Insta360 .insp uploads, processing time on each model’s General tab, and the original flight log as a download.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d buy this for the measurements before the damage scan. EagleView, the incumbent in aerial roof reports, lists its Premium Roof Report from $24.25, and that report is measured on EagleView’s own aircraft imagery, flown on EagleView’s schedule rather than yours. SkyeBrowse charges twice that per model and makes you fly the roof yourself, and in return the squares and the pitch come off the roof as it is the morning after the hail. For a crew with twenty roofs and one ladder that trade is easy, because the flight is the part they would do anyway. I’d treat the AI pins as a to-do list for the ladder rather than as evidence, and SkyeBrowse itself calls them a screening aid. I’d still check the date of loss by hand, because NOAA calls its own list preliminary.

Sources: SkyeBrowse newsletter and press release, SkyeBrowse pricing, NOAA Storm Prediction Center, EagleView.

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

Zipline Nearly Died Two Years Ago. Today It's Worth $21.5 Billion

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 18:03:00 GMT

Zipline co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton followed Thursday’s $1.5 billion raise at a $21.5 billion valuation with a thread on X about how the company got there. For its first ten years, he wrote, investors did not think the company was “investable,” and about two years ago it “almost died.”

The thread also draws a line the press release did not. Zipline builds drone delivery “that is silent and safe,” Rinaudo Cliffton wrote, six times quieter than its closest competitor during delivery and with no safety incidents in more than 150 million autonomous miles. He named no competitor. DroneXL’s own reporting supplies the comparison: Amazon asked to withdraw a Prime Air pad application in Massachusetts on October 30, eleven days after a town voted against it, and its 83-pound MK30 flies without a parachute.

Zipline Began in Construction Trailers on a Cow Farm, Hard to Fund and Hard to Staff

Zipline started on a cow farm and worked out of run-down construction trailers to keep engineering, manufacturing and flight test in one place, Rinaudo Cliffton wrote on X. Flying autonomously in the United States was illegal then, so convincing investors was “really hard.” The company dates from 2014.

It began in Half Moon Bay, California, which is still one of its flight test sites. Hiring from companies like Google was hard, he wrote, because Zipline had no cafe and no laundry service. “Enough risk takers and rebels” signed on anyway and became the early team. Most people, by his account, did not think Zipline was an economic venture at all.

So Zipline launched in smaller countries and picked use cases where a late delivery could kill someone. It hired operators in Rwanda, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and other countries, and by his account spent eight years building out across Africa before it launched at scale in the United States last year. Its first US flights came earlier: medical deliveries in North Carolina in 2020, then its first commercial orders for Walmart in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in November 2021.

Kagame Launched the First Zip After Two Weeks of a Bricked System

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame launched Zipline’s first aircraft in October 2016 after two weeks in which the system had been “totally bricked,” Rinaudo Cliffton wrote. He watched the Zip fly over the horizon thinking it was the last anyone would see of it, and it landed 30 minutes later.

Gavi, which backed the launch with the UPS Foundation, dates the ceremony to October 14, 2016, in Muhanga District. Zipline started there with 15 fixed-wing Zips dropping blood by parachute to 21 clinics, as DroneXL reported when the company marked ten years in Rwanda last month.

Rinaudo Cliffton was living in a 400-square-foot apartment on the Stanford campus at the time. He got up at 2 a.m. with Israel Bimpe and a colleague from the Rwanda team to give Bono a digital tour of the distribution center, and Bono joined Zipline’s board. Bimpe, a pharmacist when Zipline hired him, is now CEO of Irembo, Rwanda’s e-government platform, reporting to Kagame.

The thread credits the Africa network with cutting maternal mortality 51%, saving more than 14,000 lives a year and running cash flow positive. The 51% comes from a peer-reviewed Wharton study that measured in-hospital deaths from postpartum hemorrhage at the hospitals Zipline served, which is narrower than maternal mortality as a whole. The other two figures are Zipline’s own.

Zipline Almost Died Building the P2, Then Grew US Flights 100 Times in 18 Months

The company “almost died about 2 years ago” while trying to launch its next-generation technology, Rinaudo Cliffton wrote. The system was ten times as complex as anything Zipline had built. It was not working, and the money was running out. The team spent night after night at the test site.

Zipline engineers with a Platform 2 prototype at the company's test site, from the thread Keller Rinaudo Cliffton posted on November 5. Photo credit: Zipline, via Keller Rinaudo Cliffton on X

One photo in the thread shows the team at 2 a.m. on a Saturday, fixing software and hardware bugs as they found them. Rinaudo Cliffton’s second child was born in that stretch, and his wife, Steph Nevins, spent weekends at the test site that first month, breastfeeding the baby in a construction trailer conference room.

An all-nighter on a Platform 2 prototype in Zipline's flight operations workshop. The sign on the wall reads "P2 Flight Ops." Photo credit: Zipline, via Keller Rinaudo Cliffton on X

That aircraft, the Platform 2, made its first customer delivery in January 2025. By Rinaudo Cliffton’s count, Zipline has grown its flight volume about 100 times over the past 18 months and makes more than a million deliveries a year per metro. Thursday’s release put the Dallas-Fort Worth count alone above one million for 2026, and Walmart has signed for 300 more supercenters.

Zipline Says Silent and Safe. Amazon’s MK30 Weighs 83 Pounds and Flies Without a Parachute

Zipline delivers from 330 feet (100 meters) up, is six times quieter than its closest competitor during delivery, and has flown more than 150 million autonomous miles with no safety incidents, by its own count. “Neighborhoods should demand silent and safe delivery!” Rinaudo Cliffton wrote, without naming the competitor.

The six-times figure dates to a March 25 Zipline newsroom post, and the 68% cut in sound exposure Zipline announced in October rests on internal modeling, not a microphone. The no-incidents claim sits next to two Zipline aircraft that came down under parachute in Texas this summer, in Greenville on July 26 and near Houston in September, with nobody hurt. Zipline was also the only one of the three US delivery operators DroneXL questioned to answer DroneXL’s written safety questions in September, on the record, including what happens when its tether fails.

The Zipline Platform 2 that came down under its orange parachute on a Greenville, Texas street on July 26, 2026. Nobody was hurt. Zipline counts no safety incidents in 150 million miles. Photo credit: Tammy Mitchell / eGreenvilleExtra.com - Hunt County Scanner

Amazon’s MK30 weighs about 83 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff and cruises at up to 73 mph (117 km/h). It has six motors and redundant flight controllers, Amazon says no single failure can cause loss of control, and nobody on the ground has been seriously hurt in any MK30 incident on record. It carries no parachute, and Amazon did not answer the eight written questions DroneXL sent on September 3, one of which asked why.

In Westborough, Massachusetts, Amazon asked to withdraw its site-plan application for a Prime Air pad on October 30, eleven days after Town Meeting voted 510 to 13 to ban commercial drone launch pads. On November 2 the town’s building commissioner vacated the zoning ruling the pad had relied on. Amazon says it will resubmit a revised project.

DroneXL’s Take

Rinaudo Cliffton’s thread is the best argument for stubbornness this industry has produced. A company that investors called uninvestable for a decade is now worth $21.5 billion with Walmart signed for 300 more stores, and it got there without a shortcut. No other drone delivery operator can tell that story, because none of them spent five years delivering blood before they tried a retail order.

I keep coming back to “silent and safe,” and I’ll say what he didn’t: Amazon can claim neither. Zipline’s six-times-quieter figure is its own, and its no-incidents claim sits next to two parachute landings in Texas that I covered. But both of those aircraft came down under a canopy, and Zipline wrote back when I asked how its drones fail. Amazon’s 83-pound MK30 has no parachute, and Amazon has not answered the eight questions I sent in September. In my opinion that aircraft is not safe enough to fly over backyards, and Amazon has given me nothing to change my mind.

Westborough shows what that costs. Amazon pulled its application after a 510 to 13 vote and now needs a new zoning ruling before it can try again, so it still has no pad in Massachusetts. In the same week Zipline raised $1.5 billion and signed Walmart for 300 more stores. Zipline spent a decade on quiet powertrains, and Amazon is now paying for arriving late to that work, one town hall at a time. Rinaudo Cliffton is right that neighborhoods should demand silent and safe, because the operator that cannot offer both will not take off at all.

Sources: Keller Rinaudo Cliffton on X, Zipline press release, Gavi, Knowledge at Wharton

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

Zipline Raises $1.5 Billion as Walmart Signs for 300 More Drone Sites

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:06:00 GMT

Zipline said Thursday it has raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion post-money valuation, and that Walmart has signed a national multi-year agreement to launch 300 additional Zipline sites. Paradigm, WCM Investment Management and Layer Global led the round. Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Uber, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest and Salesforce Ventures joined it.

The price is 2.8 times the $7.6 billion Zipline carried in January, and it beats the $20 billion figure Bloomberg reported when the talks surfaced in September. The money goes to US manufacturing and hiring for what Zipline calls a nationwide drone delivery network.

Walmart’s entire drone delivery program, across both Zipline and Wing, ran from 66 stores in four states when the retailer announced its millionth delivery in May.

Walmart’s 300 Sites Are More Than Four Times Its Drone Footprint of May

Walmart and Zipline will launch 300 additional sites under the new agreement, with what Zipline’s release calls potential to grow further. Measured against the 66 stores Walmart counted across both partners in May, the Zipline agreement alone is more than four times the retailer’s existing drone footprint.

Zipline’s Walmart business until now has been one metro and one Arkansas hub. The company counted the Denton Supercenter as its 20th Dallas-Fort Worth site in March, its FAA authorization there allows up to 75 sites, and it also flies from the Pea Ridge hub near Walmart’s headquarters in Arkansas. Wing, Walmart’s other partner, holds a contract for more than 270 locations by 2027.

The release names no states and no date for the first of the 300.

Zipline's tethered delivery pod lowers an order onto a backyard patio. Photo credit: Zipline

Zipline Has Raised About $2.3 Billion in 2026 Alone

Zipline opened the year with more than $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation on January 20. It added a $200 million extension in March and now adds $1.5 billion. That is about $2.3 billion in ten months, against roughly $2 billion raised in total before this round.

Uber sits on both sides of the table. It is an investor in this round and the customer targeting one million Zipline deliveries a day by 2029 through Uber Eats. J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest, Salesforce Ventures, WCM and Layer Global are new names on Zipline’s cap table. Paradigm, Valor, Fidelity and Tiger Global were all in the January round or its extension.

“Zipline is now one of the largest autonomous robotics companies in the world,” said Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm, in the release.

Zipline Puts Its Dallas-Fort Worth Count Past One Million Deliveries This Year

Zipline says it has made more than one million deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in 2026, and that the median October order arrived 19 minutes after checkout. Its lifetime total stands at 150 million commercial autonomous miles, up from the 135 million it reported in July.

A cohort of Zipline’s longest-tenured restaurants saw the company’s share of their delivery revenue grow from 10.8% in March to 34.9% in October, with a 26% rise in delivery gross merchandise value, 80% of it from Zipline orders. Zipline says the orders were incremental and took nothing from other platforms. The cohort is Zipline’s own selection, and the release does not say how many restaurants are in it.

The release repeats that those miles were flown “without a safety incident.” Two Zipline drones came down under parachute in Texas this summer, in Greenville on July 26 and near Houston in September, with nobody hurt. Zipline described the Houston landing as the parachute deploying as designed, and it answered DroneXL’s written safety questions in September while Amazon and Wing did not.

The release also folds in October’s sound-optimized flight profile, which Zipline’s own modeling puts at 68% less sound exposure per flight, and says Zipline has introduced a next-generation aircraft that will fly higher and quieter with heavier orders over longer distances. The release gives no specifications or date for that aircraft, and Zipline’s newsroom carries no separate announcement of it.

Part 108 Is Still Pending at the White House, 118 Days In

The FAA’s Part 108 rule, which would make beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight routine instead of waiver by waiver, was listed as pending review at the White House regulatory office on November 5. The final rule arrived there on July 10. Zipline flies today on Part 135 approvals.

In September the FAA’s Robert Reckert called the rule the “10-yard line” and said he hoped it would publish before the end of the year. Nothing has moved on the docket since. The Texas environmental assessment that would lift Zipline’s ceiling from 30,000 deliveries a day to 220,000 across five metros closed for public comment on October 11.

DroneXL’s Take

The Walmart agreement matters more than the money. Three hundred sites is a bigger commitment than any single customer has made to a drone delivery operator in the United States, and it comes from the retailer that has been quietly running the largest drone program in the country while Amazon fights town councils. In September I wrote that a $20 billion valuation was a policy bet wearing a hardware company’s clothes. At $21.5 billion, with Walmart signed for 300 sites, that bet is bigger, and Part 108 has not moved since.

Walmart has stopped choosing between its two partners. Wing has 270 locations under contract and Zipline now has 300, and under the rules that exist today every one of those sites needs an FAA sign-off of its own. Part 108 is the document that would change that, and it sat at the White House through the whole of this round’s negotiation.

I don’t think the money de-risks that. It raises the cost of every month the rule does not publish, because Zipline is now hiring and building factories for a network the FAA has not yet allowed. If Reckert’s end-of-year hope holds, the first of Walmart’s 300 sites can open in 2027 under a rule written for them. If it slips into next year, those 300 Walmart stores wait on the FAA, and $1.5 billion buys Zipline no way around that.

Sources: Zipline press release, Walmart, reginfo.gov, DroneXL Drone Delivery Tracker

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

DJI Matrice 5T First Look: 1280 Thermal, 176x Zoom, Flies in the Rain

Mihail Svilenov — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 13:32:00 GMT

I have the latest enterprise drone from DJI in my hands, the Matrice 5T, and after checking out some of DJI’s latest enterprise tech over the past couple of years, I am super excited for this one, because it is an absolute beast. It is a massive drone, but still compact for what it can deliver. Pull the gimbal cover off and you get a full look at the camera setup, which is incredible: four cameras, a laser rangefinder and a near-infrared light, all in one gimbal. The whole thing is built to see in the dark and fly in the rain. There is a lot to unpack, so let’s get going.

The Thermal Camera Is Native 1280 by 1024, Four Times the Pixels of Most Drones This Size

Let’s start with the cameras, the headline of this drone. The thermal camera is native 1280 by 1024 pixels. Most drones this size are stuck at 640 by 512, so this is four times the pixels, and you can pick out smaller heat sources from a larger distance.

For inspection work, that means covering more ground in a single flight without flying close to whatever you are looking at. DroneXL has the full spec rundown of the Matrice 5T from launch day if you want every number.

Then there is the wide camera. It is a big, roughly 1-inch class sensor, and DJI is pushing full color night vision with it. It is meant to be used at native wide with a little ambient light around and no zooming, and that is where it should look its best.

The telephoto camera goes up to 176 times hybrid zoom, and in the dark it switches to black and white night vision. Push the zoom in far enough and the near-infrared light switches on, which DJI says reaches around 100 meters (328 feet). On top of that sits a laser rangefinder that works up to 3 km (1.9 miles), so you can point it at something and get its exact position. So I have a wide camera for context, a tele camera for details, a thermal camera for heat and a light for the dark spots, all in one drone.

LiDAR, Radar and Vision Together Spot Power Lines 32 Meters Out in the Dark

The second big thing is everything around it. This is the first time DJI has put LiDAR, millimeter wave radar and omnidirectional vision on a compact enterprise drone, and it matters because of power lines: thin, almost invisible at night, and one of the most common ways drones get destroyed.

DJI says the Matrice 5T can detect power lines up to 32 meters (105 feet) away, even in the dark, and it is up to you to decide whether the drone stops before hitting them or flies around them.

What really impresses me about this drone is that it can fly in rain, snow and dust, because it is IP55 rated. DJI says it will fly in temperatures between -20°C and 50°C (-4°F and 122°F), which is super incredible for a relatively small drone.

The Matrice 5T Weighs 2.2 kg, Fits in One Hand and Flies for 59 Minutes

Next to a Mavic 4 Pro, both drones are still relatively compact. The Mavic is a lot smaller and less bulky, and the Matrice has a lot more going on, but I can carry it in one hand and move it around easily. It weighs 2.2 kg (4.9 lb).

The props are huge, which is one thing that is really impressive, and the flight time is about 59 minutes per charge, around 10 minutes more than the previous Matrice 4 series. Video transmission is DJI’s O4 Enterprise, up to 40 km (25 miles), which obviously you will never fly that far. The important thing is the relay option: another drone can act as a relay to get around mountains or buildings, where the Matrice 4 series could only do passive relay.

Then there is the AI side of things. It can detect over 20 different object types, things like vehicles, vessels, fires and animals, and the onboard computing is open, so companies can run their own models. There is also mapping, automatic power line following, and takeoff and landing on a moving boat.

The Matrice 5T lifting off from a ship's deck. DJI says it takes off from and lands on a moving vessel. Photo credit: DJI Enterprise

The RC Plus 3 Enterprise Controller Powers On When You Open the Lid

We also have the new DJI RC Plus 3 Enterprise controller. It opens up and powers on automatically when you open the lid, which is also where the antenna sits. The screen is really bright, and I love the folding top, which works as the antenna and protects the screen.

At your fingertips you have a large variety of customizable buttons, controls for anything you can think of, and a lot of ports to get the most out of this remote controller.

So this is my very first look at the new DJI enterprise solution, the Matrice 5T. I am super excited to give this a go, check this drone out and make a full in-depth review in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned for that. It is going to be epic, that’s for sure. Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll catch you in the next one very, very soon. Ciao.

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