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Ukraine plans to sign drone agreements with at least seven NATO countries before the end of 2026, and some signatures could come as soon as this week’s alliance summit in Ankara. Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, set the target in an interview published Monday. Six countries have already signed:…
Steffanie Rivers, who runs TCB Drones Academy in Dallas, announced a national program on July 4 to steer students at historically Black colleges and universities toward careers in drones and aviation. She is calling it the National HBCU Aviation and Drone Leadership Initiative. Rivers, a Tennessee State University graduate who describes herself as the first…
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportation broke ground on June 25 on the Vertical Take-Off and Landing Procedures and Analysis Range, or V-PAR, at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City. The roughly $8.3 million facility gives the agency its first dedicated range for studying how electric and hybrid vertical…
The FBI said Saturday it has seized more than 600 drones flying in restricted airspace around FIFA World Cup 2026 venues since the tournament opened on June 11, with confiscations recorded in all 11 U.S. host cities. Miami leads the tally at 99 seized drones, followed by Atlanta at 77 and Dallas at 63. The…
A Pasco Sheriff’s Office drone found a missing man in the woods outside San Antonio, Florida, in the dark early hours of July 2, using a thermal camera to pick his body heat out of the surrounding trees. Deputies got the call around 3:25 a.m., put a drone in the air, and used the aerial…
Sky Elements Drone Shows put more than 700 drones over Lake Carolyn on Friday night, July 3, headlining Sparks & Stripes, the City of Irving’s two-day celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The drones opened the night at Levy Event Plaza in Las Colinas, and a traditional fireworks finale closed it. Eighteen months after DroneXL reported…
The Dutch Ministry of Defense will invest more than €30 million in Intelic, the Amsterdam company whose NEXUS command-and-control software lets drones from competing manufacturers fly inside a single operational picture. The three-year strategic partnership, announced Friday, makes the Netherlands what Intelic says is the first country in the world to formally fund a Software-First…
The Federal Communications Commission prohibited the continued importation and marketing of previously authorized equipment from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua on June 26, 2026, closing a nearly four-year window in which older, pre-approved models from Covered List companies could keep entering the United States legally. The decision does not touch drones. DJI and Autel…
Autel Intelligent Technology, the Shenzhen company that shares its founder and brand name with drone maker Autel Robotics, has refiled for a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing. The Shanghai-listed firm (688208.SH) submitted its application to the HKEX Main Board on June 30, 2026, with CICC as sole sponsor, after its first attempt, filed December 19,…
Hoverfly Technologies has launched Hoverfly Elements, a new business division selling NDAA-compliant drone components built for defense and commercial UAS manufacturers. The Sanford, Florida-based company unveiled the line at Xponential 2026, and its first products are drone motors and electronic speed controllers built with Korea Robot Manufacturing, plus GPS modules developed with Septentrio, a
DJI and Insta360 have voluntarily dismissed all four of the patent infringement lawsuits they filed against each other in the Eastern District of Texas. Court filings show both companies submitted notices of voluntary dismissal on June 28, 2026, covering DJI’s cases 2:26-cv-00462 and 2:26-cv-00463 and Insta360’s cases 2:26-cv-00466 and 2:26-cv-00467. The court entered dismissal orders…
A Ukrainian studio has trained more than 7,000 military drone operators on a simulator built to behave almost exactly like a real FPV strike drone, and it hands the software to the armed forces for free. The Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator, or UFDS, comes from Simtech Solutions, a roughly 30-person team whose founders pulled their…
Shawn from Air Photography takes a close look at Insta360’s new Luna Ultra head tracker, showing how the Bluetooth accessory follows your head movements for cycling, helmet, and POV shooting setups.
Several San Diego County cities are putting police drones in the air this Fourth of July weekend to enforce a fireworks ban and catch the people who ignore it. Oceanside, Escondido, and Carlsbad updated their ordinances this year to pair steep fines with drone-and-ground patrols, following California cities like Chino and San Bernardino that tried…
China has shown a launch system that turns a line of flatbed trucks into an electromagnetic catapult for fixed-wing drones, with no runway required. Beijing Institute of Technology posted video on June 30 of three eight-wheeled trucks linked end to end into a single launch rail, accelerating a fixed-wing UAV off the back and into…
Javeayah Harris, a 4-year-old girl, has been missing from Aiken County, South Carolina since the night of June 30, and the search for her now covers more than 3,000 acres. She was last seen around 8:15 p.m. near Hillsboro Street and Ridgecrest Road, wearing Minnie Mouse pajamas with pink beads in her braided hair. Drones…
DJI launched the Mic Mini 2S on July 2, and the headline change is simple. The tiny clip-on wireless mic now records inside itself. It carries 14.5GB of built-in storage, captures 32-bit floating-point audio, and pairs up to four transmitters to a single receiver. DJI shipped it in China first, with global pricing and dates…
After almost 10 years of waiting, the FAA finally dropped its proposed rule for Section 2209. So if you fly drones, whether recreationally or commercially, this one kind of matters for you. The window to do anything about it closes on August 5th after it was extended from the original deadline of July 6th. Stick…
Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. I have four stories for you this week. First up, the EFF is warning about arming police drones. Then a JetBlue pilot reporting a drone strike at 3,000 feet over JFK. Also, another JFK drone sighting that turns out to be just normal operation. And then lastly, we…
Redmond, Oregon, is replacing its DJI police drones with six Skydio aircraft, and paying for them the way a city buys a fleet of patrol cars: on a five-year financed contract. The city council approved the $410,762 deal with Axon on June 23. The department calls its old fleet obsolete, but the bigger force behind…
Amazon has confirmed that its next drone-delivery market is the Omaha area, with Prime Air aircraft set to fly out of the company’s warehouse in Papillion, Nebraska. The service will carry items under five pounds (2.3 kg) that fit in a shoebox, to homes within a 7 to 8 mile (11 to 13 km) radius…
A London think tank has assembled the fullest picture yet of the drone incursions that rattled European airbases, airports and nuclear sites since late 2024, and its central claim is serious: Russian intelligence ran a coordinated surveillance campaign launched from vessels in Moscow’s sanctions-dodging “shadow fleet.” The 144-incident dataset is real, the pattern is unsettling,…
Santa Maria’s police department is getting its drone-as-first-responder program off the ground with money raised at a charity gala, not a line in the city budget. The Santa Maria Police Council, a nonprofit booster group, pulled in about $95,000 at its annual fundraiser and is handing the department a $97,869 donation to buy the aircraft.…
Two California cities moved to put police drones in the air the same week, and both ran straight into residents who don’t want them there. West Hollywood launches a sheriff-run drone program by the end of July. Berkeley opens bidding on a public safety package that bundles drones with license plate readers and cameras. DroneXL…
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