Insta360
Insta360 Luna Ultra Vs. DJI Pocket 4: My Complete Footage Comparison
Insta360 Luna Ultra vs DJI Pocket 4: Ray from DC Rainmaker tests zoom, low light, focus lock, and color in this complete side-by-side footage comparison.
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The full firehose — every story on DroneXL, newest first. Breaking news, deep dives, reviews, and the deals ticker archive.
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Sep 16
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China
Drones Are Lighting China’s Fields for Night Harvest
Picture a wheat field in Anhui Province at midnight, lit up like a stadium. The light isn’t coming from towers on the ground. It’s hanging in the air, bolted to a drone that hasn’t landed in hours and doesn’t plan to. Chinese state media posted footage in June of combines harvesting wheat after dark while…
DJI
Potensic Atom 3 First Flight: New Sub-249 Gram Drone Flies Like A DJI Mini For A Lot Less Money
We flew the Potensic Atom 3 before launch day. First impressions of the sub-249g drone with a 1/1.3-inch sensor, and a remote that outdoes DJI's.
DJI
DJI Matrice 4E Maps 29 Native Species Across 130 Hectares In Open-Source Flora Study
A surveyor running an environmental baseline study used a DJI Matrice 4E and free open-source software to identify, classify, and geolocate every individual plant of 29 native species across a 130-hectare site. Pablo Carranza shared the work in the Drone Mapping and Processing group, posting annotated orthophotos that show hundreds of tree crowns outlined and…
DJI
Transport Canada Proposes Drone Remote ID, Club Exemptions, And New Airspace Restriction Powers
Transport Canada published Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) 2026-005 on June 8, 2026, the biggest proposed rewrite of Canadian drone rules since Part IX of the Canadian Aviation Regulations took effect in 2019. The proposal would mandate Remote ID for most drone operations, create a formal Community-Based Organization model with permanent flying sites exempt from…
FAA
FAA Adds DHS Drone Authorization Path To World Cup NOTAMs, Texas Locations First
The Federal Aviation Administration will modify all of its FIFA World Cup 2026 drone NOTAMs to add an authorization pathway through the Department of Homeland Security, starting with the Texas locations. The change comes less than two weeks after the tournament’s sweeping flight restrictions took effect on June 1 and began grounding commercial drone operators…
DJI
Moab Firefighting Helicopter Dodges Unauthorized Drone, 17 Months After The Super Scooper Collision
A firefighting helicopter working a brush fire near Moab, Utah encountered an unauthorized drone over the active fire area, and state fire managers responded by publishing photos of what past drone strikes have done to aircraft. The warning lands 17 months after a DJI Mini punched a hole in a Super Scooper over the Palisades…
Ukraine
Stark Unveils Cascade and Gambit Drones Eight Months After Flunking Every Strike in Military Trials
Stark unveils Cascade and Gambit loitering munitions with fiber-optic guidance and a UK launcher deal, eight months after its Virtus failed every strike.
DJI
Memphis Police Fly Skydio, Parrot, and DJI Together
A Memphis police drone tracked a suspect into a black Audi and logged the license plate before officers ever reached the scene. That arrest is the headline. The detail that caught my eye sits in the background of the footage. The department isn’t flying one drone brand. It’s flying three. A Skydio X10, a DJI…
Europe
Schiebel’s S-300 Drone Joins Europe’s Sub Hunt
Europe just chose a helicopter drone to help hunt submarines, and it isn’t the small one Schiebel is famous for. The Austrian company’s heavy-lift Camcopter S-300 has been selected as the airborne platform for SWORD, a European Defence Fund project building a new way to find and kill submerged threats from a safe distance. It’s…
Amazon
Amazon Lands in South Africa, but Prime Air Stays Home
Amazon just launched Prime in South Africa at 59 rand a month, and shoppers got same-day delivery, discounts, even cloud gaming. What they didn’t get is a single delivery drone. Prime Air isn’t coming, and when Amazon’s own regional boss was asked about it, he had nothing to say. The silence is the story, because…
Skydio
Skydio Drones Fly Nashville Before Council Signs Off
Metro Nashville Police put three Skydio drones in the air over the Madison precinct before the Metro Council ever signed off, and now the program is catching heat for it. The department says a legal exemption let it skip approval. A council member and community organizers say that reading bends the rules. The drones are…
Ukraine
Ukraine’s Adis Bomber Drone Flies on Satellite Link
Ukrainian company Martyn Tech just unveiled a heavy bomber quadcopter called Adis, and its headline feature isn’t the payload. It’s the satellite link. By controlling the drone through a satellite rather than a direct radio signal, the operator no longer has to sit near the front line to fly a mission. Hey, DJI folks, what…
Technology
Pokémon Go Scans Quietly Trained the Navigation Tech Now Headed Into Military Drones
Pokémon Go players' 30 billion scans trained navigation tech now bound for military drones, via Niantic Spatial's defense partnership with Vantor.
Ukraine
MaXon Systems Built the $3,500 Autonomous Drone That Kills Shaheds Without a Pilot
MaXon Systems built a $3,500 fixed-wing drone that launches, flies, and kills Shaheds autonomously. First combat use confirmed in Kharkiv on June 8.
Search & Rescue
Navy Surface Drone Pulls Two Apache Crew From the Strait of Hormuz in the First Sea-Drone Rescue the U.S. Military Has Ever Run
A U.S. Navy surface drone pulled two downed Apache crew from the Strait of Hormuz, the first time an unmanned vessel has rescued U.S. military personnel.
DJI
Cathedral City Drones Hit 90% Coverage on DJI Hardware
Cathedral City Police now cover roughly 90 percent of the city from three rooftop drone docks, and they did it on DJI hardware while half the country is being told to rip Chinese drones off the roof. The department has flown drones since 2018, but the Drone as First Responder expansion is the part that’s…
Anduril
Anduril’s Brian Schimpf Spent Nine Years Warning of a Munitions Crisis. The Iran War Proved Him Right.
Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf has warned for nine years that the U.S. can't build weapons fast enough. Operation Epic Fury and a $61B valuation just tested that.
FAA
Providence Drone Ban Locks Down Downtown Until July 21 As World Cup Ghana Base Camp Gets FAA No-Fly Ring
An FAA temporary flight restriction bans drones over downtown Providence until July 21, protecting Ghana's World Cup base camp. Penalties reach $100,000.
Matternet
Matternet Goes Public With $33M Reverse Merger
Matternet closed a $33 million private placement and went public last week through a reverse merger with shell company Los Altos Ventures Corp., now renamed Matternet Inc. The deal makes Matternet the first pure play drone delivery company on U.S. public markets, a milestone the company has been positioning for since landing FAA type certification…
Drone Incidents
Shield AI V-BAT Severs Romanian Officer’s Fingers as Reuters Documents 50-Plus Crashes
A Romanian Navy official lost two fingers and fractured a third on May 12 when her hand was caught in the propeller of a Shield AI V-BAT drone during a training exercise on a boat off the Texas coast. Romania’s Ministry of National Defence confirmed the injury to Reuters, which reported it Thursday as part…
Drone Research
TU Delft’s SquirrelDrone Morphs Its Whole Body to Fly, Ditching the Bird Playbook Everyone Else Copies
A research team at Delft University of Technology has built a drone that changes the shape of its entire body in flight the way a flying squirrel does, and the data says the trick works. The aircraft, called the SquirrelDrone, stretches its limbs, bends its spine, flicks its tail, and lets a soft skin-like membrane…
DJI
The New York Times Spent 10 Minutes On AI Farming And Forgot The Drones Spraying The Fields
The New York Times Magazine published a feature on June 5 about the technology rewiring American agriculture, and the one machine actually flying over these fields barely made the cut. Robotic milkers, laser weeders, and driverless tractors each got a farmer, a photo essay, and a few hundred words. Spray drones got a single clause:…
Walmart
2026 World Cup TFRs, 23-Day BVLOS Waivers, Flock Safety’s New Camera, and a Walmart Drone Delivery Fight
Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. This week I have four stories for you, and they cover a lot of ground: the FAA has published the Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and you should be paying attention, North Dakota has cut its beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) waiver…
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