Drone Research
TU Delft Drone Flies 600 Meters Home On 42 Kilobytes By Copying A Honeybee
TU Delft's Bee-Nav drone flies home from 600 meters without GPS, using a honeybee-inspired neural memory of just 42 kilobytes. Here's how it works.
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Technology
Vermeer Bets American Strike Drones Are Useless Without a GPS Replacement
New York startup Vermeer sells a $20,000 camera-and-AI kit that lets strike drones navigate without GPS, combat-tested in Ukraine against Russian jamming.
DJI
DJI Clears an Independent U.S. Cybersecurity Audit, a Custom FPV Drone Hits 730 km/h, and SkyeBrowse Drops Another Major Update
Welcome to your weekly UAS News Update. I have three stories for you this week: DJI was audited by a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, a custom FPV drone hit 730 kilometers per hour, and SkyeBrowse rolled out yet another major product update. So let’s get to it. DJI Passes a U.S. Cybersecurity Audit With Zero Critical…
Russia
Russian Drone Hits Romanian Apartment Block in Galați, First Injuries on NATO Soil as Bucharest Weighs Article 4
A Russian Geran-2 attack drone crashed into the roof of a 10-storey apartment block in Galați, Romania, overnight on 28-29 May, detonating its full warhead on impact and starting a fire that injured two residents. It is the first time in nearly four years of repeated airspace breaches that a Russian drone has hurt anyone…
Police
FAA Law Makes That Viral “Claude Squirrel-Hunting Drone” Illegal Three Times Over
A post claiming to show an AI-controlled drone armed with a CO2 BB gun that autonomously shoots squirrels has pulled in more than 590,000 views on X this week, and almost every law it touches points the same direction: this is illegal for any civilian to operate in the United States. The account, a self-described…
Ukraine
Pentagon Floats Equity Stakes In U.S. Drone Startups As Trump Administration Tries To Buy Its Way Out Of A Production Deficit
The Trump administration is negotiating funding deals with a group of American drone companies, and at least some of those deals could hand the U.S. government an ownership slice of the firms it backs. According to a Wall Street Journal exclusive, the Pentagon has identified Performance Drone Works, Unusual Machines, and Neros Technologies as candidates…
Department of Homeland Security
HOVERAir AQUA Launches In 50+ Countries Today, US Buyers Locked Out By FCC Foreign Drone Ban
HOVERAir AQUA, the waterproof self-flying camera, launches globally today in 50+ countries. US buyers excluded due to the December 2025 FCC drone ban.
DJI
DJI’s New U.S. Security Audit By OnDefend Finds No Backdoors, No Foreign Data Transmission In Air 3S And Matrice 4E
Independent U.S. cybersecurity firm OnDefend audited DJI's Air 3S and Matrice 4E across five months and found zero critical, high, or medium-risk findings.
Russia
Tymur Fatkullin Hunts Russian Shaheds In A Six-Ton Skydiving Plane, And The New Yorker Just Profiled Him
Ukrainian aerobatics champion Tymur Fatkullin hunts Russian Shahed drones at night from a six-ton An-28 skydiving plane, now profiled by The New Yorker.
Ukraine
Kalashnikov’s SKAT-220 and Its 99 MPH Speed Claim
Kalashnikov rolled out a new drone this week and wrapped a familiar Russian word around it: record. The SKAT-220 is a lighter, faster spin on the company’s SKAT-350M, and Kalashnikov says it tops out around 99 mph (160 km/h), which it calls unmatched in its class. The pitch is all agriculture and power lines. The…
Brinc
Skydio, BRINC and a Robot Dog Join Louisiana Patrols
The West Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office is adding four Skydio X10 drones and a four-legged Boston Dynamics
DJI
DJI Matrice Drones Cut Teesside Inspections to 16 Min
ConocoPhillips just ran a trial that did the same job in 16 minutes from the air, flying a DJI drone-in-a-box beyond visual line of sight at one of the U.K.'s
Brinc
St. Louis OKs Six BRINC Drones Amid ‘Rushed’ Vote
St. Louis is getting six police drones, and how the city approved them says as much as the program itself. On Wednesday its Board of Police Commissioners signed off on a Drone as First Responder program built on BRINC hardware, racing a funding deadline that had Mayor Cara Spencer calling the process rushed. The drones…
NASA
NASA’s First Moon Drones Won’t Fly. They’ll Hop.
NASA is sending drones to the Moon, and not one of them has a rotor. Firefly Aerospace won a $75 million subcontract to fly four hopping drones to the lunar south pole under a mission called MoonFall, with delivery targeted for no earlier than 2028. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is building the drones. Firefly’s job…
DJI
MIT and Penn Open-Source MIGHTY, a Drone Motion Planner That Cuts Out Six-Figure Commercial Software
Researchers at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania have released MIGHTY, an open-source motion planner that lets drones react to obstacles in milliseconds using only onboard sensors and compute. The system, detailed in a paper accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and announced by MIT, jointly optimizes flight path and travel time in a…
DJI
Wyoming PD Goes from One Drone to Three on $26K Vote
The Wyoming Police Department is going from one drone to three. The Wyoming City Council approved $26,226 for two new aircraft on May 18 in a 5-1 vote, with one council member dissenting on surveillance grounds. The department flew its existing drone 131 times in 2025, and command staff say the additional units will close…
Skydio
NYPD Spends $6.5M To Stand Up Counter-Drone Unit Built To Outlast The World Cup
The New York City Police Department now has trained officers and certified equipment to electronically disable hostile drones in city airspace, a capability reserved until December for a small group of federal agencies. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed the department spent $6.5 million on drone mitigation gear at a May 21 press conference at One…
Skydio
Nashville Police Launch 45-Day Skydio DFR Pilot
The Metro Nashville Police Department started flying drones over the Madison precinct on Tuesday, May 26, the first day of a Drone as First Responder trial that will run up to 45 flight days. Three Skydio aircraft are involved, on loan from the manufacturer at no cost to the city. Four FAA-certified officers operate the…
Drone Delivery
Green Berets Drop 500-lb Glider Drones in NATO Drill
U.S. Army Special Forces and a Romanian Air Force crew dropped autonomous cargo gliders over North Macedonia during Trojan Footprint 26, the largest U.S.-led special operations exercise in Europe. The aircraft were DZYNE’s Grasshopper resupply gliders, the same family the Air Force quietly fielded last year. The exercise wrapped on May 21 after ten days…
Skydio
Dallas PD Drone Saves Man From I-45 a Day After DFR Launch
The Dallas Police Department’s new Drone as First Responder program made its first save on Thursday afternoon, one day after the program went live. A man was walking into rush-hour traffic on Interstate 45, a Skydio drone reached him before any patrol unit could, and a uniformed crew walked him off the freeway alive. The…
DJI
SkyRover X1 Crashes to $449, a $309 Cut on the Sub-249g 4K Foldable
The SkyRover X1 just dropped to its lowest price ever, $449 at B&H, down from a $758 list. That is a $309 cut on a sub-250g foldable drone that flies 4K60 HDR, ships with 360-degree obstacle sensing, and walks into the FAA-registration-free zone by weighing exactly what a small bag of coffee weighs. The deal…
Underwater drone
U.S. Navy Tests SEAL Mini-Subs Teamed With Drones
The U.S. Navy is working to pair its SEAL mini-submarines with uncrewed underwater vehicles, sending robotic scouts ahead of operators into the most defended stretches of any covert mission. Navy Captain Mike Linn confirmed the program at SOF Week 2026 in Tampa, where he heads the Naval Special Warfare program office. The goal is straightforward.…
Firefighters
Alaska Drone Module Tracks Spot Fires To Contain Sawmill Creek Blaze At 14.8 Acres
The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection (DFFP) used its Unmanned Aerial Systems Module to identify hot spots and spot fires across the Gerstle River during the Sawmill Creek Fire, helping ground crews achieve 100 percent containment four days after ignition. The fire was held to 14.8 acres on state land east of Delta…
DJI
Durham Police DJI Drone Locates Wanted Suspect In Pickering Greenspace
A Durham Regional Police Service (DRPS) drone operator located a suspect with outstanding warrants for violent offences in under 20 minutes on May 9, 2026, after the man fled a disturbance call in Pickering, Ontario and hid in a green space. The operation marks one of the first publicly documented arrests powered by DRPS’s three-month-old…
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