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Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have four stories for you this week, and they’re quite interesting. First up, the FAA abruptly shut down the airspace over El Paso, Texas. A former DJI VP has been detained in China. A new bill gives Kansas City police the authority to take down drones. And…
SkyDrive Inc. has reached a general understanding with 7A Drones Co., Ltd. for the purchase of 10 SKYDRIVE Model SD 05 eVTOL aircraft
California based startup Swarm Aero has opened an 80,000 square foot Advanced Manufacturing Center at Drake Field in Fayetteville, Arkansas
In April 2025, inside the neon charged arena of the A2RL Drone Championship in Abu Dhabi, something quietly historic happened. An autonomous racing drone did not just compete. It defeated three human FPV world champions in head to head knockout rounds, as Small Wars Journal reported. No pilot.No goggles.No thumbs on sticks. Just silicon nerves…
At the India AI Summit, California based Ottonomy.IO unveiled Ottumn.AI, a cloud orchestration platform designed to coordinate robots, drones, and smart infrastructure as if they were sections of the same mechanical orchestra, as published by The Robot Reports. The company built Ottumn.AI on NVIDIA artificial intelligence infrastructure, with backing from the NVIDIA Inception program. The…
In Rockbridge, Virginia, first responders have found a new partner that does not drink coffee, does not complain about overtime, and can hover over a cornfield at midnight without blinking. The Rockbridge Regional Public Safety Communications Center has quietly built a drone program that is now reshaping how local agencies handle search and rescue, suspect…
In a world where minutes can redraw the map of a community, drones are no longer weekend gadgets or delivery pipe dreams. They are becoming airborne lifelines. On March 2, the University of Mississippi will host its second Unmanned Aircraft System Symposium, organized by the Center for Air and Space Law. The event, titled “Unleashing…
SABUVIS II was managed by the EDA with a budget of €3.7 million. Poland served as the lead nation, with Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia
Europe’s AI driven drone heavyweight, TEKEVER, has officially switched on the lights at its new UAS Training School in West Wales, turning a quiet corner of the Welsh coast into what looks increasingly like a nerve center for serious unmanned aviation, as SUAS News reports. The facility has been fully operational since January 2026 and…
Police in regional Australia are about to test a capability that feels like a preview of where public safety aviation is heading. In Moree, NSW Police are deploying DJI Matrice 4TD aircraft as part of a six month trial that allows officers in Sydney to remotely pilot drones operating more than 600 kilometers away, as…
German defense startup Stark is facing mounting backlash over its ties to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, days before lawmakers decide on a drone contract that could reach €2.9 billion, as Financial Times reports. What should have been a celebration of Europe’s push for sovereign defense tech has instead turned into a debate about influence, democracy,…
The Ukrainian company Ratel Robotics announced on February 18 that its domestically produced Ratel H unmanned ground vehicle has been
Europe is not just designing a long range loitering munition. It is redesigning how such weapons are built. Under the European Long-range Strike Approach framework, the One Way Effector 500 Plus is emerging as a deliberately simple, industrial scale strike system, as Interesting Engineering reports. And the word simple keeps coming up for a reason.…
Europe’s five biggest military spenders are formalizing what Ukraine’s drone operators figured out the hard way: cheap autonomous systems beat expensive traditional ones. The UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland are expected to announce a new joint drone and missile development program as early as Friday, February 20, during a defense ministers’ meeting in Poland,…
China’s coastguard just gave us a rare window into how drones are shaping operations at Scarborough Shoal, and it did not come through a defense white paper or satellite imagery analysis. It came through a Lunar New Year post. Behind the festive tone was something far more strategic. Beijing is increasingly relying on uncrewed aircraft…
Israeli drone maker XTEND is heading to the public markets through a $1.5 billion reverse merger with Florida based JFB Construction Holdings, a Nasdaq listed contractor whose core business until now has had little to do with defense robotics, as Bloomberg reports. The combined company will rebrand as XTEND AI Robotics and trade under the…
London’s phone theft crisis has mutated into something colder and more organized. Gangs are recruiting children on Snapchat, offering up to £380 for the latest Apple devices, and sending teenagers out on bikes before school to hunt commuters, as The Guardian reports. According to the Metropolitan Police, gangs are circulating digital “menus” listing cash rewards…
US based Ondas Holdings is seeking to acquire Aeronautics, the unmanned aerial vehicle subsidiary of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems
We have been tracking Quantum Systems‘ rise from small civilian drone maker to what the company calls Europe’s first “triple unicorn” in dual-use technology for nearly two years now. Today, the trajectory just got a lot steeper. The Peter Thiel-backed German drone company is preparing for an initial public offering that could take place by…
The AH-64 Apache’s evolution into a dedicated counter-drone platform continues — and now it’s getting a major upgrade to its chin gun. The U.S. Army has successfully live-fire tested the new XM1225 Aviation Proximity Explosive (APEX) 30x113mm ammunition for the Apache’s M230 chain gun, adding a critical new tool to its expanding anti-drone arsenal, as…
Mexican drug cartels are no longer just trafficking narcotics across borders. They are building a low cost air force, as Small Wars Journal reports. A new report from the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, based at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, documents 221 weaponized drone incidents in Mexico between 2021 and 2025.…
SpaceX is reportedly competing in a secret Pentagon challenge to build voice controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology, as Reuters reports. On paper, it reads like the next chapter in military innovation. In context, it also reads like a sharp philosophical U turn. According to Bloomberg News, SpaceX and its AI subsidiary xAI are among a…
More than $100 million in federal funding is headed to Grand Forks, North Dakota, reinforcing the region’s growing role as a national hub for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), space, and defense technology, as the Grand Forks Herald reports. Speaking at the HIVE innovation center, U.S. Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) detailed a sweeping investment package that…
Kevin Durant was logging his 16th NBA All Star appearance while the internet was busy staging a different kind of contest. This one involved alleged burner accounts, leaked screenshots, and an unexpected subplot about drones and Yahoo! Sports reported about it. The Houston Rockets forward suddenly found himself at the center of accusations that he…
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