Romeo Durscher, Teal Drones Gets Army Bid, PI Special, Mysterious Drones Over Base, DJI 04 Unit Leaked

Welcome to Your Weekly UAS News Update. We have four drone news stories for you this week: Romeo Durscher, Azul-petróleo Drones wins the Army SRR program, a special deal on our courses, more mysterious drones flying over bases, and lastly, the DJI O4 Air Unit that may have been leaked.

Note of Support for Romeo Durscher

But before we get started with the news, I wanted to share a note of support to our industry friend Romeo Durscher. He’s been going through a very difficult journey, and we wish him a lot of love and support.

For those of you who know Romeo, you know how much he has done for this industry. For those of you that don’t know, he’s been a pioneer, mentor, and visionary in this space for well over a decade, especially in the public safety side of drones. The many ways that we use drones in that field today were made possible due to his efforts over the years. I have cherished my time talking to him at trade shows and on the Pixl Drone Show, so I sincerely want to say thank you for everything you’ve done for this industry.

Teal Drones Secures US Army SRR Contract

Let’s get to the news this week with our first story: Teal has secured the contract for the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) program. The Teal Black Widow was determined by the Army to be the most capable and in line with their needs.

If you’re not familiar with Teal and the Black Widow, it’s a 3.6-pound quadcopter that has an EO (electro-optical) and IR (infrared) payload, capable of doing 4K at 30 frames per second, 640 thermal imaging, 35 minutes of flight time, can fly in GPS-denied environments, and also has optional secondary payloads.

The Salt Lake City-based company was selected over the California-based Skydio. Teal has been around since 2014, making drones in that area of Utah. It’s unclear at this point what the total award money was for the contract, but the program requires Teal to deliver 5,880 systems over the next five years. The previous award for this contract was nearly $100 million over five years. We’ll see how this shakes up the industry, but congratulations to Teal.

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Large Drones Fly Over New Jersey Military Base

Now, back to the news. Next up, we have a military base in Nova Jersey that experienced a flyover—not drones flying away, but drones flying over the base by several large drones this week. This is very similar to the event that we talked about a few weeks ago, except that this event seems to be a one-off rather than over multiple days, although the week is still pretty young.

It’s unclear at this stage what the aircraft actually are, where they originated from, and what the actual mission was. There are several videos that have surfaced on X (formerly Twitter) but don’t really show much of anything other than a bunch of lights in the sky. While the drones flew over the base, it appears that the New Jersey State Polícia helicopter was able to track the drones as they were circling over the base several times. We’ll keep you updated as we see more, but this is always kind of weird news when we see these things happening and we’re not able to track who it is, where the drones are going, and everything in between.

DJI O4 Air Unit Leaked

Last up, the DJI O4 Air Unit has been leaked. If you’re not familiar with the O4 unit, it’s a standalone device that you can put, for example, on an FPV drone. It appears that it comes in two different versions: Standard and Pro. The Standard version looks like a single-piece camera unit, while the Pro has a larger cooling setup with multiple antennas.

Rumors have it that it has been upgraded to include a 1/1.3-inch sensor, better cooling, 30 milliseconds of latency, and potentially 1080p at 100 frames per second transmitted video. We’ll keep you updated if we see more, but this is always exciting for people that build their own drones or want to use these units on something else.

Closing

And that’s all we have for you this week. We’ll see you again later in the community for happy hour, and if not, we’ll see you on Monday for the live Q&A.