DroneXL: The Independent Drone Authority — DJI, FAA, Reviews & Deals

Amazon Drones Buzz Cleveland Heights Homes. The Mayor Wants Them Moved

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:46:00 GMT

Cleveland Heights Mayor Jim Petras has a meeting scheduled with Amazon next week, after residents complained about the Prime Air drones that began flying out of North Randall on September 24, as DroneXL reported at launch. Petras told Spectrum News 1 the drones currently fly over residential neighborhoods, and he plans to ask Amazon whether the flight pattern can be adjusted to a more commercial area.

Cleveland Heights sits inside the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) delivery circle around Amazon’s North Randall warehouse. Some Northeast Ohio residents told Spectrum the drones sound like a swarm of bees or a lawn mower. “Nobody asked me if I wanted things flying overhead,” said Joe Iacobucci, who also worries about surveillance and about someone flying a lookalike drone.

Amazon has made a version of this change before, and it has also said no to the bigger version. In Richardson, Texas, it moved some outbound flights over a commercial area after residents complained, and DroneXL revisited those changes after the New York Times visit. When Richardson residents asked for routes over major roads, Amazon turned them down.

Amazon Shifted Some Richardson Flights but Refused Road Routes

Amazon implemented its Richardson changes in February and presented them to the city council on March 9, Community Impact reported. It raised the minimum altitude for outbound flights to an average of 225 feet (69 meters) and sent select departures east over a commercial area before they entered a neighborhood.

Several residents asked for more: paths over major roads instead of homes. Sam Bailey, who presented the changes for Amazon, said no. “Routing over roads, I think it creates an additional safety issue,” he told the council, adding that it would use far more energy. He also said a quieter drone would take a hardware change that is not coming soon.

In Baton Rouge on September 9, asked at a Rotary Club event whether Amazon had considered flying higher, an Amazon spokesperson said altitude changes require Federal Aviation Administration approval, as DroneXL reported.

Shaker Heights Says Amazon and Cleveland Clinic Drones Fly in the Area

Shaker Heights officials confirmed that delivery drones operating in the region fly for Amazon and for Cleveland Clinic, 19 News reported on September 29. The city said the FAA regulates the flights and that it is still gathering more information.

The city told residents it is collecting that information from the drone operators, and pointed them to the FAA’s Northeast Ohio Flight Standards District Office, WKYC reported. Spectrum lists that office at 440-686-2001. Not every drone over the east side is an MK30. Cleveland Clinic’s Zipline prescription service flies from Beachwood, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) northeast of Amazon’s warehouse, and has flown there since the program went live in August.

Amazon has said its fully electric drones produce less noise than an idling delivery truck during drop-offs, WKYC reported. The FAA’s Baton Rouge filing gives the MK30’s delivery phase two numbers. One is about 69 decibels Lmax measured 75 feet (23 meters) from the drop point, which the FAA likens to a household vacuum cleaner at 10 feet. The other is a maximum of 92.1 decibels SEL measured 25 feet (8 meters) away, for which the filing offers a diesel truck at 50 feet, at roughly 80 to 90 decibels, as its reference. The filing gives no figure for an idling truck; DroneXL searched it on October 6.

Amazon’s MK30 Releases Packages From About 13 Feet

The MK30 descends to about 13 feet (4 meters) over the drop spot, hovers and lets the box fall, according to the same FAA filing. Shaunese Reese told Spectrum News 1 her package arrived the next morning and looked to be in good condition.

She was excited to try the service, but said the landing was not perfect. “It dropped out, and it did roll,” Reese said. She told WKYC the box rolled down her driveway, which she thinks makes packages easier to steal. In Richmond, Texas, the same release put a customer’s order into her swimming pool on August 17. Zipline lowers its packages on a tether instead.

Amazon’s Own Page Says Its Drones May Record People Near Deliveries

Amazon has said its Prime Air drones use cameras and sensors for navigation, obstacle detection and safe delivery, but don’t track individuals or record their movements, WKYC reported. Amazon’s Prime Air operations page, which DroneXL checked on October 6, says people near a delivery or landing spot may be recorded.

The page lists “people, pets, cars, and objects near the delivery or landing location” as things the cameras may record, and says Amazon uses the images to safely complete deliveries and to improve drone delivery and other Amazon services. In my reading, not recording a person’s movements and not recording the person are different promises. The statement WKYC relayed makes the first, and Amazon’s own page says the second can happen. DroneXL found a wider gap in Texas, where Amazon’s Bailey told Pflugerville’s council on September 22 that the drones can’t take “pictures or images,” as DroneXL reported.

Cities do not control the airspace the drones fly through, the federal government does, and Amazon’s hub sits in North Randall, not Cleveland Heights. Residents can reach Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 or through the customer service chat (“Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery”), and our guide for residents covers the rest of the options. Every Amazon hub DroneXL follows, North Randall included, is on the Prime Air tracker page.

DroneXL’s Take

Petras is asking for the right thing, and I think a meeting is the most direct lever he has. Amazon changed where some Richardson flights go when residents pushed, so a Cleveland Heights route change looks within reach to me. On the east side, Zipline flies prescriptions for Cleveland Clinic over some of the same suburbs, with an aircraft that weighs about 55 pounds empty and carries a parachute. Amazon flies consumer goods in an MK30 that weighs about 83 pounds at takeoff and carries no parachute. I support drone delivery when the cargo is urgent, and a prescription is. A package that could ride in a van does not need to cross a residential street, and in September one MK30 landed itself beside a Baton Rouge road while another made a precautionary landing on a Waco lawn. I’d want Amazon to bring next week’s meeting a plan that keeps Cleveland Heights departures over commercial land wherever it can.

Sources: Spectrum News 1, 19 News, WKYC via Yahoo News, Community Impact, FAA Baton Rouge filing, Amazon Prime Air operations page

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

US Military Counts 378 Border Drone Incursions In 30 Days, And Rising

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:44:00 GMT

Joint Task Force-Southern Border detected at least 378 drones along the US-Mexico border between August 22 and September 22, and the trend is climbing, Air Force Brig. Gen. Brian Filler told reporters at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Filler, the task force’s deputy commander, said most carry surveillance cameras. Army officials said the drones are typically commercial models that criminals use to watch over smuggling and human trafficking operations.

He was speaking at Falcon Peak 26.2, the Pentagon’s counter-drone experiment that put 21 companies’ detection and defeat systems in front of soldiers at Yuma from August 31 to September 25. It was the fourth Falcon Peak, the first at Yuma and the first built around the southern border.

In early September, military officials told CBS News that cartel drone flights over the Rio Grande Valley had fallen about 75% once an Army laser started shooting them down on August 25. Filler now describes the border-wide trend as rising.

Falcon Peak Lined Up 21 Counter-Drone Companies Against DJI Mavics

The Department of War’s participant list named 21 companies, including Anduril, Teledyne FLIR, Powerus and Perennial Autonomy, which holds a Pentagon interceptor contract worth up to $500 million. Yuma tested them in three lanes: sensors, electronic defeat and kinetic. Anduril’s Lattice software was the command-and-control baseline, a series first.

Reuters reported that the demonstrations featured Anduril’s Ghost drone, a Teledyne FLIR radar-and-camera detection system, and Allen Control Systems’ Bullfrog, an automated machine gun. Military photographers caught the Bullfrog firing at drone targets from the bed of a pickup on September 9. On September 22, a Genesis Arms Gen-12 shotgun system knocked a drone out of the sky on the same range.

The targets looked like what Filler described crossing the border. Army photos from the range show a DJI Mavic 3 Classic carrying an add-on radio module as it flies toward the intercept area. “We are seeing largely commercial off-the-shelf available drones,” Filler said.

A DJI Mavic 3 Classic carrying an add-on module flies toward the intercept area at Falcon Peak 26.2, September 7, 2026. Photo credit: Dept. of War / SSgt. Colten Tessness

Powerus brought an interceptor drone. The company went public on Thursday, October 1, by merging with Aureus Greenway Holdings, the Florida golf course company whose deal Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump backed in March. Powerus also had a seat at the White House drone dominance meeting in August, according to the attendee list.

Yuma Keeps Permanent Counter-Drone Lanes After The Exercise

Joint Interagency Task Force 401 is leaving the sensor, electronic-defeat and kinetic lanes in place at Yuma, so vendors can test there without waiting for the next Falcon Peak. Data from every system went into the task force’s central repository to inform buying decisions, its closing release says.

Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, who directs Joint Interagency Task Force 401, told reporters the model is Ukraine, where units adapt on a daily or weekly basis. “What we should really do is replicate that process,” he said. Military officials also told Reuters that cartel drones are not comparable to the sophisticated ones flying over Ukraine or the Middle East, but the border gives soldiers a real operating environment to test and train in.

Drone wreckage on Cibola Range Site 17 at Yuma Proving Ground during Falcon Peak 26.2, September 7, 2026. Photo credit: Dept. of War / SSgt. Colten Tessness

Brig. Gen. Jason Rueschhoff, Northern Command’s director of operations, told DefenseScoop that the fifth Falcon Peak will move to an urban area, with no city or date named yet.

Only 15 Of The 378 Border Drones Drew An Engagement

The task force’s commander, Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, broke the 378 down for DefenseScoop: 75 drones turned back, 15 drew an engagement and one was captured. That covers the task force’s mission along all 1,954 miles of the border, from August 22 to September 22.

At about 378 a month, the count is roughly a third of the last public estimate. In March 2024, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, Northern Command’s commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that incursions probably topped 1,000 a month, while conceding nobody knew the real number.

The 75% drop covered a narrower area. It applied to the Rio Grande Valley sector, where the Army’s laser had destroyed 11 drones by early September, and Army Col. Robert Felicio declined to give CBS the daily counts behind the percentage. When I reported that claim on September 7, the open question was what it was 75% of. Taylor’s figure doesn’t answer it, because his count spans the whole border and the 75% applies to one sector.

DroneXL’s Take

I want Joint Task Force-Southern Border to publish this count every month, by sector, because one month of data can’t show a trend. A detection count depends on the sensors doing the detecting, and sensors were one of the three things Falcon Peak was at Yuma to test. In August, Northcom’s deputy commander acknowledged the command lacks the sensors to see a domestic swarm forming. If radar coverage on the border grows, the count grows with it, whether or not cartels fly more. Filler told DefenseScoop the task force runs an “incredibly involved intelligence process” to characterize each drone, so the data already exists. Until the task force releases it with a note on when new sensors came online, nobody outside the command can check the 75% drop in the Rio Grande Valley against the rising count across the border.

Sources: Reuters, Department of War / DVIDS, DefenseScoop, CBS News, Tucson Sentinel

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Airspection Drone Skips the Boat on BVLOS Run to UK Wind Farm

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:26:00 GMT

Glasgow drone start-up Airspection has flown a shore-launched aircraft about 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) round trip over Liverpool Bay to a working offshore wind farm and back, entirely beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). The company announced the flights on October 6 as one of six projects in the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s BVLOS sandbox.

Amazon Prime Air, which has since asked the CAA to fly across all of Darlington, is in the same cohort. The pitch is a drone that launches from the beach, so no crewed vessel has to carry people and equipment out to the turbines. Airspection also says that, within limits, its aircraft gets more efficient as the wind picks up.

Airspection Spent Two Years Building the System the CAA Wanted

Airspection’s flights come after two years of work with the CAA’s Innovation and Test and Evaluation teams. The regulator selected its six sandbox projects on August 15, 2024 and runs the program with UK Research and Innovation to gather the safety evidence for routine BVLOS flight.

The other four are the National Police Air Service, air traffic provider NATS over the North Sea, Project SATE in Orkney and Project Lifeline for medical deliveries. Airspection says it built the safety, communications and flight operations system along with the aircraft, and the CAA counted the company among its new sandbox authorizations in the Test and Evaluation report DroneXL covered in June, when the UK had logged 1,672 BVLOS flights.

Ed Clay, Head of Technical Strategy at the CAA, said the company’s data “will help in the development of the UAS-supporting policies” the regulator is writing through its Future of Flight Programme. The Offshore Wind Growth Partnership helped fund the Liverpool Bay work.

Airspection’s CAA Filing Points to the Burbo Bank Wind Farm

Airspection’s announcement names neither the wind farm nor the flight dates. Its airspace change proposal to the CAA, ACP-2025-001, asks for a Temporary Danger Area inside the Burbo Bank Transponder Mandatory Zone in Liverpool Bay, reached from the coast through a separate corridor.

The filing describes a staged plan, launching from a crewed vessel first and then from land. It requested operations between October 2025 and March 2026, with a possible extension of up to 12 months, and scheduled the shore-launched phase for January to March 2026. Local site Wirral Today reported drone trials linked to Burbo Bank launching from Moreton Shore on August 3, 2026, without naming the operator.

An Airspection crew member tracks the aircraft over Liverpool Bay. Photo credit: Airspection

Airspection Says Its Drone Hovers on 40% Less Power in Strong Wind

Airspection designed the aircraft to hover in strong wind the way a kestrel holds its position, working with the wind instead of fighting it. In its testing at 22 to 27 mph (10 to 12 meters per second), hover power dropped about 40%, good for roughly two-thirds more flight time.

The release cites no independent test of the hover figures. The company estimates the shore-launched approach saves up to 50% against standalone inspection campaigns, cuts about a metric ton of CO2 equivalent per turbine and improves site access by up to 25%. A support vessel can burn more than 50 gallons (several hundred liters) of diesel an hour, according to the release.

Airspection says the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult assessed the commercial case on reference UK wind farms and found vessel-free drone inspection could cut costs substantially against conventional rope-access methods. The release quotes no figure from that analysis. Managing Director Matthew McLean, who co-founded the company in 2022 out of his work as an aero-mechanical engineering student at the University of Strathclyde, said: “We proved it around offshore wind, but it applies to any remote infrastructure.” Airspection is now looking at railway route checks after storms and power network surveys.

DroneXL’s Take

Airspection’s own airspace filing asked the CAA for a Temporary Danger Area that is “fully segregated” whenever it is active, and it planned the shore flights inside that area. That is the closed-off airspace the sandbox exists to retire, so I wouldn’t call Liverpool Bay routine BVLOS yet. It does show Airspection can run an offshore operation the regulator will approve, inside a box built for it, and that is real progress for an inspection drone. Range was never the hard part, because Austin-based Skyways flew 50-mile round trips from a German port to the Arkona wind farm with cargo in October 2025. Wind farm owners need to see the same run with the danger area switched off and the drone sharing Liverpool Bay with other aircraft.

Sources: Airspection press release (October 6, 2026), UK Civil Aviation Authority, CAA airspace change proposal ACP-2025-001, Wirral Today.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Feared Iran Drone Attack Sent All 12 US B-1s Home From RAF Fairford

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:40:00 GMT

The US Air Force pulled all 12 of its B-1B Lancer bombers out of RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England, over the weekend after commanders received new intelligence about a possible drone attack on the base ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to US and British officials who spoke to The New York Times. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, and the Pentagon said the bombers have returned to their home stations in the United States.

Vice President JD Vance confirmed the move on Monday and accused Iran of plotting attacks against the United States. Several hundred US personnel are stationed at Fairford, and American bombers have flown from it in the US-Israeli war against Iran, which began on February 28.

The pullout came a week after British police arrested five men following reports of three white vans near the base in the early hours of September 27. Police found petrol in the vans but no explosives, and all five were released on bail without charge the next day.

The Fairford Arrests Brought an Evacuation, a Cobra Meeting and a Sixth Suspect

Counter-terrorism police held the five London-based men, aged 23 to 25, under the Explosives Act and then on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. About 85 homes in Whelford were evacuated while a bomb-disposal robot searched the vans. Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired a Cobra meeting on September 28.

A local farmer raised the alarm after seeing the vans and a large group of hooded or masked people near them. She later estimated that eight to 10 people were there, IBTimes UK reported, and police had not confirmed that anyone beyond the five was at the scene. On October 1, officers arrested a 25-year-old dual UK-Iranian national in London on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, Reuters reported.

Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, said investigators were looking at possible foreign state involvement. IBTimes UK reported that they are examining whether the five acted for a foreign state, knowingly or unknowingly, and that no such connection has been established. Burnham said last week that the government believes Iran played a part in planning the events that led to the arrests. Iran denies any role and summoned the British ambassador in Tehran in protest.

In July, the Revolutionary Guards warned in a statement that letting the US use Fairford “makes London responsible” for US actions. The statement called any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory a legitimate target for its forces.

Some Officials Believe the Plot Was Loosely Modeled on Ukraine’s Spiderweb Raid

Officials told The New York Times the suspected attack was part of a multipronged Iranian plot to strike aircraft at Fairford and kill some of the Americans stationed there. Some believe it was loosely modeled on Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine’s 2025 raid that launched drones from trucks near Russian airbases.

None of the reports DroneXL reviewed for this story says drones were found in the vans or that the arrested men are suspected of a drone plot, and no one has been charged. The Times puts Spiderweb’s toll at a dozen or more aircraft destroyed or damaged, many of them nuclear-capable strategic bombers. When DroneXL covered the raid on June 1, 2025, a Ukrainian security official told Reuters the drones had hit more than 40 Russian warplanes.

US commanders received a warning in mid-September from American and other Western intelligence agencies that Fairford was the target of a potential Iran-backed attack, according to US officials briefed on it. One official said the new information belonged to the same set of warnings, but the sense of urgency spiked over the weekend. Some B-1s and their crews left while the tankers meant to refuel them on the way home were still deploying. “Out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys,” Vance said of the move.

A senior US official told the Times that Israel also warned Germany that American bases there faced heightened risk, naming Spangdahlem and Ramstein air bases. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone threat as the reason for the withdrawal, the Times noted, and the Pentagon told Al Jazeera that every bomber deployed to Fairford had gone home.

On Monday, Burnham’s spokesman declined to comment on other nations’ military operations. Asked whether the base was safe, he said yes and pointed to Defence Secretary Wes Streeting’s statement last week describing “tried and tested approaches to defend our bases around the country.”

DroneXL’s Take

None of the reports DroneXL reviewed describes a drone flown at Fairford in this plot, yet the US sent 12 bombers across the Atlantic in a weekend. Ukraine had to fly its drones to wreck Russia’s bombers. On the officials’ account, the threat alone was enough to clear the base.

I don’t think Streeting’s “tried and tested approaches” survive a look at the record. When DroneXL reported 340 drone incidents at UK military sites on September 19, British troops still had no general legal power to bring down a drone over their own bases, and the Armed Forces Bill that would give them one was waiting at Lords report stage. Drone incursions were reported at Fairford and three other American-run stations in November 2024, and a STRATCOM official called Spiderweb “utterly eye-opening” in August. Neither government can say this threat arrived without notice. My read is that a pullout this rushed, from a base Downing Street says is safe, tells you more about Washington’s confidence in those defenses than any statement has.

If aircraft start leaving Ramstein or Spangdahlem on a similar warning, I’d take it as proof that NATO still has no defense against small drones at its bases that it trusts.

Sources: The New York Times, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Euronews, IBTimes UK, The Wall Street Journal (as cited by The New York Times).

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Neo 3 Unboxing Video Leaks, and the Battery Slots Are Real

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:31:00 GMT

A 49-second unboxing video of the DJI Neo 3 Fly More Combo reached X on Tuesday morning, and this time the drone itself comes out of the box. Jasper Ellens, who writes for DroneXL, posted the clip at 7:48 a.m. Eastern. He said someone had leaked it on TikTok and a friend of his captured a copy. Ellens added the DroneXL watermark that appears on every frame.

The DJI Neo 3 drone comes out of its sleeve with spoked cages over all four propellers. Next to it go a DJI RC Mini controller with its own screen, a charging hub, a USB-C cable and two small sealed bags. The hub holds two flight batteries, and a third sits in the drone.

Each battery has rows of black slots across its top. On September 21, Ellens said slots like those made him think a circulating Neo 3 image was AI-generated, and DroneXL wrote that slots in a flight battery were not something DJI ships. Clearly we got that wrong.

Jasper Ellens (@JasperEllens), October 6, 2026

Neo 3 Fly More Combo Matches the Box Panel Leaked in September

Everything in the video matches the in-the-box panel DroneXL went through on September 20: the aircraft, three flight batteries, a charging hub, the DJI RC Mini and a USB-C cable.

The panel also lists spare propellers and a screwdriver. Those would fit in the sealed bags, but in the clip we do not get to see their contents.

Ellens wrote on X that the drone is almost 200 grams, citing DroneXL’s reporting, and that the figure includes a transceiver now built into the airframe. That number traces to the production listing Igor Bogdanov posted last month, which puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 grams. The DJI Neo 2 weighs 151 grams on its own and 160 grams with its screw-on transceiver. If the Neo 3’s radio is inside, the like-for-like gap is about 33 grams.

The RC Mini in the box has held a U.S. FCC grant since December 19, 2025, as DroneXL reported in September. The aircraft has no grant, and without one DJI can’t sell it in the United States.

Neo 3 Carries a Small Screen on Its Nose, Behind the Gimbal

The Neo 3 has a small rectangular screen on top of its nose, just behind the gimbal, and it glows blue in one close-up. DJI has not announced the Neo 3, and nothing official says what the screen shows. The video never catches it displaying anything readable.

Those close-ups come from the middle of the clip. It cuts away from the table to shots of a Neo 3 against an edited-in fire backdrop, some with the drone standing on its retail box, then returns to the table for the last nine seconds.

The rest of the airframe is dotted with obstacle avoidance sensors. A round lens faces up from the rear of the fuselage, and the vented underside has a sensor set into it too. The nose has a slit above the camera and dark “sensor windows“ on the arms either side of it. The Neo 2 already pairs forward LiDAR with additional obstacle avoidance sensors on its top and bottom, as Shawn from Air Photography noted in his one-year Neo 2 review for DroneXL, and the leaked spec sheet promises omnidirectional obstacle detection for the Neo 3.

Neo 3 Flight Battery Carries the Slots DroneXL Doubted

Near the end of the clip, we see the battery being inserted into the DJI Neo 3, a regulatory label sits in the bay underneath.

The DJI Neo 3 charging hub with two flight batteries, each with black slots across its top, beside the aircraft. Screenshot from a leaked TikTok unboxing video shared by Jasper Ellens.

Each Intelligent Flight battery also has four status LEDs and a button on its top face, so the charge level shows on the battery itself. The video can’t show whether the slots move air or are only styling, and the leaked spec sheet Bogdanov posted on October 1 gives no battery spec or flight time.

The September 21 story was right about the image itself. The picture Ellens posted then was the drone printed on the retail box, in the same pose and with the same picture on the controller’s screen, and nothing in this video changes that. DJI drew the slots on the box because they are on the battery.

DroneXL’s Take

This is the most complete beginner kit DJI has shown for the Neo line. Spoked cages take the knocks a new pilot will give it and makes it safe for indoor flights, and a three-bay hub means a first afternoon doesn’t end when one battery runs flat. The RC Mini matters most to me. Ellens called it a downgrade last month, and he has a point if you already fly with a DJI RC 2 with a built-in display. It seems that with the DJI Neo 3, the Chinese drone maker has created the perfect, easy-to-fly, safe beginner drone, that many American drone pilots would have loved to find under the Christmas tree this year…

The leaked DJI Neo 3 unboxing video, as uploaded to YouTube by Jasper Ellens.

Source: Jasper Ellens on X

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Zing Drone Solutions Tests Korean Radios as FCC Bars Foreign Parts

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:14:00 GMT

Zing Drone Solutions, the Pendleton, Oregon company behind the Z-RID Lite Remote ID module and the Z-SCAN drone detection system, has signed a memorandum of understanding with NUCODE, a Seoul maker of low-power Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules. The two announced it on October 5. Zing wants a radio module small enough for what it calls its “ultra-compact solutions.”

Nothing has been bought yet. Zing has sent NUCODE a request for information, NUCODE has sent back samples of its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo module, and the terms are left for a definitive agreement that does not exist yet. On December 22, 2025, the FCC put every foreign-made drone “critical component” on its Covered List, and data transmission devices are the first example it names.

Zing Is Grading NUCODE’s Modules On Secure Boot And Component Origin

Zing is testing the samples against its size and power targets, and the announcement puts security on the same footing: secure boot, signed firmware updates, and transparency on the bill of materials and where parts come from. Neither company has named a price, a volume or a delivery date.

The two CEOs agree on what the buyer wants. Ian Annase, Zing’s founder, said customers need “a clean path to Remote ID compliance.” NUCODE CEO Bruce Lee said “customers need to trust the supply chain.”

The Korean connection runs through Pendleton. Zing’s own timeline lists it as one of seven founding companies of the Oregon UAS Accelerator, and in July Korea Investment Accelerator signed an agreement with that accelerator to bring Korean defense and drone startups to the U.S. market. The Oregon Defense Tech Basecamp, the banner behind the signing photo, is the housing and office hub it opened in the Portland area afterward, according to Smart Today. NUCODE lists its own U.S. office in Portland.

Zing has changed shape since DroneXL first covered it. In July 2022 it rebranded from Zing Drone Delivery to Zing Drone Solutions, and in January 2024 it launched the Z-RID Lite as a cheaper broadcast module. Zing says the Z-RID Lite now carries approvals in the U.S., Europe and Singapore, and that Z-SCAN is deployed at Oregon Department of Corrections facilities and at Salinas Airport in California.

The FCC Covered List Treats A South Korean Drone Radio Like A Chinese One

The FCC’s December notice, DA 25-1086, adds drone critical components “produced in a foreign country” to the Covered List, with no carve-out for allies. A listed part can’t get a new FCC equipment authorization unless the Department of War or Homeland Security clears it.

Those clearances come in a few forms, and DroneXL has tracked them since January. Components on the Blue UAS list and U.S.-made products with at least 65% domestic content were exempted in January. In July the FCC extended both through January 1, 2028 and dropped the end date on Department of War Conditional Approvals, the case-by-case route a foreign part would most likely need. A NUCODE module would be foreign-made, and NUCODE’s published boards run on Nordic Semiconductor chips from Norway. NUCODE says it is Nordic’s only official third-party Bluetooth 6.0 module partner in Korea.

The notice never mentions Remote ID. It does not say whether a general-purpose Bluetooth and Wi-Fi module counts as a drone component, or whether it becomes one once it sits inside a Remote ID broadcaster. Neither company’s announcement mentions the Covered List, and the line about component origin is the closest either comes.

DroneXL’s Take

I like that Zing put secure boot and component origin on the checklist next to size and battery life. That is the right order of questions for a box whose whole job is telling the world where your drone is. But an MOU with samples and no price is a conversation, and I’d treat it as one until there is a supply contract. My bigger problem is with Washington. The FCC rule as written makes no distinction between a radio from South Korea, a treaty ally that hosts U.S. troops, and one from the country the rule was aimed at. If an Oregon company building compliance hardware needs a Pentagon Conditional Approval to use a Korean Bluetooth module, the foreign parts rule is catching the wrong supplier. Watch whether Zing’s definitive agreement names that approval path, because a smaller module that can’t get FCC authorization doesn’t help a single U.S. pilot.

Source: Zing Drone Solutions and NUCODE press release, October 5, 2026; FCC DA 25-1086.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Neo Hits $139 on Amazon While DJI's Own Store Is Sold Out at $169

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:31:00 GMT

The DJI Neo is $139 on Amazon for Prime Big Deal Days, 30% under its $199 list price and level with the lowest price the 135-gram palm drone has ever sold for. The cut is on the controller-free base kit, and the two-day Prime event runs through Wednesday, October 7.

Three Neo bundles are discounted with it. The Three-Battery Combo is $201, the Fly More Combo with the RC-N3 controller is $242, and the Motion Fly More Combo with the RC Motion 3 is $369. DJI’s own US store lists the base Neo at $169 and shows it out of stock.

Get the DJI Neo for $139 on Amazon

The Neo’s full-coverage propeller guards and single-axis gimbal, with the gimbal protector clipped on. Photo credit: Air Photography

The $139 Matches the Floor the Neo Set in June and Hit Again After the Tariff

Amazon listed the Neo at $139 during the June 23 to 26 Prime Day and again on September 2, and today’s price returns to that floor after last October’s Prime event bottomed at $159, then the record. The listing is sold by the DJI Tech Hub storefront, shipped by Amazon.

DroneXL ran the $159 deal on October 7, 2025 and listed the $139 price in June. Since June, President Trump’s Section 232 drone tariffs took effect on September 3 with consumer aircraft in the 25% tier, and the Neo is back at its pre-tariff low anyway. DroneXL checked the price at 7 a.m. Eastern on October 6.

The empty shelf at DJI’s own store fits a pattern DroneXL first reported in June 2025, when DJI’s site and the large US retailers ran dry across the lineup. The newer DJI Neo 2 is in stock from the same storefront at $259, so the Prime price opens a $120 gap between the two generations.

The Neo Flies Itself From Your Palm and the $139 Kit Has Everything It Needs

Press the mode button, hold the Neo flat on your palm, and it lifts off, flies the selected shot and lands back in your hand. No controller or phone is involved. The $139 kit ships with the aircraft, one battery, propeller guards, spare propellers, a screwdriver and a USB-C cable.

The button cycles through Follow, Dronie, Circle, Rocket, Spotlight and a Custom slot you set up once in the DJI Fly app. Connect a phone over Wi-Fi and the app adds virtual joysticks out to 164 feet (50 meters), plus voice control: say “Hey Fly” and the Neo takes spoken commands in English or Mandarin.

Shawn of Air Photography, who has reviewed the Neo on DroneXL since its September 2024 launch, wrote in his one-year review that it is the drone he still grabs for a hike or a bike ride because there is nothing extra to carry, and that clipping a branch while tracking is a bounce rather than a crash. His controller compatibility guide covers the other end of the range, from the RC-N3 to the RC Motion 3 and the DJI Goggles 3.

Phone control over Wi-Fi is the middle option between the palm button and a dedicated controller. Photo credit: Air Photography

DJI Neo Specs: 135 g, 4K/30, 18 Minutes and 22 GB With No Card Slot

The Neo weighs 135 g and shoots 4K/30 and 12-megapixel stills on a 1/2-inch sensor behind a 117.6-degree lens. It flies 18 minutes per battery, 17 with guards on, and stores footage on 22 GB internal memory, no microSD slot. Wind rating is Level 4, 18 mph.

Stabilization comes from a single-axis tilt gimbal plus RockSteady or HorizonBalancing electronic stabilization, and the video bitrate tops out at 75 Mbps. Top speed is 18 mph (8 m/s) in Sport mode and 36 mph (16 m/s) in Manual mode with a controller. A battery charges in about 50 minutes over USB-C. The full sheet is on DJI’s spec page.

Shawn’s one-year verdict names the trade-offs: the 4K does not match a DJI Mini 4 Pro, the 22 GB fills with no card to swap, and gusts push the guarded airframe around when you fly high. The Neo 2 answers two of those with obstacle sensing and 49 GB, and the Air Photography side-by-side upgrade comparison says who needs them. A DJI Neo 3 surfaced in a leaked spec sheet on October 3 at 193 g, and the FCC’s Covered List decision of December 22 blocks authorization of new DJI models in the US. The original Neo launched in September 2024, before that date.

At 135 g the Neo Skips FAA Registration, Not the FAA’s Rules

The Federal Aviation Administration requires registration for drones of 250 g (0.55 lb) or more, so a recreational Neo pilot files no paperwork and needs no Remote ID broadcast. The free TRUST test is mandatory for every recreational flyer, and commercial Neo work needs Part 107 and a registered aircraft.

The FAA’s recreational flyer rules spell out the rest: stay at or below 400 feet (122 meters), keep the drone in sight, and carry proof of the TRUST test when you fly.

DroneXL’s Take

Buy the $139 base kit and skip the combos. The Neo earns its place by removing the controller, so paying $242 to put one back makes little sense, and if sticks are what you want, the DJI Mini 4K sits at $299 with a three-axis gimbal and 31 minutes per battery. The Neo has two knocks against it: DroneXL flagged the high-pitched propeller noise before it even launched, and 22 GB with no card slot means offloading before a long day is done. Neither changes my read, because at $139 this is the cheapest DJI camera drone that works as advertised, and the cheapest one that flies with no controller in your hands. Take the free TRUST test before the first flight and keep the Neo low, where Shawn found the wind leaves it alone.

Sources: Amazon, DJI

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Certifies First Benelux Dealer for Europe-Only Mapping Training

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:02:00 GMT

DJI Enterprise has a certified training dealer in the Benelux, and Drone Parts Center in Nivelles, Belgium, says it is the first. The dealer’s operations manager, Stéphane Tilmant, passed DJI’s GEO Trainer Certification in August, and its Matrice 4E photogrammetry and Zenmuse L3 LiDAR courses are now open to professionals across the Benelux, the dealer said in a press release on October 5.

The courses belong to DJI’s Advanced GEO Products Training Services, a program DJI introduced this year for its mapping drones and sensors. Trainees who pass get an official DJI certificate. DJI’s own page for the program says it is currently available only in Europe.

DJI Lets Only Examined Dealers Teach the Same Curriculum Across Europe

The program puts one DJI-written curriculum per product in front of every trainee in Europe, taught by qualified dealers rather than DJI staff. Drone Parts Center says qualifying takes an online screening exam, a qualification review, compliance training with an exam, and a trial lecture assessed by DJI.

DJI presented the program in a September 3 webinar led by Brad Li, its sales leader for geospatial products. The two courses available so far cover the Matrice 4E and the Zenmuse L3, with more to come. DJI’s pitch is standardization: flying a mapping drone takes hours to learn, but turning the flight into a centimeter-accurate plan, a classified point cloud or a stockpile volume is a workflow most operators have pieced together from tutorials.

Each Course Mixes Online Study With One to Two Days in the Field

Trainees start with self-study on DJI’s online portal, in English. Then come one to two days in person with Tilmant, in Nivelles or on site, in French or English, booked by one organization at a time. An assessment closes the course. The certificate brings five years of updated material.

The Matrice 4E course runs through RTK photogrammetry, Smart 3D Capture, corridor and oblique missions, D-RTK 3 base station setup, modeling in DJI Terra and editing in DJI Modify. The L3 course covers LiDAR acquisition design, RTK and PPK operations and point cloud classification on the Zenmuse L3 and its 950-meter detection range, flown on the Matrice 400 that sits on the table in the dealer’s photo. Drone Parts Center says a French version of the online portal is due in January 2027.

No surveying background is required, the course is not tied to a purchase, and it does not replace a remote pilot license. Founder Didier Van Nes said the dealer sells increasingly capable drones and sees “too many customers using only part of them because nobody taught them the method.” Courses are on request and quoted individually, with no list price published.

DroneXL’s Take

Good move, and overdue. The gap between what a Matrice 4E can do and what most buyers get out of it is real: the surveyor who mapped 29 native species across 130 hectares with one did it on free software, and he is the exception. Dealers have filled that gap with ad hoc demos for years. A DJI-written curriculum with an exam at the end is the first time the manufacturer has put its name on the teaching. DJI is building that network in Europe while the FCC has proposed ending imports and sales of already-approved drones carrying LiDAR or thermal sensors, which covers a Zenmuse L3 on a Matrice 400. DJI gives no reason for the Europe-only label, and a pilot in the region where its Enterprise dealer network is densest is the plain reading. I suspect the FCC docket is the other half of it: there is no point certifying trainers for hardware a US dealer may soon be barred from selling. European operators get the manufacturer’s know-how with the hardware. American ones are fighting to keep the hardware.

Source: Drone Parts Center press release, DJI Enterprise.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Lakeland's $22M Axon Deal Adds Drones, Taps Immigration Grant

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 01:38:00 GMT

Lakeland, Florida is getting police drones that launch before an officer arrives. On October 5 the city commission voted 7-0 for a ten-year, $21,983,139.93 Master Services and Purchasing Agreement with Axon Enterprise that replaces the police department’s 2021 contract and adds Axon Air, the company’s Drone as First Responder package, to a bundle of body cameras, TASER 10 devices, in-car video and Axon’s AI Era Plan software.

The Lakeland Police Department has flown patrol-led drones, carried in cruisers, since it restarted its program in 2025, after Florida’s ban on Chinese-made aircraft grounded its fleet from 2022 until February 2025. The new agreement is more than double the roughly $9.4 million deal the city signed with Axon in December 2021, when Assistant Chief Hans Lehman said Lakeland “isn’t getting any of Axon’s drone technology, but that could be added later,” LkldNow reported.

The city’s own agenda memo says a $3,972,962.18 grant will be applied toward the first two years, money from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s State Board of Immigration Enforcement, a program that exists to fund cooperation with federal agencies “to enforce federal immigration laws.” Lakeland’s grant application, approved by the board on May 28, names body cameras and in-car video for that money. It does not mention a drone.

Lakeland’s drones move from the cruiser trunk to a dock

Lakeland police fly four patrol-led drones today, LkldNow reported in June. The proposal Lehman presented at the April 23 strategic planning workshop adds three Drone as First Responder aircraft that launch from docks the moment a 911 call comes in, remotely piloted and flying straight to the scene.

Today, two officers per squad check out two drones each at the start of a shift and keep them in the cruisers, Lehman said, per The Ledger. The drone only flies once that officer is on scene and watching it. The DFR aircraft instead give responders “real-time aerial information during emergency calls,” the city attorney’s agenda memo and 70-page agreement packet say, and the system logs pilots, flights and activity “to support operational oversight and FAA requirements.”

Lehman described the DFR mission in April as a drone that “goes straight to the call, assesses, and then returns to base,” with the aircraft stationed on rooftops across the city. His workshop slide listed the intended calls: crashes and fires, missing persons by thermal search, trespass in closed parks, blocked driveways and abandoned vehicles, and damage assessment after a hurricane. The agenda memo does not restate the count. The April proposal listed three docked drones. A Ledger photo caption in its Apple News edition says two, stationed around the city. The Axon quote that itemizes the deal, Q-705064-45999JG, is referenced in the agreement but was not attached to the agenda packet.

The memo does not name the aircraft. Axon’s own Axon Air product page lists two Skydio aircraft, the Skydio X10 and the indoor R10, and one launch station, the Dock for X10. The X10 is the docked DFR aircraft, and it is the one in the Axon packages Orlando and Boynton Beach took up this year.

Skydio's Dock for X10, the launch station Axon Air sells for Drone as First Responder flights. Photo credit: Skydio

Lakeland does not appear among the Florida agencies on the FAA’s Drone as First Responder waiver list that DroneXL published in August, which covers approvals through February 2026. Orlando, Boynton Beach and Clearwater are on it. The agenda packet does not say whether the department has applied for the beyond-visual-line-of-sight waiver, under Part 107.31 or a Part 91 certificate of authorization, that docked programs like Orlando’s and Clearwater’s hold.

Florida’s Chinese drone ban put Lakeland’s drones on the Axon-Skydio path

Lakeland’s drone program sat grounded from 2022 until February 2025. Its five aircraft were Chinese-made, and Florida law barred agencies from flying them. The restart cost $162,095 for four Skydio drones through Axon on a three-year deal and one BRINC aircraft, with FDLE’s Drone Replacement Grant offering $125,000 toward it.

The February 2025 staff memo spelled out why the department had one choice: “Skydio Drones is the sole drone provider that is compliant with Florida statutes that is aligned with Axon and will integrate with our current Axon platform and evidence.com.” That memo also said the restart would let the department “explore future usage” of Drones as First Response technology.

By October 2026 the city’s purchasing division had approved Axon as the sole-source provider for everything in the new agreement, cameras to drones. DroneXL reported in November that the ban grounded roughly $200 million worth of drones, by state Senator Tom Wright’s estimate, and that the University of South Florida security analysis of the confiscated drones, promised for 2024, was never published. Lakeland’s $162,095 restart and its $22 million follow-on are what replacing that capability looks like in one city.

The immigration grant buys Lakeland’s cameras and AI tools, not its drones

Lakeland’s $3,972,962.18 comes from Florida’s $250 million Local Law Enforcement Immigration Grant Program under Section 908.1033 of the Florida Statutes. The board approved the award, IG115, on May 28. Every dollar sits under one category: “equipment, hardware, and software essential to 287(g) task force activities and/or enforcing immigration laws.”

The application, published in the State Board of Immigration Enforcement’s June 9 board packet, asks for “approximately 277 body-worn camera systems, 165 Fleet 3 in-car video systems and associated peripherals for two (2)-years.” The equipment list runs to Tasers, “AI reporting and real-time translation tools,” Fusus integration, license plate recognition and AI-assisted 911 dispatch. The word drone does not appear in it. The same award carries a further $439,000 for Peregrine data analytics software, which does not appear in the Axon agreement packet.

The justification the department filed says the equipment “will support immigration enforcement operations conducted in coordination with federal partners, including activities under 287(g) and related enforcement efforts,” and that joint operations “frequently involve collaboration with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, federal partners, and state and municipal agencies.”

Contract total

$21,983,139.93 over ten years, sole source, replaces the 2021 agreement. Average of about $2.2 million a year against $938,000 a year under the 2021 deal.

What it buys

Replacement body-worn cameras (about 277) and 165 Fleet 3 in-car video systems, per the grant application, TASER 7 to TASER 10 conversion, VR de-escalation training, the AI Era Plan (report drafting, translation, transcription, case summaries), and Axon Air Drone as First Responder.

Drones

Three docked DFR aircraft in the April proposal; a Ledger caption in its Apple News edition says two. Model not named in the packet; Axon Air's outdoor aircraft is the Skydio X10 with Dock for X10. The drone line price is in Axon quote Q-705064-45999JG, which the city did not attach.

Earlier drone spend

February 2025: four Skydio drones through Axon on a three-year deal plus one BRINC aircraft, $162,095 in total, with FDLE's Drone Replacement Grant offering $25,000 per drone, $125,000 in all, per the February 2025 memo.

Year one

$1,200,077.01 after credits from the old contract. $1,075,530 was already in the FY2027 budget; the $124,547.01 gap comes out of police overtime.

Immigration grant

$3,972,962.18 from FDLE's State Board of Immigration Enforcement, applied to years one and two. Application names body cameras and in-car video; no drones.

DHS stipend

$855,000, already received, for eligible costs over the term.

DOJ grant

$7,586,213.37 applied for, years three through five. Decision expected this fall.

City's share

About $9.57 million if the DOJ grant lands, about $17.16 million if it does not. The memo lets the city terminate if future years are not funded.

The approved price is about $683,000 above the $21.3 million proposal LkldNow reported in June, and officials did not explain the increase at the meeting, LkldNow reported. Mayor Sara Roberts McCarley praised the grant hunt: “These grant pursuits are really, really important.”

Lakeland’s chief sold the AI report writer hardest

Chief Sam Taylor told commissioners at the October 2 agenda study that report writing eats more officer time than anything else after a call. Axon’s AI Era Plan drafts the report from body-camera audio, separating voices, and the department estimates it will cut writing time by 30% to 50%.

“It saves time drafting up to 70% of the report,” Taylor said, per The Ledger. Officers still have to review every report before submitting it. The same plan adds translation for more than 50 languages, evidence transcription and search, case summaries and investigative aids. Lehman had earlier called the package a “game changer for productivity, efficiency, safety and community trust,” The Ledger noted.

DroneXL’s Take

I’m for drones that get overhead in the first two minutes of a call, and Lakeland’s own numbers make the case: the aircraft that sits in a cruiser trunk is useless until the officer is already there. But look at how this city got here. Five working drones were grounded by a state law whose promised security analysis was never published. The replacement had to be Skydio, the city’s own memo says, because Skydio was the only aircraft both legal in Florida and integrated with the Axon platform Lakeland already paid for. Now the drones arrive inside a ten-year, sole-source, $22 million bundle, delivered with the body cameras. I read it as Florida’s ban doing what protectionism does: it removed the competition, and Axon is the vendor left standing.

Somebody on the commission should have asked where the grant money comes from. Lakeland took $3.97 million from a program that exists to fund immigration enforcement, and in its application it told the state that the new body cameras, the AI report writer and the translation tools would support 287(g) operations with federal partners. When the chief pitched those same tools to the commission, they were about cutting paperwork and talking to residents in 50 languages. The drones aren’t in the application, so the money doesn’t touch them. The agenda memo names the State Board of Immigration as the source in one clause and says nothing about what that program is for, LkldNow calls it an FDLE grant, and The Ledger says “several grants.” In everything I read on this deal, nobody has said the word immigration to Lakeland’s residents, and somebody should.

Sources: The Ledger, LkldNow, City of Lakeland agenda memo and Axon agreement (October 5, 2026), City of Lakeland staff memo (February 3, 2025), Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement June 9, 2026 board packet, FDLE, Axon.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Quadmovr Flies A 160 Gram 5-Inch Drone By Eye, No Camera, No GPS

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 23:05:00 GMT

Quadmovr posted a new video on Sunday of a 5-inch quadcopter that weighs 160 grams (5.6 ounces) with its battery on, flown line of sight in acro mode. The parts list carries no camera. He watches the aircraft itself, and the entire clip is two minutes and 23 seconds of flips and low passes over a field.

It comes two weeks after the impeller video DroneXL covered on September 20, which stood at 1,679,127 views on Monday. The new one had 19,615 views and 532 likes a day after posting. Quadmovr lists the dry weight at 117 grams (4.1 ounces), on motors whose maker says they belong on a quad weighing 250 to 350 grams.

The Parts List Puts 599 Grams Of Thrust On Each Corner

The build runs four ITS-1604.5 KV3650 motors, co-developed by T-Hobby and IT’S FPV, on quadmovr’s own movr200cp1 frame. T-Hobby’s spec sheet rates each at 599 grams of maximum thrust on 4S and names an ideal quad weight of 250 to 350 grams. Quadmovr flies them on 3S.

The motors weigh 13.8 grams each with their leads, so 55 grams of the 117 gram dry weight is motor. A 3 mm titanium shaft runs straight through each one and the propeller is held by an M3 nut. The props are HQProp J33 Juicy Props, a 4.9 by 3.3 inch polycarbonate tri-blade that weighs under 4 grams. The flight controller is a T-Hobby F7 AIO with a 35 amp four-in-one ESC on the same board.

One of the four ITS-1604.5 KV3650 motors, with the prop nut on top and an HQProp J33 tri-blade. Photo credit: quadmovr

Quadmovr’s description adds the context he puts under every build: these drones are self-built and cannot be bought, and learning to fly them this way takes years. He flies manually in acro mode, “which means no gps, no self stabilization, etc.” The parts list names no camera and no video transmitter, so nothing on board would let anyone fly it from a headset.

At 160 Grams The Drone Sits Under The US And EU Weight Lines

A 160 gram takeoff weight leaves 90 grams of margin under the 250 gram line that decides whether a recreational drone has to be registered with the FAA and broadcast Remote ID in the United States. Europe draws its lightest drone class at the same 250 gram figure.

That line has been the fight of the past year for consumer drones, and DJI’s trouble staying under it with the Mini 5 Pro filled a month of DroneXL coverage. Scratch builders treat the same number differently. Born4Flight in the Czech Republic put a sub-250 gram drone through 351 mph in May. Quadmovr himself has a history of chasing the other end of the spectrum: his SUB400speed approached 200 mph in 2022. This build spends its margin on nothing. The 117 gram dry aircraft lifts a battery of roughly 43 grams, by subtraction, and that is the whole machine.

The 160 gram quad in flight over the field where quadmovr shot the video. Photo credit: quadmovr

DroneXL’s Take

The impeller video pulled 1.6 million people in because it looked like a new idea. This one will not do those numbers, and I think it is the better video. Flying a 5-inch quad by eye in acro, with no horizon to lean on and no camera to show which way is forward, is the hardest discipline in this hobby. The motor spec sheet tells the story: T-Hobby designed these for a 250 to 350 gram 3.5-inch freestyle quad, and quadmovr hung them on an aircraft well under half that weight, then ran a cell below rating to keep it flyable. Consumer drones are not built with that power-to-weight ratio. My read is that the 160 gram number is the point of the video, not the flying: a full 5-inch acro quad under the US and EU registration lines, built from parts anyone can order, by a person who tells you in the description that the parts are the easy half.

Sources: quadmovr on YouTube, T-Hobby ITS-1604.5 product page

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FBI Drone School to Double Capacity After 700 World Cup Seizures

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 22:02:00 GMT

The FBI’s counter-drone school at Redstone Arsenal will more than double its capacity in its second year, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said after touring the Huntsville, Alabama, facility on Thursday, October 1. Woodward, the Justice Department’s third-ranking official, pointed to the more than 700 drones federal and local teams pulled out of the sky at this summer’s FIFA World Cup as the reason the training matters, and said every host city completed the course.

The school is the National Counter-UAS Training Center, created by executive order in June 2025 and graduating its first class before the year was out. Since July 1 it has also been the only place a state or local officer can earn the right to take a drone down under the Safer Skies Act. When that rule published, 61 officers in the whole country held the certificate. The school’s first class, in late October 2025, held 12.

The World Cup Ran on a School That Opened With a Dozen Seats

The FBI announced the center to every U.S. law enforcement agency in a September 24, 2025 memo scheduling a three-week Counter-UAS System Operator course for late October. The inaugural class was 12 officers from New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and California. The 2026 courses would prioritize World Cup host areas.

Congressman Dale Strong cut the ribbon on November 7, 2025, with the first graduates standing beside him, as DroneXL reported in December. The memo had been candid about what the certificate was worth at that point: nothing, legally, until Congress extended counter-drone authority to state and local agencies, which it did in the Safer Skies Act signed on December 18 inside the defense bill. Bloomberg reported in May that the FBI would field roughly 60 of those trained officers across the 11 U.S. host cities.

The Department of Transportation’s post-tournament account put seizures above 700 across all 11 cities under nearly 250 temporary flight restrictions, and FedScoop reported nearly 1,700 detections and more than 400 mitigation actions. Woodward told 256 Today what the haul did not contain: none of the 700 was loaded with ordnance.

“We love drones,” he told WZDX, adding that the bureau is not trying to infringe on anyone’s right to fly in a safe place, only to keep drones out of stadium events.

Doubling Still Leaves the Line Longer Than the School

Woodward did not say what the current capacity is, so the doubling has no public baseline. The nearest figures are the 61 mitigation-certified officers across about 46 agencies counted when the rule published on July 6, and the FBI’s plan to graduate 250 more next fiscal year.

Demand outran the building before the tournament ended. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told House appropriators on June 26 that the school was full mid-World Cup and that he wanted to route DHS money into it, as DroneXL reported. DroneResponders director Charles Werner told FedScoop in early August what that pace buys: with about 340 metropolitan cities in the country, 250 graduates would not cover them in the first year. Counting those graduates, the FBI will have trained about 1,000 people in three years.

The interim final rule that took effect July 1 locks that bottleneck in by design. Detection and warning, the lower tier, needs no in-person training. Disrupting, seizing or taking control of a drone requires resident training at the Redstone school and nowhere else. The government expects about 1,500 agencies to hold the detection tier within two years, and every one that wants the second tier passes through the same door. Woodward also toured a new FBI cyber facility on the arsenal and said agents he met that day commute between Huntsville and Washington, a presence he expects to grow.

Woodward Credits Trump and Says the Last Administration Did Nothing

Woodward said drone threats existed under the previous administration and nothing was done. President Trump, he said, directed his staff to get smart on counter-drone technology on taking office. He said the executive order came well before Congress authorized the school: June 6, 2025, against December 18.

The record on the earlier administration is more specific than nothing. On April 25, 2022, the Biden White House published a Domestic Counter-UAS National Action Plan that asked Congress for detection authority for state and local police, a federally sponsored pilot program letting selected local agencies mitigate drones, and, as its fourth recommendation, a National Counter-UAS Training Center. Congress passed none of it during that administration. DroneXL covered the bipartisan bill that tried in June 2024. The House reported it out of committee that September and never voted on it.

The executive order delivered a center the 2022 plan had described, and the Safer Skies Act supplied the authority the same plan had requested.

DroneXL’s Take

The 700 figure should worry pilots, not reassure them, because by Woodward’s own account none of those aircraft carried anything dangerous. Seven hundred operators flew into published no-drone zones, and I suspect most of them were hobbyists and videographers who never checked the TFR. Every one handed the people who want to regulate us a data point. Don’t be that guy. The stadium TFR is the one rule with no grey area left in it.

The school itself I am for, and I am for it staying the only gate. Fifteen hundred agencies are lining up for detection powers, and the ones that want to seize or commandeer an aircraft face a single federal certifying body with a three-week course. That course is the thing standing between the Safer Skies Act and a sheriff’s deputy with a jammer and a hunch. Doubling capacity is the right move. The pressure Werner described, 340 cities and a one-year pace that covers none of them, is exactly the pressure that produces a shorter course or a second, looser certifier, and that is the outcome I’d watch for in the fiscal 2027 numbers. The executive order built in five months what the previous White House and two Congresses had only written down. The next test is whether the standard survives the waiting list.

Source: WZDX / Rocket City Now, 256 Today, FBI NCUTC memo, FAA, FedScoop

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Warwick Police Flock Drone Waits On T.F. Green's Zero-Foot FAA Grids

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 21:58:00 GMT

Warwick, Rhode Island has slipped past the launch window its police chief set in March, and the reason sits at the end of the runway. Col. Michael G. Lima told the Providence Journal that the city’s Drone as First Responder program is waiting on Federal Aviation Administration airspace approvals that could take another 30 to 60 days. In March he had hoped to be flying within about two months.

The aircraft is a Flock Safety Alpha, bought under a three-year, $150,000 contract the City Council approved in March. It will live in a dock on the police headquarters roof and fly itself to 911 calls. Warwick is also home to Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport, the busiest in the state, and the FAA’s facility map for the airspace around it reads zero feet in grid after grid.

In March, WPRI reported the drone had received special permission to operate near T.F. Green, and Lima said then that the FAA was sure it would not interfere with planes around the runway. Seven months later, the airspace submissions are still on an FAA desk.

FAA facility maps put zero-foot grids over much of Warwick

The FAA’s UAS Facility Maps divide controlled airspace into grid squares, each carrying the maximum altitude the agency approves without further review. Around T.F. Green, several squares read zero feet. Any flight there needs further review and coordination inside the FAA, as does any request above a grid’s number.

Lima walked the Providence Journal through the map. Much of Rhode Island carries no grids at all. Warwick and North Kingstown, home to Quonset Point Air National Guard Base, are the exceptions. The zero squares sit right at Green and in the neighborhoods next to it.

His workaround is the camera. The Alpha can hover inside approved airspace and zoom into a scene that sits in a square it cannot enter. “I mean, it’s not perfect,” Lima said. “But you can still see pretty clearly that area.” The city has filed its requests and is waiting. Lima hopes to find common ground with the agency on where the drone can be.

Warwick already holds its BVLOS waiver, the easier half

Warwick has received an FAA waiver from the visual line of sight requirement, the rule that makes most operators keep the drone in view. Lima called it the first waiver the department applied for and the first it received. The airspace approvals around the airport are the half still pending.

That is the usual order of difficulty reversed. BVLOS waivers were the choke point for Drone as First Responder programs for years, and departments like St. Cloud, Minnesota treated getting one as the milestone. Warwick cleared that one first. An airport inside the response radius is the harder problem.

While the drone waits, structural engineers are assessing a section of roof at police headquarters for the dock. After that, Lima said, the city electrician needs a couple of days to run power and Ethernet to the roof, and then the program rolls.

Providence got there first. Its program launched in early June on Axon hardware, with three docked drones on the roof of the Public Safety Complex feeding video to the Real-Time Crime Center below, according to a WPRI Target 12 survey that found 28 of Rhode Island’s 39 law enforcement agencies now own drones. Providence has already used the drones to follow a road-rage stabbing suspect from the air after a license plate camera flagged the car. Its roof sits about six miles (10 kilometers) north of T.F. Green, outside the airport’s surface ring, where the FAA map mostly reads 400 feet (122 meters).

Flock’s Alpha arrives with its plate reader switched off

Warwick’s ordinance bans license plate reading cameras that are not mounted in a fixed location. Flock built the Alpha to read a plate from 2,000 feet (610 meters) away, and Lima acknowledged the drone has that feature. He said he asked Flock to turn it off.

The plate camera is the feature Flock markets hardest. The company’s spring campaign for the Alpha put the 2,000-foot plate read at the center of the pitch, because it ties the drone into the ground-based license plate reader network Flock already sells across Rhode Island, Warwick’s 10 fixed cameras included. Warwick is paying for the camera and asking Flock to switch off the function that distinguishes it.

The Alpha's camera head, which Flock says can read a license plate from 2,000 feet. Warwick asked for that function to be disabled. Photo credit: Flock Safety

Lima has said the drone will respond to calls only and will not patrol, a reactionary tool rather than a roving one. Under the contract terms the council approved, a supervisor signs off on every launch and footage is deleted after 30 days unless it is held for an investigation. The department’s manually flown drones stay in service for investigations. Flight paths and the reason for each launch will appear on the department’s existing Flock transparency portal, and the Rhode Island ACLU, which warned of surveillance creep of the kind that sank Bridgeport’s Flock program five days after launch, told WPRI in March that the portal was a good step.

DroneXL’s Take

Warwick is the useful case because the airport is the only thing left in the way. A chief who talked about FAA clearance in March is talking about 30 to 60 days in October, and the gap between those two statements is the part every other city should study.

Vendors sell DFR as a turnkey product, and for most suburbs it is. Flock’s Alpha launch announcement talks about speed, endurance and plate reads and says nothing about airports. A Class C airport inside the response radius turns the FAA paperwork from a formality into the critical path. Every city with a commercial runway should read Warwick’s timeline before it signs: budget the airspace coordination as its own project, with its own months, and ask the vendor which grids it has actually cleared for a customer before.

I also think Lima’s camera workaround is the honest answer and a weak one. Hovering outside a zero grid and zooming in gets you a picture. It does not get the drone over the call, and the whole pitch of DFR is being over the call before the cruiser is. Watch whether the FAA’s response, when it comes, gives Warwick altitude in those zero squares or leaves the drone looking in from the edge. The second outcome is a $150,000 camera on a pole with a good zoom.

Sources: Providence Journal, WPRI, Warwick Beacon, Flock Safety

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Ramy RC Crashes Five Natilus Horizon Models Before One Finally Lands

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:13:00 GMT

YouTube builder Ramy RC has crashed five 6-foot (1.8-meter) 3D-printed models of the Natilus Horizon since June and landed one, and the 24-foot (7.3-meter) prototype he built for the San Diego aircraft startup still has not flown. He explained why in a video published September 25, which passed 527,000 views in ten days.

The big Horizon is parked in his US workshop. Ramy says the runway he has access to leaves about 50 feet (15 meters) of margin for rotation, and the computer simulation that called the runway long enough never accounted for the thrust angle of the high-mounted electric ducted fans, which push the nose down on the ground. Both reasons, he says, put the maiden flight on hold until smaller models could show how the airframe behaves.

Ramy RC's September 25 video on the Natilus Horizon test models. Video credit: Ramy RC

Three 3D-Printed Models Crashed Within Two Days at a Dutch Airstrip

Ramy built the first three 6-foot models with Joel Vlashof, a Dutch engineer known for 3D-printed VTOL Harrier and F-35 models, after six weeks of reworking the design for printing. All three crashed within two days at Vlashof’s airfield in the Netherlands, two on takeoff and one after lifting off.

Each model tested a different fix for the nose-down thrust problem. The first copied the big prototype’s motor placement and added a thrust-vectoring fin tilted about 5 degrees, adjustable to 10 degrees from the transmitter in flight. The second moved the fans to the tail, lower on the fuselage, at a fixed 5 degrees down. The third kept the original position, lowered, with vectoring. Ramy printed one in his own shop and Vlashof two on his Bambu Lab H2D printers, carbon-fiber filament for the wings and ASA Aero for the rest, over carbon-rod spars.

The crashes came before the fixes could be compared. Ramy pulled full up on the first model to save a bad takeoff and it over-rotated and flipped. The second could not hold the narrow strip, partly because its wheels had no bearings, and ran onto the grass twice. On its third attempt it lifted off and crashed because a 5 percent static margin, the distance between the center of gravity and the wing’s aerodynamic center, made the elevons far too sensitive. The third model failed the next day, even from grass. Ramy’s conclusion was a much longer runway and a center of gravity further forward.

A Drop From a Homemade Carrier Plane Proved the Horizon Flies

Vlashof printed 3-foot (0.9-meter) Horizons. Ramy built a foam carrier plane with a release hook to drop them at speed. The first drop flew stable on two servos and one small fan, with the center of gravity moved forward and the fan tilted 4 degrees.

The landing failed. Back at 6 feet, Ramy added more power, better wheels and CNC-machined aluminum parts, and took a model to an airport runway. It rotated but was so nose-heavy that full elevator could not make it climb. It turned, hit a tree and is still up there, minus the batteries and heavier parts that fell out.

The Last Model Landed on the Third Day of JetPower

Ramy brought the final two models to JetPower, the jet model show at Breitscheid airfield in Germany, for its long runway, where the first lost power when tape went into its single 12S ducted fan. The last model took off the next day, flew a circuit and landed.

The fan exploded when the tape went in. JetPower ran September 4 to 6 this year, and the landing came on its third day. Ramy says in the video that the same adjustments now go onto the full-scale Horizon, which he plans to fly from a large airport or a desert with room to rotate and land. He gives no date. The video carries no weights, speeds or flight data, and Ramy calls the work prototyping that is also a hobby for him and Vlashof.

The 24-foot prototype, a carbon-fiber skin over a wood and foam skeleton built with Natilus, dates from a two-part series Ramy published on December 12, 2025 and January 30, 2026. Natilus pitches the Horizon as a 200-seat competitor to the Boeing 737 MAX and Airbus A321neo. In February it raised $28 million, redesigned the jet as the dual-deck Horizon Evo for service in the early 2030s, and said its Kona cargo aircraft, the American comparison to China’s HH-200 cargo drone, would fly full-scale within 24 months.

DroneXL’s Take

The most useful thing anyone has published about the Natilus Horizon this year is this video, and Natilus didn’t make it. Renders and order books tell you nothing about a blended wing’s behavior at rotation. A simulation that ignores thrust angle, pointing a 24-foot airframe at a 50-foot margin, is the lesson every DIY fixed-wing builder learns at the field, usually by rebuilding, and Ramy learned it on 6-foot prints instead. A 3D-printed model says nothing about certifying a 200-seat jet, any more than Tom Stanton’s wind-up plane did. But center of gravity and thrust line are the same physics at every scale, and those are the two things that would have destroyed the big one. Natilus plans to fly passengers in the early 2030s. The first Horizon that actually landed was 6 feet across, and my read is that it earned more trust than anything in the press releases.

Source: Ramy RC, Natilus

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Germany Builds 600-Soldier Drone Regiment as US Army Scraps Its Own

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:50:00 GMT

Germany’s army will stand up its first drone regiment in 2027: up to 600 soldiers flying reconnaissance and strike drones and intercepting enemy ones, with a reach Defense Minister Boris Pistorius puts at 500 kilometers (311 miles). He announced it October 1 at the Bergen training area in Lower Saxony, standing next to the prototypes the army is testing there.

The regiment goes to the 10th Panzer Division, headquartered in Veitshöchheim in Bavaria. About 100 miles (160 kilometers) east, at Grafenwoehr, the US Army activated a drone battalion of roughly 600 paratroopers in January to learn the same lessons from Ukraine. That battalion lost its drone mission in September and went back to airborne infantry work.

Pistorius Gives the Regiment Reconnaissance, Strike, Ground Robots and Jammers

The regiment is an independent formation for unmanned systems, Pistorius said at a press conference after touring the tests. It bundles aerial reconnaissance and strike drones, unmanned ground vehicles and the interception of enemy drones, from close range out to long range. It also gets its own electronic warfare company.

The regiment starts in 2027 with an initial capability and roughly 300 soldiers, growing to a target strength of about 600, according to Augen geradeaus, the German defense blog that recorded the briefing. The Bundeswehr’s own account names no garrison and no budget. If the model works, Pistorius said, the other divisions get one too.

Unmanned systems under test at the Experimentalserie Land on the Bergen training area, October 2026. Photo credit: Bundeswehr/Janin Garzke

The regiment is not the army’s whole drone plan. Army chief Lt. Gen. Christian Freuding said three branches, among them the light infantry and the tank force, start building unmanned systems into their own units around the turn of the year, and the regiment adds a second track on top. “I believe this will let us gain a lot more speed in unmanned combat,” he said.

The setting was the Experimentalserie Land, a 10-day field trial where troops, not engineers, put more than 40 prototypes through tactical scenarios on Bergen’s range 20. Pistorius watched a tracked ground robot carrying a remote weapon station, and he tied the whole exercise to Ukraine: innovation cycles decide success or failure on that battlefield, he said, and the strategic partnership with Kyiv lets Germany test and adopt what Ukrainian troops learn.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius inspects an armed unmanned ground vehicle at Bergen on October 1, 2026. Photo credit: Bundeswehr/Janin Garzke

The Strike Drones Arrive in 2027, the Same Year as the Regiment

The regiment’s strike hardware is already on order. In February, the Bundestag’s budget committee approved about 269 million euros each for Helsing and Stark Defence to deliver loitering munitions, a deal DroneXL covered when lawmakers capped it at 1 billion euros per company, with the first rounds shipping in 2027.

Those first deliveries go to the 45th Armored Brigade in Lithuania, Germany’s forward-deployed NATO brigade. That brigade belongs to the 10th Panzer Division, the same division that now gets the drone regiment, which puts the army’s loitering munitions and the unit built to fly them under one headquarters.

The record behind that order is mixed. Stark’s Virtus failed all four of its strike attempts in a Bundeswehr test last October, and the government awarded the contract anyway a few days later. A regiment with 300 soldiers is a way to find out, in German hands and on German ranges, whether the rounds now work.

The US Army Ended a Same-Size Drone Unit 100 Miles Away

The 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade was the US Army’s only drone assault battalion, built to turn Ukraine’s drone war into doctrine. Acting Army Chief Gen. Christopher LaNeve sent it back to airborne infantry duty once Saber Junction 26 ended. That was September 13.

DroneXL reported the phase-out in August. Three senators and a House member wrote to Army leaders on September 1 that eliminating the battalion hurts the Army’s ability to learn from Ukrainian soldiers. The battalion owes the Army a findings report, and no successor unit has been announced.

The Army in Europe keeps training with drones. Saber Junction put 1,900 autonomous systems on the field at Hohenfels, and Brig. Gen. Terry Tillis, who commands the 7th Army Training Command, told reporters on September 17 that his command rewrites its drone training doctrine every 60 days, Stars and Stripes reported. German and American units in Germany have trained Ukrainian troops since 2022, and Ukrainian drone operators regularly assess both armies’ platforms and tactics.

DroneXL’s Take

Germany just did the thing the US Army undid: it gave drones a home with a commander and a headcount of its own. Ukraine built a separate Unmanned Systems Forces branch, Russia answered with dedicated drone formations like Rubikon, and the lesson both armies learned under fire is that drone skill lives in units that do nothing else. A platoon of quadcopters inside an infantry company gets borrowed for guard duty. A regiment with its own jammers and its own budget fights for its mission.

Freuding is also doing what the US Army says it wants, which is drones inside every combat unit. The difference is that Germany runs both tracks and the US Army kept one. On the evidence of the last six months, the Bundeswehr is the army that studied Hohenfels, where Ukrainian operators beat a US brigade this spring and the opposing force threw 1,900 drones at the 173rd, and acted on it.

I’d hold the applause until the end of 2027. German drone procurement has a habit of announcing before it delivers, and this regiment currently has no garrison, and its 500-kilometer requirement is one neither ordered munition meets on paper (Helsing and Stark both market theirs at about 100 kilometers). The number to check next December is 300 trained soldiers. The number to check in Washington is whether the 173rd’s Saber Junction findings produced a single new drone unit, or a binder.

Sources: Bundeswehr, Stars and Stripes, ZDF, Augen geradeaus.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FAA Puts $12 Million Into Drone Test Sites as Part 108 Sits Unsigned

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:29:00 GMT

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday it has awarded $12 million to 19 drone research and testing projects, each paired with one of the agency’s nine designated UAS test sites. The money comes through the UAS Broad Agency Announcement program, which pays companies to demonstrate detect-and-avoid, command-and-control, traffic management and identification technology under real-world conditions so the FAA can use the data in rulemaking.

Fourteen organizations share the 19 awards. ANRA Technologies took four, SPS Aerial Remote Sensing three, and General Atomics, Skydweller and DroneUp one each. The FAA framed the awards as advancing the Unleashing American Drone Dominance executive order of June 2025.

The $12 million is not new money: Congress ordered it in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, at $6 million a year starting in fiscal 2025. And the rule the test-site data is supposed to inform, Part 108, has sat at the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) since July 10.

ANRA Technologies Took Four of the 19 Awards

ANRA Technologies won four of the 19 projects in the FAA’s October 5 announcement: air taxi and vertiport connections, a common altitude reference for drones, a link between drone traffic systems and airport air traffic control, and AI tools that identify drone types. No other recipient won more than three.

SPS Aerial Remote Sensing took three awards covering drone visibility testing, a sensor system for drone traffic management and counter-drone operations, and tools to measure sensor performance. General Atomics will work on ground-based systems to help drones avoid other aircraft, the same company whose YFQ-42A collaborative combat aircraft DroneXL covered in September 2025. NAVMAR will test systems to help large drones fly safely, and Skydweller, whose solar aircraft flew 73 hours for the Navy last year, will test onboard systems to help large drones avoid other aircraft.

The rest of the list is single awards: Censys Technologies on satellite communications for long-range flights, OneRadio Corporation on passive radar for detect-and-avoid, DroneUp on a secure way to verify a drone’s identity and its approval to fly, Aerial Vantage on managing reserved drone airspace in cities, Lighthouse Avionics on surveillance for long-range drone routes, ResilienX on software to coordinate drone missions, Devorto Corporation on a long-range cargo drone service, Frequentis USA on a drone technology demonstration, and Oklahoma State University on drone visibility under its Aero Aware project. The FAA’s announcement lists the projects by name but gives no dollar figure per award and no schedule.

Several names are repeat customers. The FAA’s BAA final reports page lists ANRA under Call 003, General Atomics under Call 002, and both Lighthouse Avionics and ResilienX under Call 004. DroneUp is the odd one out: the company lost its Walmart delivery business in January 2025 and now shows up with an identity-verification project rather than a delivery one.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the program gives the agency another way to work directly with industry and the test sites. “The research supported through this program will give us better data,” he said in the release.

Congress Wrote the $12 Million Into Law in 2024

Section 925 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 set aside $6 million a year for matching funds at the UAS test ranges. The appropriation runs from fiscal 2025 through 2028, split evenly among the sites. Two fiscal years of it is exactly the $12 million announced on Monday.

The FAA quotes the section on its own BAA program page.

The FAA posted the solicitation on SAM.gov on September 30, 2025 and issued Call 001-2026 under it days later, with white papers due November 14. The FAA pushed that deadline to December 12 because of the government shutdown, then to January 9, 2026. A fourth amendment in March opened a separate call for the two test sites the FAA added in January, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, with white papers due April 9. The solicitation requires a one-to-one minimum cost share, with the FAA paying no more than half of any project’s cost, and the FAA’s own questions-and-answers document set the agency’s maximum share per test site at $1,333,333 once a ninth site was designated.

So each test site had about $1.3 million of FAA money to place, and the companies put up at least as much again. The executive order’s contribution is a paragraph instructing the FAA to make sure its test ranges are fully used for BVLOS, autonomy and advanced air mobility work. The appropriation that pays for Monday’s awards predates the order by more than a year.

The Rule the Data Is Meant to Inform Is Still Under White House Review

Part 108, the rule that would make routine beyond visual line of sight flight standard instead of waiver by waiver, has sat at OIRA since July 10. The executive order gave it 240 days, a deadline that passed in February.

The FAA’s Robert Reckert told Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas last month that the rule is at the “10-yard line” and that he hopes it publishes before the end of the year, as DroneXL reported when Zipline went looking for a $20 billion valuation on the strength of a rule that does not yet exist. Bedford’s own release says the BAA data will inform how the FAA integrates drones into the airspace. The rule that would do the integrating was written before any of Monday’s 19 projects flew.

DroneXL’s Take

I like this program, and I think the press release oversells it. Companies putting their own money alongside the FAA’s to generate detect-and-avoid and traffic-management data at nine test sites is exactly the kind of merit-based support for American drone technology that DroneXL has argued for, as opposed to tariffs and blacklists that punish operators to protect incumbents. The 1:1 match is the right design. ANRA, General Atomics, Lighthouse and ResilienX coming back for another round says the earlier reports were worth something to the agency.

But $12 million is what Congress ordered in 2024, delivered on schedule, dressed up as a drone dominance initiative. It works out to less than $1.5 million per test site and roughly $630,000 per project before the company match, which buys a demonstration, not a fleet. The administration’s actual lever on drone integration is a signature on Part 108, and that document has been sitting at OIRA for 87 days while the FAA announces research to inform a rule it already wrote. The test-site data will matter for the Part 108 amendments that follow the first rule, and nobody serious expects the final rule to be the last word. My read is that the sequence is backwards anyway. Publish the rule, then fund the data that shows where it needs fixing. Until the rule is out, every one of these 19 projects is testing against a final rule nobody has seen.

Sources: Federal Aviation Administration, FAA UAS Broad Agency Announcement Program, SAM.gov solicitation 697DCK-25-R-00278, The White House.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Wounded Port Shuaiba Soldiers Tell AP the Army Left Them to Find Care

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:48:00 GMT

Nine U.S. soldiers wounded when an Iranian one-way attack drone hit Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, on March 1 told The Associated Press on the record that the military’s medical system left them, in many ways, fighting for treatment on their own. The strike, on the second day of the war with Iran, killed six soldiers and wounded dozens more at a logistics site that, as DroneXL noted in March, an official had told CBS had “basically no drone defeat capability.”

Army Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón was about 7 feet (2.1 meters) from the blast. Shrapnel lodged in his jaw, cut through a salivary gland, severed an artery in his neck and embedded in a vertebra, and a damaged left vertebral artery put him at risk of a stroke. When he reached Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the Army did not admit him. He was sent to the barracks and told to book outpatient appointments.

The Pentagon says the medical care was appropriate. The Army declined to comment on the AP’s reporting, saying it had not yet briefed the families of the dead on the outcome of its investigation into the attack.

Wounded Soldiers Used Google to Find the Nearest Hospital

Soldiers at Port Shuaiba treated each other with tourniquets after the strike, then searched on Google for the nearest hospital and drove the wounded to Kuwait City, about 20 minutes away, the AP reported. Some of the most seriously wounded flew out within two days. Others waited some 10 days.

Lincón spent a week in a Kuwaiti hospital, where surgeons removed shrapnel from his jaw and staff told him the blast had given him a traumatic brain injury, ruptured his eardrum and briefly blinded him. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rodney Bearman, with shrapnel from his face to his legs, was seen briefly at a Kuwaiti facility and then sent to the home of a U.S. government employee, as Iranian missile and drone fire made evacuation flights risky, the AP reported. The soldiers who finally boarded the cargo plane sat on its floor in straps. Bearman could barely eat or lie down.

The six who died at Port Shuaiba were among the 18 Americans killed in a war that, by the Pentagon inspector general’s count, had wounded 417 through June 30.

Landstuhl Turned the Wounded Away Over a Coding Error

When the plane landed in Germany, Bearman said, the soldiers learned they had not been documented as wounded in combat, which he attributed to a coding error. Landstuhl would not hospitalize them. Like Lincón, they were sent to the barracks for outpatient care. Lincón went days without pain medication.

Lincón carried a CD of his Kuwaiti medical records. The emergency room doctor at Landstuhl who read it expressed concern that nobody had yet put him in front of a trauma team.

“Some sacred trust that I thought would never be broken was broken,” said Bearman, who has served more than three decades, including in Afghanistan.

A Pentagon official told the AP that Landstuhl’s mission in battlefield casualty situations is to stabilize patients and transfer them to specialized care at a military hospital in the United States, not to admit them. In a statement, the Pentagon said every wounded service member who arrives at its facilities is evaluated and may be admitted based on severity, according to physicians following “healthcare-industry practices.” The large U.S. military hospitals that once sat closer to Kuwait are gone. The Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad in Iraq was handed to the Iraqi government in 2011.

Brain Injury Diagnoses Waited Until Fort Hood, and Treatment Waited Longer

Medical records shared with the AP by Maj. Stephen Ramsbottom and another officer show neither was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury until they reached Fort Hood, Texas, a week after Germany. Ramsbottom, who had shrapnel removed from his head, said he waited over four months for his MRI results.

The wounded went to Fort Hood for the Army’s demobilization process, the routine step for returning deployed troops, not for treatment.

The second officer, who was blown off his chair by the blast, said he got no care for weeks after that diagnosis and had to find his own specialists, including a neuro-ophthalmologist for the blurred vision his injury left behind. Maj. Billy Key said he did not reach a soldier recovery unit for his head injury, hearing loss and smoke-damaged lungs until mid-April.

“I’ve had to build my own case for everything,” Ramsbottom told the AP.

Dr. James Kelly, chief medical scientist at the Invisible Wounds Foundation and an emeritus professor of neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said it is still not uncommon in war for a TBI diagnosis to take longer than it should, which can cost a soldier the early treatment that produces the best outcome. The AP noted that soldiers may not register the Army’s battlefield concussion evaluation as an evaluation, and Kelly said records too often log a concussion without flagging it as the mild TBI it is. The initial check, he said, should be done by someone with medical training, not another soldier.

Lincón received the Purple Heart and is back on active duty as an instructor at Fort Leavenworth. Shrapnel remains in his back, too close to his spinal cord to remove, and dizziness disrupts his days, he said. The 1995 West Point graduate, born in Texas to Mexican parents, was issued only a one-year passport to replace the one destroyed in the blast and was asked for more proof of his U.S. citizenship. After the AP contacted the State Department, he got a call saying the request was a mistake and a 10-year passport was coming. His claim for Traumatic Injury benefits under the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance program was denied for not meeting the hearing-loss threshold, without addressing his other injuries, he said. The Army’s Human Resources Command did not immediately respond to the AP’s emailed request for an explanation.

“I’m American enough to have fought in three different wars,” Lincón said.

Warren’s July Letter Put the Same Failures to Hegseth

Senator Elizabeth Warren, four other Senate Democrats and eight House Democrats sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a letter on July 29 with 23 questions on medical care, casualty reporting, force protection and investigations after Port Shuaiba, due August 12. A Pentagon official declined to comment to Military Times.

The letter asks why Landstuhl’s medical teams did not know wounded soldiers were on the flight, why the wounded were not logged as medical evacuees or as seriously injured in the casualty database, and when the soldiers sent to Fort Hood finally saw a doctor who could diagnose a TBI. It also asks how the Army classified as “not seriously injured” a soldier described in CBS News reporting as riddled with shrapnel with a concussion, hearing and vision loss and lung damage, and it cites CBS reporting that the 103rd Sustainment Command’s requests for more medical personnel and supplies before the attack were ignored. Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Richard Blumenthal and Mark Kelly had written to Hegseth about force protection at Port Shuaiba on April 26.

The Army completed its investigation of the attack in June, the AP reported separately on Monday, citing an official familiar with it, and has not released the report because, the official said, sensitive material still has to be redacted.

DroneXL’s Take

The Pentagon spent the first week of this war learning what Ukraine already knew about one-way attack drones: a $20,000 to $50,000 airframe gets through a post that, by one official’s account to CBS, had “basically no drone defeat capability.” DroneXL covered the first Shahed wave on March 1 and the scramble for Ukrainian interceptors a week later. This AP report is the other half of the same lesson, and I see nothing in the Pentagon’s statement that suggests the Army has absorbed it.

From four years of covering Shahed strikes on Ukraine, my understanding is that a Shahed hit produces a different casualty profile from a mortar: blast-wave concussions and shrapnel across everyone in a trailer, a whole staff section with mild TBIs that look fine on the ramp and get worse in the barracks. By Bearman’s account, the system logged the soldiers on his flight as not wounded in combat, and that entry, not a trauma assessment, decided whether they got a hospital bed. Lincón, who arrived earlier, was judged by the Army not serious enough to admit despite a severed neck artery.

I’d argue the drawdown logic that left Port Shuaiba with almost no drone defense is the same logic that stripped the region of the hospitals that would have caught these injuries early. Balad closed in 2011. I expect the next Shahed that reaches a U.S. post to send its wounded down the same Landstuhl-to-Fort-Hood pipeline, and nothing in the Pentagon’s statement says the coding will be right next time.

Sources: The Associated Press via The Seattle Times, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s July 29 letter to Secretary Hegseth, Military Times

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Munson Medical Drones Fly Again Oct. 6, Five Months After DroneUp Quit

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:18:00 GMT

Correction, October 6, 2026: An earlier version of this article placed the Crystal Lake Health Center in Frankfort, Michigan, about 30 miles from Munson Medical Center, and the headline and DroneXL’s Take were built on that distance. Traverse Connect says the clinic in the project is at 5191 Rosewood Drive in Traverse City, about 2.2 miles from the hospital. The headline, the lead and the Take have been rewritten. The full note is at the end of the article.

Munson Healthcare starts the second phase of its medical drone delivery trial on Tuesday, October 6, flying between Munson Medical Center and the Crystal Lake Health Center on Rosewood Drive, both in Traverse City, through October 30. Traverse Connect, which runs the state-funded project, announced the dates in a release emailed Monday morning. The flights will simulate deliveries of supplies, laboratory samples and medications between the two Munson facilities.

The two buildings sit about 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) apart by air, a little further than the longest leg of the first phase in May 2025. Warren Call, Traverse Connect’s president and CEO, says in the release that this phase runs “multiple drones and sensor technology, with approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.” The release does not say which approval, or name the aircraft.

Phase two was supposed to fly in May. As DroneXL reported on May 22, the plan then was a 2026 move into beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations with DroneUp as the licensed operator. By June 3, DroneUp had left the project.

DroneUp Walked Away in Spring, and Blueflite Took Over the FAA Paperwork

DroneUp, the Virginia operator that ran phase one’s flights, winch deliveries and ground infrastructure, exited the Munson project before the May 2026 flights, Michigan public radio station WCMU reported on June 3. Blueflite, the aircraft maker, assumed the operator role and the FAA approvals DroneUp was to secure.

Greg James, DroneUp’s vice president of business development, told WCMU the company was refocusing on “scalable platform, autonomy, and airspace-management capabilities” and that the exit reflected “current market timing and delivery economics at scale.” Tracy Cleveland, Munson’s vice president of supply chain, said DroneUp was leaving the space as a business and that Munson would work with blueflite for the immediate future.

Blueflite’s chief technology officer James McClearen told the station the company now handles the regulatory requirements that DroneUp was going to do. That is a different job from building the aircraft. Blueflite’s Cobalt 461 went onto the FAA’s Section 44807 approved list on June 1, and it holds a Department of War conditional approval exempting it from the FCC Covered List, as DroneXL reported in August when the same aircraft began flying auto parts for a Ford dealer group in metro Detroit. In June, WCMU reported testing would restart near the end of summer. It is starting on October 6.

Phase One Flew 67 Times Inside One Mile and Lost Six Flights to Hardware

The first phase ran from May 9 to 20, 2025, within one mile (1.6 kilometers) of Munson Medical Center and completed 61 of 67 flights, a 91% success rate. Three failures were winch problems. One was a GPS fault, two were lost cellular links that triggered automatic return to launch.

Those figures come from the project report Traverse Connect published in December 2025. Fifty-five of the 67 flights ran the shortest route, roughly 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) to the Munson Dialysis Center on West Royal Drive. The longest, to Copper Ridge Surgery Center in Garfield Township, was about 2,200 meters (1.4 miles). Every flight was under Part 107 with the pilot watching the aircraft and three to four visual observers covering ground and air risk, and the report’s stated purpose for that constraint was to gather data for later BVLOS operations under Part 135.

The flights started with water bottles and temperature loggers standing in for specimens, then carried real patient laboratory samples once the handling checked out. Munson staff drive more than 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers) a year moving samples and supplies between the system’s facilities, which span 29 counties, and that mileage is the number the project exists to cut.

The state has put about $1.64 million into the project through the Advanced Aerial Mobility Activation Fund, an initial $689,500 and a further $950,000 announced in May 2025. The fund is run by the Michigan Department of Transportation, the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Newlab provided additional support, per the release. Central Michigan University’s Rural Health Excellence Institute is the evaluation partner.

Cleveland said in Monday’s release that expanding to “multiple drones to multiple Munson Healthcare sites” is another step toward operationalizing the service for the region. Call said the data would “inform best practices for statewide and national adoption.”

DroneXL’s Take

The operator swap is the story here, and it is why a May test is flying in October. DroneUp was the party with the FAA relationship, the winch system and the ground stations in phase one. Its exit left a Michigan aircraft maker to become an air carrier on top of being a manufacturer, and the release’s silence on which FAA approval covers these flights is the loose end I want closed before anyone calls this phase a success. A Section 44807 listing says the FAA has looked at the Cobalt 461, and nothing more. It says nothing about who is allowed to fly it, or how far from the pilot’s eyes.

The distance has not changed much. A 2.2-mile hop to Rosewood Drive is the same order as the 1.4-mile Copper Ridge leg phase one already flew, so the real test this month is the “multiple drones” part and whether the winch, GPS and cellular links hold up over four weeks instead of twelve days. Phase one lost six of 67 flights to exactly those three things. If the project publishes a phase two report as candid as the December one, with the FAA authorization named and the abort causes listed, Munson will have done more for rural medical drone delivery in the US than any press release could.

Sources: Traverse Connect and Munson Healthcare media release, October 5, 2026 (emailed to DroneXL), 9&10 News, WCMU, June 3, 2026, Traverse City Medical Drone Delivery Pilot Project Report, December 2025.

Correction, October 6, 2026: An earlier version of this article said the October flights run between Munson Medical Center and a Crystal Lake Health Center in Frankfort, Michigan, about 30 miles (49 kilometers) west of the hospital, and the headline (“Munson Medical Drones Jump From 1 Mile to 30 After DroneUp Quit”) and DroneXL’s Take were built on that distance. Traverse Connect contacted DroneXL on October 6 to say the Crystal Lake Health Center in the project is at 5191 Rosewood Drive in Traverse City, about 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) from the hospital. The Frankfort location was DroneXL’s error, not the release’s. The headline, the SEO description, the lead and the Take have been rewritten; the phase one figures and the DroneUp reporting are unchanged.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FAA Warns NFL Drone Pilots After 700 World Cup Seizures Didn't Deter

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:05:49 GMT

The Federal Aviation Administration posted a reminder over the weekend that every NFL game is a strict No Drone Zone, with operators who enter the restricted airspace facing fines of up to $100,000, confiscation of the aircraft and federal criminal charges. The post went up on the agency’s Facebook page on Saturday, ahead of Sunday’s games and pointed pilots to B4UFLY to check restrictions before flying.

The restriction is the standing stadium Temporary Flight Restriction: no drones within 3 nautical miles (3.5 miles, 5.6 kilometers) of the venue and up to 3,000 feet (914 meters) above the ground, from one hour before kickoff until one hour after the game ends.

None of this is new. The FAA ran the same No Drone Zone message from March through July around the FIFA World Cup, published the venue list and the penalty figures in May, and the FBI still seized more than 700 drones before the final.

World Cup Seizures Passed 700 Despite Four Months Of Warnings

The FBI and DHS seized more than 700 drones inside World Cup restricted airspace across all 11 U.S. host cities between June 11 and the July 19 final, the Transportation Department said July 22. The FAA issued close to 250 Temporary Flight Restrictions for the tournament.

The count had already passed 600 by July 4, with Miami at 99 seizures, Atlanta at 77 and Dallas at 63. Detections ran higher still: 1,139 drones logged at tournament sites by June 28, according to the White House task force. Federal prosecutors in Texas charged at least three men, including a 26-year-old who flew a DJI Mavic 3 for two minutes to film a church inside the Houston ring on opening day, unregistered and without a remote pilot certificate. Greg Reverdiau of Pilot Institute, a DroneXL partner, said in his July 3 update that the early feedback was that plenty of the violators held Part 107 certificates.

The DOT release also put a number on what comes next: $500 million in counter-drone grant funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics named as the next application. The detection gear and the state and local mitigation powers that produced 700 seizures did not leave town with the tournament.

The Stadium TFR Covers Regular And Postseason Games, Not Preseason

The FAA’s stadium restriction covers every regular and postseason NFL game, Major League Baseball, NCAA Division I football and major motorsport races at venues seating 30,000 or more. Preseason games fall outside it. The FAA issues it through a standing NOTAM, not the league.

That answers the question commenters put under the FAA’s weekend post about whose rule this is. The restriction sits in B4UFLY and in the FAA’s Sporting Event Automated Monitoring System, and it activates on the schedule, whether or not a drone’s own app flags it.

Enforcement at NFL games already has a record. A drone paused the Ravens-Steelers playoff game on January 11, 2025, the third drone incident at M&T Bank Stadium in two years, and the NFL told Congress it counted 2,845 stadium incursions in 2023, up from 2,537 the year before.

DroneXL’s Take

Don’t be that guy. The World Cup settled the question of whether a Facebook graphic deters anyone: four months of No Drone Zone posts, a published venue list, and 700 confiscated drones anyway. My read is that the FAA’s NFL warning is aimed less at the pilots who will read it than at the record it builds, because every one of those 700 seizures is now an exhibit for the next counter-drone authority bill, exactly as the Baltimore playoff drone was for the last one. Stadium TFRs exist because people really do fly over packed seating bowls, and the Ravens game proved it three times. The 18-week NFL season hands enforcement teams, now funded for the Olympics, a weekly chance to add to the pile. Check tfr.faa.gov before you spin a prop within 3 miles of a stadium on a Sunday, because the FBI spent the summer proving it will find you.

Sources: Federal Aviation Administration on Facebook, U.S. Department of Transportation, FAA Stadiums and Sporting Events.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Wing Picks Denver for Walmart Drones. Two Suburbs Already Froze Hubs

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:42:30 GMT

Wing and Walmart will bring drone delivery to the Denver and Seattle metros in 2027, the companies said Monday, taking the partnership to 19 U.S. metros. Five are flying today: Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando. The other 14 are announced and waiting, and Wing says more than three million customers already have access.

Wing’s two Hummingbird aircraft cruise at up to 60 mph (97 km/h), carry up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms) and lower the box to the yard on a tether. The target is more than 270 Walmart stores and 40 million customers by 2027, and Wing’s chief business officer Heather Rivera said the new metros show “how quickly people across the country are adopting drone delivery.”

Neither Denver nor Seattle was on the list Wing and Walmart gave in January or the one they gave in June. Both metros turned up in September in city land-use filings, and two Denver suburbs had already voted to freeze drone-hub applications before Wing named the city.

Wing’s “Nearly 20” Metros Are 19, and Only Five Have Aircraft in the Air

Wing’s count of nearly 20 metros breaks down as five operating, 12 announced without a launch date, and the two named Monday. The 12 came in three batches: Tampa in June 2025, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami on January 11, 2026, then seven more on June 8.

The June seven were Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and Salt Lake City, as DroneXL reported. Orlando is the only market to go from announced to flying since then, in July. The FAA’s public list of drone-delivery environmental reviews, last updated September 24, carries Wing authorizations for Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte, Central Florida, Houston and Atlanta, plus the 2021 Christiansburg, Virginia site, and nothing for any of the 14 announced metros. A national programmatic environmental assessment the FAA signed on July 28 may let Wing skip metro-by-metro filings; Wing has not said whether it will use it.

Wing's October 5, 2026 map of its Walmart drone delivery network shows Denver and Seattle as new metros, five metros flying today (Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando), and twelve metros announced but not yet live. Photo credit: Wing

Denver Suburbs Wrote the Rules Before Wing Said the Word Denver

Castle Rock passed an emergency ordinance on July 20 freezing drone-hub applications for six months, and Parker followed on July 21 with a nine-month pause. Both sit south of Denver. North of the city, Northglenn’s Planning Commission voted September 15 to recommend Colorado’s first drone-delivery ordinance.

Walmart had approached Northglenn about flying Wing drones from its Neighborhood Market at 10755 N. Washington St. The draft keeps launch pads 200 feet (61 meters) from homes and schools, caps ground noise at 65 decibels at the property line and limits hours to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. City Council takes a first reading October 12 and a final vote October 26, as DroneXL reported September 28. Thornton is drafting its own hub ordinance and Longmont is holding two Walmart pre-applications with no hearing scheduled.

Every one of those rules governs the parking lot, and Northglenn’s own staff memo says so: a nest in the next town can serve every address in the city, because the FAA owns the airspace. Wing’s nests have a range of about six miles (9.7 km).

Seattle Starts With One Tacoma Walmart and a Rival Already in FAA Review

Wing’s first sign in Washington was a City of Tacoma building permit for the Walmart Supercenter at 1965 S. Union Ave., filed in September with no FAA filing behind it, as DroneXL reported September 15. Monday’s release quotes Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell rather than anyone from Tacoma or Seattle.

Zipline got there earlier on paper. The FAA posted a draft environmental assessment for up to 75 Zipline sites and 500 docks across the Seattle metro in September 2025, took comments through November 2, 2025, and has posted no decision since. Wing’s name does not appear on the FAA’s Washington entries at all. Rivera said in June that Wing was already working with communities in its new markets; what that has produced in Puget Sound so far is one store permit in Tacoma.

Ferrell’s statement in the release closes: “The future has arrived and its being delivered by Walmart by drone!”

DroneXL’s Take

Wing keeps letting its permits announce its markets, and Colorado shows the bill for that. Castle Rock and Parker did not freeze hubs because a Walmart lot scared them. They froze them because the first thing their planners saw was a pre-application for an 18-drone port, filed while no delivery operator had said the word Denver in public, and with none of the altitude, noise and frequency figures that Northglenn is now writing into law. Wing has had DroneXL’s 30 written safety questions since September 8 and has answered none of them, so I don’t expect a Thornton planner to have better luck.

A pad moratorium cannot stop the flights, and Northglenn’s memo says that in plain words. But it can stop the pad, and a Wing network is nothing without pads in Walmart lots six miles apart. Every month a suburb spends on a moratorium is a month of Denver that Wing cannot serve, and the company bought those months by staying quiet.

If you live in Thornton, Longmont or anywhere else on the Denver survey list, the operational narrative in Northglenn’s draft is the clause to ask your council for: altitude, noise figure, aircraft count and flight frequency, in a public filing, before the first delivery. It is the only place so far where Wing will have to put those numbers on paper.

Sources: Wing, October 5, 2026 announcement, Wing, June 2026 seven-market announcement, FAA Public Involvement and Environmental Review for Drone Operations, City of Northglenn staff memorandum #29-2026, DroneXL Wing tracker

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FBI's Balloon Fiesta No Drone Zone Runs On A Clock: 10.5 Hours A Day

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 20:11:28 GMT

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a no drone zone through October 11, and the FBI says it has counter-drone personnel in place to enforce it. FBI Albuquerque, working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Albuquerque Police Department, warned on September 30 that anyone flying inside a 4-nautical-mile (7.4-kilometer) ring around Balloon Fiesta Park faces drone confiscation, loss of their pilot certificate and civil fines of up to $75,000 per violation.

This is the first Fiesta since local police gained counter-drone authority of their own, and it follows a summer in which the same federal playbook seized more than 700 drones at World Cup venues. DroneXL tracked that crackdown city by city.

The FBI’s warning says the restriction is in place for the duration of the event. The FAA notices that create it switch on at 5:30 a.m., switch off at noon, and run again from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

FAA’s Fiesta Restriction Runs 10.5 Hours A Day Across Two NOTAMs

Despite the FBI’s whole-event framing, the FAA built the Fiesta restriction from two daily windows. NOTAM FDC 6/5920 closes the airspace from 5:30 a.m. to noon Mountain time, and FDC 6/6087 closes it again from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., for 10.5 restricted hours a day.

Both cover the same circle, centered on the park, from the surface to 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) above sea level. Both are issued under 14 CFR 91.145, the FAA’s rule for aerial demonstrations, so they apply to every aircraft, crewed or not, unless Albuquerque Tower clears the flight. The morning restriction took effect October 2, a day before opening, and runs through the final morning on October 11. The evening restriction covers October 3 through October 10, and it is the only notice the FBI’s release links. A duplicate evening notice, FDC 6/6191, carries identical terms after the FAA replaced an earlier version over a text error.

The only drones flying legally inside those windows belong to the Fiesta. Its 2026 schedule lists a drone light show, sponsored by Sandia Resort & Casino, at 5:45 a.m. every day and at 7:45 p.m. on October 3, 4, 8 and 9. DroneXL covered those shows in 2024, when Verge Aero flew an estimated 500 drones per performance.

Saturday, October 10, doesn’t fit the pattern. The evening restriction expires at 8 p.m. that night, while the schedule puts the drone show at 9 p.m. and the AfterGlow fireworks at 9:15 p.m.

Outside the windows, the TFR is not in force and north Albuquerque’s normal airspace rules apply. The Fiesta’s own website still tells visitors there are no drones within 4 nautical miles, with no hours attached.

Local Police Gained Counter-Drone Powers Three Months Before The Fiesta

The SAFER SKIES Act, signed December 18, 2025, lets certified state and local police run counter-drone operations on their own authority. A Justice and Homeland Security rule implementing it took effect July 1. That authority expires December 31, 2031, unless Congress extends it.

The interim final rule sets two tiers. Detection and warning certification comes from an online course. Mitigation certification, which reaches as far as forcing an aircraft down, requires resident training at the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center. When the rule published on July 6, just 61 officers across roughly 46 agencies held mitigation certification, a gap DroneXL laid out when 1,500 agencies lined up for the new powers.

The FBI says its personnel are working with trained state and local partners at the Fiesta. Its release does not say which tier, if either, Albuquerque Police officers hold, so whether a city officer or a federal agent would be the one to take a drone down is not on the record.

Turning off Remote ID will not help a pilot hide, either. The release calls a disabled or noncompliant Remote ID broadcast a separate federal violation, and adds: “Authorities use multiple detection methods, whether Remote ID is broadcasting or not.”

Anyone who sees an unauthorized drone at the Fiesta can report it to 911, on-site officers, 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov.

FBI Enforcement Since The World Cup Has Ended In Federal Charges

The FBI says any Fiesta drone caught in restricted airspace now gets referred to the FAA for mandatory enforcement action. Beyond the $75,000 civil ceiling, federal prosecutors can seek criminal fines up to $100,000 and up to one year in federal prison.

The FAA’s own 2019 Fiesta warning cited civil penalties above $30,000. The harder line since then has a record behind it. Federal agencies seized more than 700 drones at World Cup venues this summer and opened around 120 federal cases, with about a dozen arrests, building on the 600 seizures the FBI reported in early July. One of those cases belongs to a 26-year-old Houston cinematographer charged after a two-minute DJI Mavic 3 flight to film a church, who now faces up to a year in prison.

The FAA has also run a faster case-processing program, DETER, since April. Russ at 51 Drones walked through what it changes in July: reduced penalties for qualifying first-time violators who accept responsibility and give up their appeal rights.

DroneXL’s Take

The restriction is justified. A balloon pilot steers only by climbing or descending into different winds, so a drone wandering over the launch field is a hazard the balloon can’t dodge. What I object to is the FBI telling the public the zone runs for the whole event when the FAA’s own notices say 10.5 hours a day. Precise rules get obeyed. Vague ones teach pilots that TFRs are guesswork, and the World Cup showed where that leads: 700 drones seized and about a dozen arrests, which reads to me as hundreds of pilots who never checked the airspace. A release that printed the two windows would have done more for compliance than another counter-drone team. If you’re in Albuquerque this week, pull up both NOTAMs in B4UFLY, and leave the drone in the bag whenever balloons are in the air, TFR or not.

Sources: FBI Albuquerque, FAA NOTAM FDC 6/5920, FAA NOTAM FDC 6/6087, Federal Register, Balloon Fiesta 2026 Schedule of Events, The Paper.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Estonia's Capital Trains Kids From 8 on Drones, Citing Russia

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:17:18 GMT

Tallinn is now teaching children as young as 8 to fly drones, and every seat is taken before the first school group walks in. The city opened its first drone classroom on September 18 at the Energy Discovery Center, the capital’s science museum, and from October any Tallinn school can book the course for students aged 8 to 16. Deputy Mayor Kristjan Järvan, who launched the project at the start of the summer, told Le Monde the program is already fully booked and the city’s problem is now finding room for the children it has turned away.

The city’s own announcement of the opening talked about engineering, programming, electronics and future careers. Järvan, asked by Le Monde why he built it, gave a different answer: the defense of a country with Russia next door.

Tallinn Sold the Classroom as STEM and Its Creator Calls It Defense Prep

Estonia has required every student entering upper secondary school to take a 35-hour national defense course since autumn 2023, and Järvan told Le Monde the children’s drone classroom feeds it. Students fly civilian drones only. “We know we have a slightly crazy neighbor, but we are getting ready,” he said.

The quotes the city released at the September 18 opening covered engineering and careers and never mentioned defense. The national course Järvan is pointing at covers military history, weapon handling and first aid in its theory block. A second 35-hour practical block, run by the Defence League, stays voluntary. Tallinn’s classroom sits below both, aimed at primary and middle schoolers, and Järvan’s point was what those children can do with the skill once they are adults.

The idea itself came from Ukraine. Järvan said he visited Ukrainian cities where children are taught civil defense with 3D-printed replicas of mines so they learn what not to pick up, and concluded that protecting citizens during a military crisis is a civil authority’s job. Estonia is not the first Baltic state to reach that conclusion: DroneXL reported on Lithuania’s program in Lithuanian Kids Learn to Fly Drones Near Russian Border, where the defense ministry put a 22,000-person training target and a €3.3 million budget on paper when it announced the program in August 2025. Tallinn has published neither a headcount nor a budget beyond the fact that the city paid for the room.

Järvan was Estonia’s minister for entrepreneurship and information technology in 2022 and 2023 before taking the transport portfolio at Tallinn City Hall. Estonia has 1.4 million people, a number DroneXL has flagged before when covering the country’s drone warfare push in 2024.

Students Fly 30 Simulator Hours Before They Touch a Real Drone

Children in Tallinn’s course fly computer simulators for 30 hours before the Energy Discovery Center lets them pilot a real drone, instructor Richard Muuga told Le Monde. After-school clubs for ages 8 to 11 and 12 to 16 have run since September 8, built with the HobiZone club since March.

Muuga, 22, opens each session with a plush duck, because every child already knows how a duck flies, then takes apart one of the round drone-soccer quads the museum also flies to show what moves when the sticks do. The 30-hour simulator rule exists, in his words, “to avoid too many crashes.” Public drone-soccer sessions on the city’s own pitch run daily at noon, 2, 4 and 6 p.m. and are open to adults too, according to the ERR report on the opening.

The three boys Le Monde watched, two 9-year-olds and a 15-year-old, did not talk about war. One wants to shoot films, the 15-year-old already flies at home and wants to race. Asked whether he could see himself operating military drones as an adult, he answered that defending the country is important. The grandmother collecting one of the 9-year-olds, a member of Estonia’s Russian-speaking minority who introduced herself as Estonian, called drones a profession of the future and then added that if the country were attacked, her grandson might be useful.

DroneXL’s Take

Tallinn has the order of operations right, and Russia has it backwards. Moscow put a drone-operation textbook into the federal curriculum for 8th and 9th graders with a stated goal of one million operators by 2030, a military quota dressed as a school subject. Tallinn built a science-museum classroom where a 22-year-old explains lift with a stuffed duck, let the kids fill it on their own, and only when a French correspondent asked did the deputy mayor say the quiet part. The children get drone soccer and simulator time. The state gets a generation that knows how a quadcopter fails before it ever needs them to. Teaching 9-year-olds anything with a war in the next sentence is uncomfortable, and the grandmother’s “that would be a good thing” is the sentence in this story I keep coming back to. My read is that Estonia’s version is still the honest one: a civilian program that admits why it exists beats a defense program pretending to be a hobby. American school districts are running drone soccer leagues and STEM flight classes right now with no such framing, and that is fine for a country with two oceans. Estonia shares a land border with Russia. Fully booked is the only correct enrollment number.

Sources: Le Monde, ERR, Estonian Defence Resources Agency

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Germany Funds Jet-Drone Interceptors As Ukraine's Best Hits 30%

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:24:00 GMT

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv by train on October 4 with a support package worth more than €1.3 billion ($1.46 billion), and the headline item is money to mass-produce interceptor drones against Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds. About €1 billion ($1.13 billion) is military aid: the interceptor production financing, long-range strike weapons, combat drones and satellite equipment. Another €350 million ($394 million) goes to generators, substations and grid repairs before winter.

Merz came with Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and executives from Siemens Energy, Hensoldt, Diehl Defence and Quantum Systems, a day after Russia’s foreign ministry told foreign diplomats to leave the capital. Four air-raid alerts sounded over Kyiv that morning. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries signed 15 agreements worth more than €8.5 billion ($9.57 billion) in total, including a separate agreement on joint counter-drone work.

Zelensky also gave the figure Berlin is betting against. Of Ukraine’s interceptor drones, he said, the Bars has shown the best results so far, and it downs up to 30% of its targets.

Volodymyr Zelensky and Friedrich Merz outside the Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv on October 4, 2026, before the talks that produced the €1.3 billion package. Photo credit: Office of the President of Ukraine.

Quantum Systems Gets The Interceptor Contract And A Successful Test

The interceptor money runs through Quantum Systems. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense signed an agreement with the Munich company on testing and procuring interceptors for jet-powered drones, and Zelensky told the joint press conference that a new German-Ukrainian interceptor, the SPYS, had just passed its test.

German officials told Euronews thousands of interceptors will reach Ukrainian forces in the coming months.

The SPYS comes from WIY Drones, the Ukrainian interceptor maker Quantum Systems bought into in March when Berlin funded 15,000 Strila interceptors for the National Guard. WIY says the SPYS tops out at 373 mph (600 km/h), carries a 300 g payload, and is being tuned to meet a diving Shahed head-on in its final approach. The first 50 went to the military for combat evaluation in July. Quantum Systems has been chasing that speed since its Apex test aircraft hit 699 km/h in June.

Merz said the recent technical progress means the new interceptors can go into serial production quickly. “This will quickly and noticeably strengthen Ukraine’s air defense,” he said. Quantum also signed a memorandum with Fire Point, the Ukrainian maker of the FP-1 long-range drone, on unmanned systems and countering advanced aerial threats. The same business forum produced a Diehl memorandum on thousands of IRIS-T missiles and a Hensoldt agreement on surveillance radars.

Russia’s Jet Shaheds Are Arriving Faster Than Ukraine Can Catch Them

Russia used more than 1,900 attack drones against Ukraine in the week before Merz’s visit, and more than 800 of them were jet-powered, according to Zelensky. Ukraine’s propeller-driven interceptors were built for a Shahed cruising near 115 mph (185 km/h). A jet Geran runs at roughly twice that.

Ukrainian intelligence said in May that the Geran-4 was designed specifically to beat Ukraine’s $2,000 interceptors. An RFE/RL teardown last week found the Geran-4 runs on a $25,000 Chinese hobby turbojet and that Russia builds about 3,000 a month. Zelensky said on September 22 that Russia plans to spend $12 billion next year on jet-powered drones and loitering munitions alone, and that Ukraine was intercepting about 55% of the jet-powered Shaheds at the time. The SBU released video of the first confirmed jet Shahed kill by an interceptor on September 19, two weeks before Merz landed.

Zelensky said Ukraine expects the first results from small missiles designed for jet drones in the second half of October. Earlier in the day he and Merz walked through the National Academy of Sciences building in central Kyiv, where a Russian drone killed two people and injured seven on September 28. While they spoke with rescuers, an alert sounded and emergency service chief Andrii Danyk showed Merz Russian drones moving across the map in real time. A Russian drone hit Kyiv’s Northern Bridge again the same day.

DroneXL’s Take

Germany is doing the right thing in the right order, and I still want the hit rate on the next press release, not the unit count. Berlin is buying production capacity for a weapon Russia has already engineered around once: the Geran-4 exists because the $2,000 interceptors worked too well against the propeller Shaheds, and the 30% Zelensky gave for his best jet-killer is the bill for that. Ukraine’s cheap interceptors earned this money: the $2,000 Sting has been trading for $50,000 Shaheds on camera since spring, so the concept is proven. The target moved. Serial production of a 600 km/h airframe fixes the speed gap only if the guidance closes the head-on intercept WIY says it is still refining, and Zelensky’s own date for the next data point is the second half of October, when the small missiles report in. Americans should watch this one too: Quantum Systems is the German firm that In-Q-Tel walked into Washington, and the Pentagon has been shopping for Ukrainian interceptors since the Patriot math broke in March. Whatever Kyiv’s 30% becomes by winter is the number the US will be buying.

Sources: Kyiv Independent, Zelensky and Merz joint press conference, Euromaidan Press, Reuters via Business Day, Euronews, UA.News, NV

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon North Haven Drone Hold Disputed as Legislators Meet Oct. 5

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:16:00 GMT

Amazon’s North Haven, Connecticut, drone plan is on hold until residents, state legislators and regional mayors have been heard at meetings the company will run, First Selectman Michael Freda wrote on Facebook on Saturday, October 3, after a call from Amazon’s corporate office. On Sunday morning, Connecticut House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, whose district includes part of North Haven, posted that the project has not been put on hold and that calling it one is “not the case.”

The two posts agree on one date. State legislators meet Amazon on Monday, October 5, Candelora wrote. Freda wrote that no decision comes before a series of such meetings.

The paper between them is the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s review of the hub, which the agency extended last week from October 1 to October 15. Candelora’s reading is that the extension is the whole change. Amazon has not said which man is right.

Freda Says Amazon Corporate Called; Candelora Says Only the Comment Window Moved

Freda’s Saturday post says he had a very good discussion with a representative of Amazon corporate, not Amazon North Haven, and that “the drone initiative is now on hold.” Amazon agreed to decide nothing until the public, legislators and regional mayors had been heard at meetings Amazon will run.

Candelora’s post, about 18 hours later, links DEEP’s notice page and says Amazon already holds the FAA’s July 28 programmatic environmental assessment, needs to apply for FAA operating approval, and must first clear the state’s coastal review. The state got an extension to October 15, legislators meet Amazon on October 5, and “the application has not been put on hold, but merely extended for two weeks.” He asked residents to keep filing written comments.

Both accounts fit the record DroneXL has. The FAA’s national finding of July 28 is the document Candelora names, and it is the one 15 states, Connecticut among them, sued over on September 28. What Amazon told Freda is a phone call with no filing behind it. What Candelora describes is the filing. A company can pause a launch while its paperwork runs, and the two posts read to me as describing different things with the same word. Amazon’s only statement on the record is spokesperson Jack Stelzner’s defense of the program to CT Insider last week, before either post. DroneXL found no Amazon statement on North Haven in the Amazon newsroom or any named outlet on the morning of October 4.

Five state legislators, four Republicans including Rep. Dave Yaccarino of North Haven and Democratic Sen. Christine Cohen of Madison, had already written DEEP Acting Commissioner Emma Cimino on September 25, CT Insider reported on October 4, citing harm to wildlife and nesting birds reacting to the drones’ noise. Yaccarino called the plan “a horrible idea” on September 30 and said the DEEP review was news to many legislators. Residents raised the same concerns at North Haven’s Board of Selectmen on Thursday, October 1, WTNH reported. The call to Freda came two days later.

DEEP Extended Its Comment Window to October 15 and Opened a New Inbox

DEEP’s public notice page for the review now says the agency has extended the comment period to October 15, 2026, and takes comments at DEEP.FCC.PublicComments@ct.gov. The notice was first published September 16, and the original 15-day window closed October 1. The page gives no new date for DEEP’s decision.

Anyone who used the address in DroneXL’s September 28 North Haven filing guide should resend. The guide pointed readers to an analyst’s email found on a community flyer and to the division’s general permit inbox, because DEEP had not answered DroneXL’s question about where to file. DEEP’s own page now names the address, and a comment sent to the new inbox before October 15 is the one DEEP has committed to accept.

The decision date is the open piece. The FAA’s August 17 consistency request started a 60-day clock under the federal coastal rules, which ran to October 16. DEEP’s extended comment window closes the day before. Whether DEEP has asked the FAA for more time, or will rule on October 16 with one day of review after comments close, is not on the notice page, and DEEP has not said.

Neither post changes the paper. The Planning and Zoning Commission’s 5-0 approval of application P26-17 on May 4 stands. DEEP’s review is a federal consistency determination that runs on the FAA’s request regardless of what Amazon tells the town. The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Connecticut, North Haven or New Haven document when DroneXL checked it on the morning of October 4. The FAA’s request to DEEP described up to 1,000 flights a day inside a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius, with the MK30 at 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff and 90.5 to 91.8 dBA SEL at 20 feet (6 meters) on takeoff and landing. Amazon’s own noise claim, made at its Westborough forum, is that the aircraft peaks below its delivery trucks. The two figures measure different things at different distances, and nobody in Connecticut has put them side by side on the record.

Westborough Was Delayed the Same Week, Not Paused

Amazon asked Westborough’s Planning Board to move its drone pad vote from October 6 to no later than November 10 in the same week, and residents appealed the town’s accessory-use ruling to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Neither step came with an Amazon statement calling Westborough paused.

DroneXL reported both in Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No and Amazon’s Westborough Drone Launch Now Hinges on a Zoning Appeal. CT Insider’s account says the Westborough plan is on hold, citing MassLive. MassLive’s own October 3 report says delayed, with a vote by November 10 and a ZBA date still unset. Three Massachusetts lawmakers asked Amazon for a pause in a September 28 letter, and Amazon did not grant one on the record.

North Haven is the only hub in DroneXL’s record, including the Drone Delivery Tracker, where a town official has quoted Amazon itself calling a plan on hold since the company’s August announcement of nearly 500 communities. Westborough got its Amazon forum on September 23, which DroneXL covered in the report on residents being told the drones were coming anyway. North Haven never had one. Amazon’s Sam Bailey told the P&Z in May that the company would hold a public session, according to The Register Citizen, and the first scheduled meeting is Monday’s, with legislators rather than the public.

Residents in the North Haven circle who want to reach Amazon directly can call 1-888-280-4331 or use the customer-service chat on Amazon, choosing “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” The rest of what residents can still do is in DroneXL’s guide.

DroneXL’s Take

A hold announced in a first selectman’s Facebook post and denied in a state legislator’s is not a status. It is two men describing one phone call they were not both on, and Amazon, which was, has said nothing. My read is that both are telling the truth as they understand it: Amazon told Freda it would not launch before the meetings, and Candelora is right that no filing was withdrawn and no clock stopped. What that means for a North Haven resident is simple. Nothing Amazon said on Saturday reaches DEEP’s inbox or the FAA’s docket, and the only lever with a date on it is still the one DroneXL pointed at last week: comments to DEEP close October 15, the address is finally official, and a comment about the Quinnipiac marsh, the harbor and the missing site-specific FAA document goes into the record whatever Amazon decides after Monday. I’m for drone delivery when the cargo earns the flight, and Zipline’s P2, at 55 pounds with a tethered drop and two parachutes, shows how. The MK30 carries 5 pounds at 83, descends to 13 feet over the lawn and has no parachute, and both Tolleson collisions ended in uncontrolled descents. That judgment is mine. Candelora’s advice and mine are the same: keep filing.

Sources: Michael Freda, Facebook, October 3, 2026, State Rep. Vincent Candelora, Facebook, October 4, 2026, CT Insider, October 4, 2026, WTNH, October 3, 2026, Connecticut DEEP public notice, MassLive, October 3, 2026, FAA NEPA and Drones, The Register Citizen via GovTech.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FPV Pilot Flies Kinzua Bridge, A Pennsylvania Park That Bans Drones

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 20:27:00 GMT

FPV pilot Parker Sheppard flew a 5-inch freestyle quad around the Kinzua Bridge in McKean County, Pennsylvania, and published the footage to YouTube on October 1, 2026. The 13,500-subscriber channel’s video had 8,260 views two days later. Sheppard dove from cloud level onto the Skywalk, flew under the surviving span and crossed the valley where the 2003 tornado left 11 of the viaduct’s towers lying in the creek bed.

Kinzua Bridge is a state park. Sheppard says so on camera, adds that drones are not allowed there, and says the state cleared his flight anyway. He does not say which office cleared it.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources publishes exactly six state parks where drones may fly, each at one designated site inside the park. Kinzua Bridge State Park is not on the list.

Sheppard Says Pennsylvania Cleared A Flight DCNR Policy Does Not Allow

Sheppard told viewers “Pennsylvania gave me special permission to come here and fly FPV,” a flight the Bureau of State Parks’ drone policy rules out: the bureau permits drones only at designated sites in Beltzville, Benjamin Rush, Hillman, Lackawanna, Prompton and Tuscarora, and restricts them at every other state park.

DCNR’s drone page describes no permit route for the other parks. It tells pilots to contact the park office of the six flying sites and stops there. Sheppard’s video and its description name no agency, no permit and no date of approval, so what Pennsylvania granted, and who at the state granted it, rests on his word alone. DroneXL covered the gap between what state parks allow and what pilots assume in You Want to Fly a Drone in Your State Park? You Need This! in March 2023, and most of those parks ban launches from inside their boundaries. Pennsylvania’s version is one of the strictest, with six parks open and the rest closed.

The timing of the shoot narrows the window. The Skywalk has been closed for a multi-year steel rehabilitation since late 2024 and reopened for foliage season on September 5, 2026, with contractors back on the structure November 1. Sheppard flew from the Skywalk deck, so unless his permission also covered a closed structure, the flight landed inside that eight-week opening, the busiest the park gets all year.

A Cut Antenna And An Unseen Wire Bracket The Bridge Flight

Earlier the same trip, Sheppard launched the DeepSpace SEEKER5 with an antenna cable folded into a prop, heard it clipping, took off anyway and flew into a branch. The prop severed the cable. The quad’s DJI O4 Air Unit carries two antennas, and he flew on with one.

He said the lesson out loud: spend more time in prep before flying. The O4 series shipped in January 2025 with that dual-antenna layout. At the bridge, under a cloud deck he called questionable, he planned a single pass and clipped past a wire he had not seen, then packed up ahead of the storm. The trip was filmed entirely on a sponsored GoPro MISSION 1 PRO with the ILS lens mount, Sheppard filming with two broken wrists while pro mountain biker Rémy Métailler and Quin Gable rode.

That makes it the second GoPro-equipped FPV flight this year that DroneXL has written up from a place that bans drones. In August, GoPro flew 8K over Niagara Falls and left the permit out of the description. Sheppard at least said his on camera.

DroneXL’s Take

Sheppard did the hard part right. He wanted a spot where drones are banned, and instead of flying it anyway and hoping, he asked the state. That is the opposite of “don’t be that guy,” and I’d rather see ten more videos like this than one more unpermitted stadium dive. The flaw is in what he left out. “Pennsylvania gave me special permission” is a sentence the next pilot at Kinzua will repeat to a ranger with nothing behind it, and the DCNR page that pilot will be shown offers six parks and no permit process. One line naming the office and the agreement would have turned his flight into a map for everyone else. He found a door into a park the state says is closed. Tell us which one, Parker.

Sources: Parker Sheppard on YouTube, Pennsylvania DCNR Bureau of State Parks, Kinzua Bridge State Park history, exploreJeffersonPA.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Mach Initiative Builds 20-Lb RC Jet to Break the 9-Year 465 mph Record

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 20:12:00 GMT

The Mach Initiative, a student team at the University of Bath in England, published the build of KingChaser on October 3: a 3D-printed, carbon-reinforced jet aircraft with a 300-newton (67 lbf) turbine, designed to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest jet-powered model aircraft. That record has sat at 465 mph (749 km/h) since German pilot Niels Herbrich set it at Rothenburg, Germany, on August 23, 2017.

KingChaser weighs 9 kg (20 lb) fueled, needs more than 50 mph (80 km/h) to leave the launcher, and has completed five static engine runs at full throttle. It has not flown. The team’s previous aircraft, Kingfisher, flew in January and reached 205 mph (330 km/h) on a 60-newton engine. The jump the team is attempting is from 205 mph to past 465 mph in one airframe generation.

The video credits the Boom Prize for the surge of interest in high-speed RC. The Boom Prize’s published rules limit entry to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

KingChaser Swaps a 150 N Engine Plan for a 300 N One Because the UK Runway Is Short

The team planned a 150-newton (34 lbf) engine to replace Kingfisher’s 60-newton (13 lbf) unit. A UK attempt flown within visual line of sight leaves little room to accelerate, so the team scaled Kingfisher up 20 percent and fitted a 300-newton engine, five times January’s thrust.

The airframe is printed in PETG rather than PLA for better tolerance of aerodynamic heating. The engine bay is PPS-CF, a carbon-filled polymer that holds shape above 392°F (200°C) but is brittle, so the team wrapped it in carbon fiber. An earlier attempt to anneal a PETG bay in a secondhand oven warped it. Underneath, CNC-machined and laser-cut aluminum, carbon rods and steel engine mounts make up a structure the team sized for 20 G, with the margin reserved for steep banks that keep the aircraft inside the pilot’s view. The skin is sanded to 1,000 grit because skin friction, not pressure drag, dominates at these speeds.

Control comes from two 70 kg-cm servos driving geared elevon linkages, with servos and hinges bolted directly to aluminum to hold the tolerances that prevent flutter. A new power harness with ceramic and electrolytic capacitors, inductors and shielded cables keeps servo switching noise out of the FPV feed. Telemetry stays on TBS Crossfire with the geofence monitor and loss-of-link throttle kill carried over from Kingfisher. A modified RunCam 2, its board tucked inside the inlet with only the sensor exposed, films the control surfaces from behind to catch flutter. The 3-liter (0.8 gal) fuel bay buys engine start, two high-speed passes and a small reserve.

The team's title card: the jet from behind, with the exhaust nozzle and vertical fin, and the launcher ramp in the background. Photo credit: The Mach Initiative / YouTube

The Video Proves the Engine Runs, Not That the Aircraft Flies

Five full-throttle static fires with no cooling airflow confirmed fuel burn, thermal protection and a clean FPV feed under full electromagnetic load. Wing-loading tests matched the structural analysis. The team has no launcher yet: its pneumatic system fell through, and a replacement comes in the next video, then the flight.

That launcher is the open item. KingChaser needs more than twice the launch energy Kingfisher did, and the team itself calls Kingfisher’s launch “pretty sketchy.” The 205 mph Kingfisher figure and every KingChaser number in this article come from the team’s own video and have not been independently timed. The 465 mph mark it is chasing is the verified one: Guinness recorded Herbrich’s 7.5 kg Behotec-powered aircraft at 749.221 km/h, averaged over 200 meters in two directions.

A team member runs through checks on a FrSky Taranis X7 with the aircraft loaded on the bungee rail launcher. The team says KingChaser needs more than twice the launch energy Kingfisher did and is building a new launcher for the flight. Photo credit: The Mach Initiative / YouTube

The Boom Prize the team cites as the reason the hobby is hot is the $800,000 purse Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl formalized in July, after the $100,000 offer DroneXL covered on July 2. The published rules require U.S. citizens or permanent residents, an air-breathing engine under 25 kg (55 lb) including fuel, and Mach 1 sustained for five seconds twice in one day. As I reported when the rules landed on July 18, the nationality clause shut out Herbrich and every other record holder outside the United States. A Bath team attempting its record in UK airspace sits on the same side of that line.

DroneXL’s Take

I like this project more than the viral dorm jet that started the Boom Prize sequence, because the Bath team is doing the boring parts on camera: a geofence monitor, a throttle kill on lost link, a structure sized so the pilot can bank hard enough to keep the aircraft in sight, and a record attempt built around a planned venue rather than a college field. That is what a legitimate speed program looks like, and it is the posture the “don’t be that guy” rule asks of anyone pushing a turbine past highway speeds. My read is that the record is the right target and the prize was never theirs: Mach 1 is 64 percent faster than a mark nobody has touched in nine years, and Boom wrote its rules so the team doing this most carefully in public could not enter. If the launcher holds, the attempt worth watching is in England, judged by Guinness timing gates rather than a tweet.

Source: The Mach Initiative on YouTube, Guinness World Records, Boom Supersonic

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon's Westborough Drone Launch Now Hinges on a Zoning Appeal

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 18:40:00 GMT

Several Westborough residents have appealed the town ruling that lets Amazon treat its Prime Air drone launch pad as an accessory use of its Otis Street warehouse, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Saturday, October 3. The appeal goes to Westborough’s Zoning Board of Appeals, which has not yet set a hearing date, and the paper says it has pushed Amazon’s launch back indefinitely.

Amazon told a hotel ballroom on September 23 it hoped to fly by the end of October. Its site-plan hearing before the Planning Board, set for Tuesday, October 6, already carries a request to continue to November 10.

The Planning Board can attach conditions to a use the zoning bylaw allows by right. It cannot refuse one. The ZBA appeal asks whether the pad is a by-right use at all.

Residents hold Mass Blue Skies signs outside Mill Pond School before the Westborough Select Board's October 1, 2026, meeting on Amazon's Prime Air proposal. Photo credit: Gary Kelley, via The Heart of Westborough Facebook group

A ZBA Reversal Would Move Amazon’s Pad From Site-Plan Review to a Special Permit

Westborough’s building commissioner and town counsel classified Amazon’s 6,800-square-foot (632-square-meter) launch pad as accessory to the warehouse, which put it in site-plan review, not a special permit. The residents’ appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals challenges that, the Telegram & Gazette reported. Its hearing date is to be determined.

The accessory-use call is not new. Select Board member Welch questioned it on August 18, pointing to the bylaw’s definition of “airport” and asking whether the pad belonged on the special-permit track, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Wants Drones Over 6 Massachusetts Towns. Not All Have Been Told. Westborough’s bylaw defines an airport as any area on a lot used for the landing and takeoff of aircraft on a regular or intermittent basis, and an accessory use as an incidental or insubstantial part of the activity on a lot. Which districts allow an airport, and on what permit, sits in the bylaw’s Use Regulation Schedule, which DroneXL has not been able to pull. Town staff told the board that Building Commissioner Bill Hezlitt and town counsel had reviewed and agreed with the accessory reading. No appeal was reported at the time.

If the schedule puts an airport on the special-permit track, the difference between the two is the whole fight. Under Prudential Insurance Co. v. Board of Appeals of Westwood (1986), a Massachusetts board reviewing a site plan for a by-right use can impose conditions but cannot deny the plan unless the problems are so intractable no condition fixes them. Planning Board vice chair John Gelcich said as much on September 15: “we are almost required to approve it.” A special permit under Chapter 40A, Section 9 is discretionary. The board that issues it weighs whether the use fits the district, and a no is a no the applicant has to take to court.

State law sets the clock. Chapter 40A, Section 8 lets any person aggrieved by a building inspector’s decision appeal it to the ZBA, and Section 15 gives them 30 days from the decision to file. Once filed, the board must open its hearing within 65 days and decide within 100 days, or the appeal is deemed granted. Section 17 then gives either side 20 days to take the ZBA’s decision to court. When the residents filed is not in the T&G account, and the paper says the hearing date is still to be determined, so the 65-day arithmetic cannot be run yet. The filing date on the town clerk’s stamp is the number that sets every other date in Westborough.

The appeal lands in a week that already slowed Amazon down. Three state lawmakers asked the company to pause in a letter dated September 28, which DroneXL covered in Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA, and Massachusetts joined 14 other states in the Second Circuit the same day against the FAA clearance Amazon’s site review would rest on. Amazon then asked the Planning Board for five more weeks, as DroneXL reported Friday in Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No. None of those reports, and not the T&G’s, carried an Amazon statement on the appeal. The Drone Delivery Tracker keeps the Westborough hub at in review.

Mass Blue Skies Is 13 Residents With a 1,200-Response Survey Behind Them

Mass Blue Skies, the Westborough group organized against the drones, is a core group of 13 residents formed after Amazon’s September 23 session, the T&G reported. The separate resident-run Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey passed 1,200 responses on October 2: 92% opposed, 94% saying they would not use it.

Those percentages have not moved since DroneXL first reported the survey at 853 responses on September 28 in Amazon Faces 92% Opposition in Westborough Drone Survey, Calls Urged. The survey calls itself unscientific and is run by a resident with no tie to Amazon or the town.

Dan Kline, a Westborough resident and Mass Blue Skies member, told the T&G the program would add noise to a society that already has too much and leave no sense of freedom and peace. “This is not something we want in Westborough,” he said, and framed the fight as asking residents what they want their future to look like. He also said the group feels it has momentum and wants a conversation.

The T&G put Amazon’s reach at 11 communities nationwide and the Westborough radius across 15 cities and towns, Worcester, Hopkinton and Sutton among them. It also raised Richardson, Texas, where residents organized over noise and overflights and an MK30 struck an apartment building in February. DroneXL’s record of that strike, which Amazon attributed to a GPS fault, is in its February 9 report, and it is the incident I asked Amazon’s Tareq Wafaie about in the Westborough ballroom. He did not address it.

Residents in the 15 towns who want to put questions to the company directly can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and choose “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can and cannot do once a hub is proposed. Amazon Prime Air has not said whether it will send anyone to the ZBA hearing, and Amazon sent no one to Thursday’s Select Board meeting.

DroneXL’s Take

This is the appeal I expected in August, when Welch first raised the airport question. Everything Westborough has thrown at Amazon since, the letter, the unanimous Select Board, the North Reading bylaw idea, works on the flights, and no town can touch the flights. The ZBA appeal works on the ground, which is the only place a Massachusetts town has any power. My read is that a parking lot built to launch up to 1,000 aircraft a day is not accessory to anything. Westborough’s own definition says accessory means incidental or insubstantial, and a launch pad is the principal use of that corner of the lot. Whether a special permit is the alternative depends on the use schedule the ZBA will have in front of it, and I don’t.

Singer v. Newton cuts the other way, and the ZBA should know it. A special permit denied on noise or overflight grounds hands Amazon a preemption argument it has not needed so far. The denial that survives is the one written about the land: whether an aircraft operation is a principal use of the lot, and whether the warehouse district’s schedule allows one. Nothing about the 78-pound aircraft with no parachute belongs in that decision, and the ZBA that keeps it out is the one Amazon cannot preempt.

Watch for the ZBA to post a hearing date. Under Section 15 it has to come within 65 days of the filing, so the posting dates the appeal and starts the only clock in Westborough that Amazon does not control.

Sources: Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Citizen Portal summary of the August 18 Select Board meeting, Boston Globe, Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey, Westborough Zoning Bylaw § 1.6 definitions, M.G.L. c. 40A §§ 8, 9, 15 and 17.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Neo 3 Leak Puts the Osmo Action 6 Square Sensor in a 193 g Drone

Haye Kesteloo — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 18:12:00 GMT

A leaked DJI Neo 3 marketing sheet lists a square 1/1.1-inch camera sensor, the same size and shape DJI put in the Osmo Action 6 last November. Leaker Igor Bogdanov posted the photo of the printed sheet on X on October 1, with the feature lines in Chinese and French.

The French side spells out what the sensor is for: native vertical shooting and 2x lossless zoom. The rest of the sheet covers palm takeoff and landing with one-hand gesture control, high-speed ActiveTrack with automatic camera moves, omnidirectional obstacle detection, the DJI RC Mini controller, SelfieShot 2.0, and fast startup with quick file transfer.

The DJI Neo 2 shoots on a 12MP 1/2-inch sensor and weighs 151 grams. The production listing Bogdanov surfaced on September 21 puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 grams.

Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News), October 1, 2026

The Square Sensor Is the Osmo Action 6’s, and It Explains the Vertical Shooting Line

The Osmo Action 6 launched on November 18, 2025 with a 1/1.1-inch square CMOS sensor behind an f/2.0 to f/4.0 variable aperture. A square sensor records portrait or landscape at full resolution without rotating the camera, which is what the Neo 3 sheet’s native vertical shooting line describes.

Shawn from Air Photography called it “not a full 1-inch sensor, but it’s pretty close” in his Osmo Action 6 review for DroneXL, and showed the aspect ratio being switched in the camera’s settings rather than by remounting it. On a drone, the same trick means a vertical TikTok clip and a horizontal YouTube clip from the same flight, both at full pixel count, with no gimbal rotation hardware.

Lossless zoom on DJI’s recent consumer drones is a sensor crop, and the Neo 2’s 1/2-inch sensor had no zoom listed at all. Whether the Neo 3 keeps the Action 6’s variable aperture is not on the sheet. Neither is a video resolution, a bitrate, or a flight time.

The Rest of the Sheet Matches the September Box Leaks, and the US Is Still Out

Nothing on the sheet contradicts the retail box Bogdanov leaked in September, and it names the same RC Mini. The RC Mini got its FCC grant on December 19, 2025. The Neo 3 itself has no FCC grant, so it cannot be sold in the United States.

The box back DroneXL went through on September 20 listed the RC Mini and three batteries and dropped the Neo 2’s separate transceiver module. The sheet’s fast startup and quick transfer line fits a drone with the radio built in. The Chinese line on obstacle avoidance reads “upgraded again,” DJI’s framing for a system the Neo 2 already carries in omnidirectional form.

Notebookcheck reported the 192.7 gram weight from a production listing dated September 21, 2026, roughly 28 percent over the Neo 2. The listing is Bogdanov’s, as is the spec sheet, so the weight and the sensor rest on the same leaker. His September record on this drone is good: the one Neo 3 image that fell apart last month was recycled box art with AI-drawn battery vents, and it did not come from him. The sheet gives no price and no launch date, and DJI has not announced the Neo 3 on any of its channels.

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that DJI didn’t design a camera for the Neo 3. It reached into the Action 6 parts bin and pulled out a sensor it already makes at scale, which is how a 193 gram beginner drone ends up with a chip larger than the Mini 4 Pro’s 1/1.3-inch sensor. The square format is the tell: that sensor exists because action-camera buyers shoot vertical, and DJI is betting Neo buyers do too. For a first drone aimed at phone-first shooters, that is the right bet. The 42 grams it costs over the Neo 2 are the only price on the sheet, and under 250 g they change nothing for the buyer. DJI never launched the Neo 2 in the US, the Neo 3 has no FCC grant to launch on, and the sensor that makes this one worth buying is the one US beginners will read about and not fly.

Sources: Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News) on X, Notebookcheck, DJI Osmo Action 6 specs

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Correction (October 6, 2026): This article described the battery vents in the circulating September 21 image as AI-drawn. A leaked DJI Neo 3 unboxing video shows the production flight batteries carry those slots. The image was still the retail box render.

DHS Tested DJI Against Blue UAS and Hid the Scores. Why Weren't We Told?

Russ 51 Drones — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:40:34 GMT

I think we just learned something pretty important about the whole DJI situation here in the United States. And depending on how you look at it, it might raise even more questions about how much information we’re actually getting from our government when it comes to Chinese-made drones. Before I get into this, I want to give full credit to Haye over at DroneXL. He published an article that I think every drone pilot should read, because he obtained a Department of Homeland Security document that was not part of the public report. And what is in that document is pretty incredible.

DHS Flew Blue UAS Drones Through Hudson Yards

Here’s what happened. The Department of Homeland Security, through its National Urban Security Technology Laboratory, has been testing Blue UAS drones for first responders. Those are the drones that are allowed to be operated by government agencies in the United States. They meet certain federal sourcing and cybersecurity requirements and are supposed to give agencies alternatives to foreign-made drones like DJI.

One of these tests took place at Hudson Yards in New York City. That is a very brutal environment for a drone. You’ve got huge buildings, GPS interference, reflected signals, RF congestion, all of the things that can make flying a drone in a dense urban environment pretty difficult.

They tested several Blue UAS drones there. But here’s where it gets a little more interesting. They also tested two DJI drones, the Matrice 4T and the Matrice 30T. DHS actually scored those DJI drones right alongside the approved Blue UAS aircraft.

The Public Report Left the DJI Numbers Out

When the public DHS report came out, the DJI scores weren’t in it. The public report acknowledged that covered-nation drones were tested and said there were significant differences between them and the Blue UAS platforms, but it didn’t tell the general public what those differences were, or even which direction they went. Instead, it said the covered-nation results were available to public safety agencies upon request.

Well, now we know what those numbers were.

The DJI Matrice 4T Scored 4.6 Out of 5

According to the DHS addendum obtained by DroneXL, the DJI Matrice 4T scored a 4.6 out of 5 and the Matrice 30T scored a 4.3. The Skydio X10D scored a 3.7. And the Parrot Anafi USA scored just a 2.4.

It wasn’t just the overall score. According to the addendum, the Matrice 4T scored a 4.9 for its regular camera, 4.9 for its thermal camera, and 4.9 for command and control link quality.

Remember, this is Hudson Yards. This isn’t somebody flying over an empty farm field in North Dakota. This is about as challenging an RF and GPS environment as you’re going to find anywhere. And the DJI drones performed extremely well.

A DJI Matrice 4 series aircraft with its auxiliary light on, in front of a fire engine. DHS evaluators gave the Matrice 4T a 4.9 for its regular camera, 4.9 for thermal and 4.9 for command and control link quality at Hudson Yards. Photo credit: DJI

One Matrice 30T Drifted Into a Building

There’s another part of this that we absolutely have to mention, because I don’t want to cherry-pick the information that supports one side of the argument. One of the Matrice 30Ts had a problem. According to the report, during a nighttime flight in a narrow urban canyon, it lost both satellite positioning and vision positioning. It dropped into attitude mode and drifted into a structure. It was damaged badly enough that it couldn’t continue the test.

That’s pretty significant. If we’re going to talk about how well these drones performed, we also have to talk about when one of them fails. But even with that incident, DHS evaluators still gave the Matrice 30T an overall score of 4.3.

The Disadvantages DHS Listed Had Nothing to Do With Flying

Something else really caught my attention. According to the DroneXL article, the disadvantages DHS listed for the DJI aircraft included cybersecurity concerns associated with being manufactured in a covered nation, and the fact that buying these aircraft benefits a covered nation rather than domestic manufacturers.

Think about that for a second, because it gets directly into something a lot of you have been saying for years. How much of this is actually about cybersecurity, and how much of it is about building and protecting an American drone industry? Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

This Test Doesn’t Settle the Security Question

I want to be very careful here, because this particular DHS assessment does not answer the cybersecurity question. In fact, the assessment specifically says it examined operator experience and did not evaluate or determine national security risk. So somebody can’t take these results and say, “See, this proves that DJI drones aren’t a security risk.” It doesn’t prove that.

But the opposite is also important. If we’re going to restrict these products because they’re supposedly an unacceptable security risk, then I think it’s completely reasonable for Americans to ask where the testing is that demonstrates that risk. And at the same time, when the government conducts an operational comparison showing how these drones actually perform against the alternatives, why weren’t all of those results included in the public report?

Maybe DHS has a legitimate reason. DroneXL reached out to them, and they said certain NUSTL findings are designated For Official Use Only because they contain sensitive operational information. Okay. But according to DroneXL, public safety agencies could already request these results from DHS. So I think it’s fair to ask why the scores themselves couldn’t have been included in the public report. I think we all know why.

The Cheaper Drone Won

There’s another number I think you’re going to find interesting. According to the assessment information, the Matrice 4T cost DHS about $12,958 and the Matrice 30T about $18,608. I’m not sure why they had to pay that much, because you can go on B&H Photo right now and get a 4T for about eight grand, but the government likes to pay more for stuff. The Skydio X10D was $28,382.

So put yourself in the position of a fire department or a police department or any kind of search and rescue organization. You’re not debating geopolitics. You’ve got somebody missing, or you’ve got a structure fire, or you’ve got a police situation unfolding. You need a drone that launches quickly, maintains connection, gives you a great thermal image, and actually works between buildings. And according to these test results, the much less expensive DJI Matrice 4T scored higher overall than the Blue UAS alternatives that were scored at Hudson Yards.

That’s not my opinion. Those are the scores contained in the DHS addendum. What is my opinion is that this information should have been part of the public conversation.

Test the Drones. All of Them.

Here’s what really bothers me about the entire DJI debate. For years, we’ve heard about the potential security threat posed by Chinese drones. We’ve heard about data security, supply chains, foreign adversaries, and protecting critical infrastructure. Those are legitimate things for our government to investigate.

But I’ve said this a thousand times and I’m going to continue to say it. Test the drones. Develop a cybersecurity standard. Make DJI pass it, but also make Skydio pass it. Make Parrot pass it. Make every drone manufacturer pass the exact same test, and if DJI fails, show us the results. Then we actually have evidence to discuss.

What I don’t like is making enormous decisions about an entire industry while relevant information sits somewhere that the people affected by those decisions can’t easily see.

This addendum doesn’t prove that DJI has no cybersecurity problems. It doesn’t prove that every American-made drone is inferior. And it doesn’t prove that every restriction on Chinese drones is purely protectionism. But it does tell us something we didn’t know before. Our own government tested DJI drones against some of the alternatives that agencies are being encouraged, or in some cases required, to use. And according to this addendum, the DJI drones performed extremely well. Yet when the public version of the report came out, those scores weren’t available. I think we’re allowed to ask why.

Where Do You Land on This?

Does this change your opinion at all about what’s happening with DJI in the United States? Do you think these results should have been included in the public report? And I think the bigger question is this: if the government believes DJI represents a national security threat, should it have to publicly show the technical evidence behind that conclusion? Or are there legitimate national security reasons why some of that information simply can’t be made public? Go read Haye’s original DroneXL article for yourself, because there’s a lot more in there than I covered in the video.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Russ. Watch the full video on the 51 Drones YouTube channel, and find more of Russ’s work on his DroneXL author page.

North Myrtle Beach Amazon Drone Vote: Staff Ask Oct. 20, Forum Oct. 7

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:57:00 GMT

North Myrtle Beach’s planning staff are asking the Planning Commission to put off Amazon’s drone launch pad a second time, to October 20, and the staff report posted Friday afternoon says a public workshop on the project has been scheduled for October 7. The commission meets Tuesday, October 6, at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers to hear the request, a minor amendment to the Palmetto Coast Industrial Park’s planned development district for a 13,627-square-foot fenced paddock behind Amazon’s same-day delivery building at 8651 Water Tower Road. The plans show six launch and landing pads, a divert pad, two banks of turn stations and an 8-foot barrier wall.

The city’s zoning administrator has classed the drone operation as accessory to the warehouse already approved on the site, which keeps the decision with the five appointed commissioners and off the City Council agenda. Staff found nothing that would preclude approval, and the report says approval would not authorize a single flight: Amazon is separately pursuing the Federal Aviation Administration authorization it needs for that.

The staff report gives the workshop a date. The city’s online calendar for October 7 listed only a parks program when DroneXL checked it on Friday evening.

Staff Want the Vote Pushed to Oct. 20 After a Sept. 22 Motion Was Withdrawn

Minor PDD Amendment Z-26-22 reached the commission on September 22, where an approval motion was withdrawn and the item postponed for more information and public engagement, according to the October 6 staff report. The recommended motion for Tuesday is postponement to October 20.

The commission may approve, approve with modifications or conditions, disapprove, or postpone. It did not take staff’s advice on September 22, when the packet carried a ready-made approval motion and five findings of fact. Assistant planning director Suzanne Pritchard told WMBF News the city wanted to workshop the idea, and that the FAA governs the flying: “I think the city absolutely does have a say in where they would launch from.”

Tuesday’s agenda carries a second Amazon item, Z-26-24, for building and site signs at the same address. Staff want that one postponed too, for revised plans, and asked that the signs say North Myrtle Beach rather than Myrtle Beach.

The Plans Show Six Launch Pads, a Divert Pad and a Jersey-Barrier Wall

The paddock sits in a paved service lot behind the fulfillment center, on a 19.73-acre property, and removes 24 parking spaces. Its 8-foot (2.4-meter) enclosure is 32-inch concrete Jersey barriers topped with metal posts and privacy mesh. Inside: storage containers, turn stations, pads.

The architectural set, dated August 5, 2026 and drawn by Timothy Lott of Arlington, Texas, labels the site SSC3-PADDC, the acronym Amazon’s FAA filings use for a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center, and adds an operations cage inside the warehouse. The application was filed on August 18 by permit expediter Burnham Nationwide on behalf of the property’s owner and was complete on August 28. No new building, access drive, exterior lighting, antenna or tower is proposed, and the fire marshal, public works, planning and zoning all signed off at the conceptual stage. Battery charging and storage get their review at the building-permit stage.

The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed Amazon filings for Texas, Florida, Detroit, Kansas City, Omaha, Baton Rouge, Chicago and Tolleson on October 2, and none for South Carolina. Since the FAA signed a nationwide environmental finding for drone delivery on July 28, a site like this one can be authorized against the national study with no local comment period. The operating numbers that follow are Amazon’s own, from its other hubs, on the DroneXL Amazon Prime Air tracker.

The 7.5-Mile Circle Reaches Atlantic Beach, Barefoot and Myrtle Beach’s North End

Every Prime Air hub in Amazon’s FAA filings serves a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius, about 174 square miles, with up to 1,000 MK30 flights a day. From Water Tower Road, that circle reaches Briarcliffe Acres at 2.2 miles, Atlantic Beach at 3, Barefoot Landing at 3.5 and City Hall at 4.9.

The hours in those filings run 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Myrtle Beach’s north end, around 82nd Parkway and Arcadian Shores, is 5.3 miles out, inside. Longs is 7.3 miles and the Cherry Grove pier 7.6, on the line. Little River’s center sits 9.5 miles out and Carolina Forest 8.7, outside. DroneXL measured from Water Tower Road’s position in OpenStreetMap, not the parcel, and Amazon’s actual delivery boundary can exclude any of these.

Grand Strand Airport is 2.6 miles from the hub. Pritchard told WMBF the FAA keeps a large no-fly area around the city and the airport. The aircraft is the one Amazon flies at its US hubs: 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff, a 5-pound (2.3-kilogram) payload, a drop from about 13 feet (4 meters) over the lawn, and no parachute in any FAA filing DroneXL has read.

South Carolina’s New Drone Law Leaves the Launch Pad to the City

Act 150 of 2026, the Drone Regulation and Public Safety Act, takes effect January 1, 2027. Its preemption clause, S.C. Code § 55-1-230(A), bars local ordinances that conflict with the act or FAA rules, then lets a municipality restrict drone takeoff and landing sites. The paddock is one.

Governor McMaster signed the act on May 15, 2026 after unanimous votes in both chambers. Until it takes effect, South Carolina’s only drone-specific statute is § 24-1-300, which keeps drones away from prisons. The state has no drone-specific trespass or privacy law before or after January 1; § 16-17-470, the voyeurism statute, is the closest general provision. The act’s § 55-1-210(B) says nothing in it supersedes federal authority over airspace, so altitude, routes and hours in the air stay with the FAA.

That puts South Carolina closer to Massachusetts, where Westborough’s Planning Board still holds a site-plan vote, than to Florida, where state preemption stripped Tallahassee of the ordinance a commissioner asked for. North Myrtle Beach can decide whether the pad exists, and on what terms.

Three Levers Remain: Conditions, the Noise Record and the File

The first lever is the vote, whenever it comes. Staff told commissioners they may approve with conditions, and a condition written into Z-26-22 binds the site plan afterward. Pad hours, a departure cap or a flight-volume report are proposable; whether each survives preemption is the city attorney’s question.

The second is the noise record. The FAA’s noise appendix for Amazon’s Baton Rouge hub puts an MK30 in delivery hover at 92.1 dBA SEL measured 25 feet from the aircraft, and at 63.7 dBA SEL under a 200-foot cruise pass. Amazon’s Baton Rouge operations manager told a Rotary Club on September 9 that the aircraft is quieter than an idling delivery truck. Both belong in the city’s file with their distances attached, because the nationwide finding’s 600-foot setback from homes is calculated on an annual day-night average, and a backyard is not.

The third is the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, S.C. Code § 30-4-10 and following. The Z-26-22 file, the zoning administrator’s accessory determination, and any correspondence between the city and Amazon about flight counts, routes or the workshop are public records, and the time to ask for them is while the item is open.

Who to Contact Before Tuesday

The Planning Commission meets October 6 at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers, 1018 2nd Avenue South, with a 9:15 a.m. workshop in the Planning and Development conference room and a YouTube stream on the agenda. Public comment is item 7. The chair is Silvio “Rocky” Cutuli; staff answer at (843) 280-5566.

Amazon’s Prime Air line is 1-888-280-4331, and the customer-service chat reaches the drone team through “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” A resident inside the circle can opt out of a drop zone through the same path once service starts, and anyone ordering from Amazon will see the drone option only if their address qualifies. The FAA takes drone questions at 844-359-6982. DroneXL’s residents’ guide covers what applies in any town Amazon is entering.

Richardson Approved Its Pads in 2025 and Learned What It Had Signed in 2026

Richardson, Texas approved Amazon’s launch pads in 2025. By April 2026, after an MK30 struck an apartment building and residents counted drones over their pools, the city concluded it had no legal handle on the flights, dropped a rezoning threat on legal advice, and now points residents to their senators.

Amazon told Richardson’s council in March the hub filled about 150 orders a day. Its FAA approval allows 1,000. Westborough, Massachusetts is the other end of the same process: its Planning Board has refused Amazon’s request to delay a site-plan hearing while 92% of 853 survey respondents said they oppose the hub. In Westborough Amazon asked for the delay. In North Myrtle Beach the city’s own staff did.

North Myrtle Beach resident Jolene Puffer, who also writes for MyrtleBeachSC News, told WMBF: “Once we set a precedent, something happens forever.”

DroneXL’s Take

A staff recommendation to postpone, a workshop with a date, and a packet that spells out what the city can and cannot decide: my read is that North Myrtle Beach is doing in two weeks what Richardson did not do in a year, and that nobody there is running a trick. The accessory-use reading is defensible, and the state law that arrives in January says the pad is the city’s call. The risk is the one Richardson shows: a city that approved pads in 2025 was telling residents to call Washington by 2026, because nothing attached to the approval said anything about flight counts or hours, and the hub it approved at 150 orders a day holds FAA authorization for 1,000.

I’m for drone delivery where the flight earns its noise: blood, medication, a defibrillator across a bay. A box of sunscreen flown over Barefoot by an 83-pound aircraft with no parachute, built to carry 5 pounds where Zipline’s P2 carries 8 at 55, does not earn it, and my reading of every collision on the tracker is that an MK30 that hits something comes straight down.

The commission does not need to share that view to act on it. It needs to use October 7 to ask the city attorney, in public, which conditions will hold, and to write them into Z-26-22 on October 20. The October 7 workshop has a date in the staff report and no listing on the city calendar; the first thing to ask for Tuesday is the room and the time.

Sources: City of North Myrtle Beach, Planning Commission agenda and staff report, Oct. 6, 2026, Planning Commission packet, Sept. 22, 2026, WMBF News, MyrtleBeachSC News, South Carolina General Assembly, Act 150 of 2026, FAA drone environmental review index.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Utah Rescue Captain Tells DC the FCC Drone Ban Will Cost Lives

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 16:42:58 GMT

Captain Kyle Nordfors, the drone coordinator for Weber County Search and Rescue in Utah, has taken his fight against the Federal Communications Commission’s “military-grade” drone proposal to Washington’s own newspaper. In an opinion piece published by The Hill this morning, October 2, he writes that the drones the FCC wants to pull from the US market have helped his volunteer team save an estimated 25 to 30 lives and cut its average search from four and a half hours to under one.

The proposal, in PS Docket 26-189, would bar the import and sale of foreign-made drones carrying a thermal camera or LiDAR, among other categories. Nordfors says that describes nearly every aircraft his team flies, including the one that found a snowboarder in the dark two years ago.

He also says he has flown the American-made alternatives, and none of them match his fleet. The companies positioned to replace it charge three to eight times as much.

Nordfors Puts a Price on the Fleet and on the Alternative

Weber County bought its entire fleet of 12 drones for roughly $90,000, Nordfors writes in The Hill. A helicopter costs millions before crew, fuel and standby time. The thermal drone in that fleet had eyes on a missing North Fork snowboarder in 10 minutes, hours faster than a ground team or a helicopter launch.

The North Fork rescue is one DroneXL readers know. Our December 2025 investigation into DJI drones saving American lives documented it: a pre-release DJI Matrice 30T found the snowboarder off-trail, after dark, with ice forming on his skin. Nordfors uses the same case in The Hill to make the point that the FCC’s proposal would classify that exact aircraft as military-grade because of its thermal camera, and the LiDAR that keeps it out of trees and cliff faces.

On the domestic alternatives, Nordfors is specific. He writes that the US-made drones on the market cost three to eight times as much and deliver less than half the capacity, with shorter flight times, weaker thermal sensors and less reliable performance in high winds and cold. “I have tested them, and none have been able to match what my team’s current fleet can do,” he writes.

The federal government’s own test lab reached the same result, and DroneXL published it yesterday. A DHS addendum marked For Official Use Only scored the Matrice 30T at 4.3 out of 5 at Hudson Yards, against 3.7 for the Skydio X10D, with the DJI Matrice 4T at 4.6, the highest mark of any aircraft in the Blue UAS series. The two DJI aircraft outscored both Blue UAS on all nine criteria. DHS left those scores out of the public report.

Nordfors briefs Weber County Search and Rescue team members on a search area from the screen in the team's rescue van. Photo credit: Weber County Search and Rescue / Pilot Institute

That is the same claim he put on the record with the Commission itself. His comments in Docket 26-189, filed on September 2 and published in full by DroneXL, named Skydio directly and said the proposal would set the country back an easy ten years. The Hill piece drops the names and the “blood on their hands” language and keeps the numbers.

The Record Shows 16 Comments in Support of the FCC

Nordfors cites Pilot Institute’s analysis of the docket, which found 98.6 percent of comments opposed the proposal and just 16 supported it. Pilot Institute, a DroneXL partner, read and coded all 3,824 filings with readable text; Greg Reverdiau walked through the method and the results on DroneXL on September 9. On the economic-impact question, 1,701 filings addressed it and one agreed with the FCC.

Nordfors writes that many of the opposing comments came from agencies like his. The proposal’s own economic analysis tentatively concluded the impact would be minor and contained because domestic production is more prevalent in the higher-end categories. The comment record, and his own cost figures, say otherwise.

He closes the piece with the same offer he made the Commission: come to Utah and watch a search. “See side-by-side how the American drones match up to the equipment you want to ban,” he writes.

Nordfors is the sUAS Team Coordinator for Weber County Search and Rescue and UAS Chairman of the Mountain Rescue Association, which covers more than 90 rescue teams in North America. He is a 25-year aviation veteran and a current Boeing 737 captain for a US legacy airline. He won the Unsung Hero Award at the Global Search and Rescue Excellence Awards in London in May 2025 for the drone work behind these rescues.

DroneXL’s Take

Kyle is a friend, and I have covered his team’s rescues for years, so take this with that disclosure. He is right, and the fact that he has to say it in The Hill instead of being heard in the docket tells you something about how this proposal was built.

The FCC asked whether domestic alternatives exist and whether the economic impact would be minor. A rescue pilot with an airline captain’s certificate answered both questions with numbers: $90,000 for 12 aircraft, a search time cut by three and a half hours, and a domestic alternative that costs up to eight times more and does less than half the job. Then 3,770 other filers said some version of the same thing, and DHS’s own evaluators put the Matrice 30T six tenths of a point ahead of the best Blue UAS at Hudson Yards and filed the result where the public could not see it. A month after the record closed, the Commission has issued no order, and Nordfors is still extending the Utah invitation in print, which tells you nobody took it. I don’t expect the FCC to argue with his numbers. My read of the December Covered List action is that the agency’s habit is to not engage with the public safety record at all, and this docket is on the same path.

I have been making the “drones for good” argument since my DroneDJ days, and the people who need to hear it most are the ones who still think of drones as toys. A retired FDNY firefighter laughed at the idea over lunch a few years ago. Nordfors’s piece is written for that reader, not for me, and it is the right venue for it. Congressional staff read The Hill. I doubt many of them read PS Docket 26-189.

Whether the Commission’s order, whenever it comes, addresses the public safety record directly or hides behind its tentative finding that only recreational users are affected is the test. If you run a rescue program and have not told your congressional delegation what your fleet does and what it would cost to replace, Nordfors just wrote the template.

Source: The Hill; Pilot Institute FCC comment record analysis; FCC Public Notice DA 26-758

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.