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

DJI Neo 3 Battery Goes to Three Cells. Neo 2 Owners Buy New Packs

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 02:55:00 GMT

The DJI Neo 3 flies on a three-cell battery. A label photo that surfaced Wednesday afternoon in the replies to Jasper Ellens’s latest Neo 3 post reads 1,800 mAh, 10.5 V nominal, 12.9 V maximum charge and 18.9 Wh. The DJI Neo 2 battery is a two-cell, 1,606 mAh pack at 7.16 V and 11.5 Wh, so no Neo 2 pack will ever go into this drone and no Neo 3 pack will go into a Neo 2.

Ellens, who writes for DroneXL, posted two photos at 3:02 p.m. Eastern from the same Indonesian owner whose videos DroneXL covered on Wednesday morning: the drone from the front on a shop counter and the underside of a propeller cage with its screws. He put them up to answer readers who asked how the Neo 3’s propellers come off, and to close the argument over whether the footage was AI-generated. Reader Ángel, posting as @gelon1983, added the battery photo two hours later and counted seven contacts on the pack against five on the Neo 2’s.

The leaked spec sheet never mentioned a battery, and it still lists no flight time.

The Neo 3 Pack Holds 64 Percent More Energy Than the Neo 2’s, in a Third Cell

The Neo 3 flight battery stores 18.9 Wh, against 11.5 Wh for the Neo 2 and 10.5 Wh for the original Neo. Its 10.5 V nominal and 12.9 V charge voltage mean three cells in series, against two before. Capacity is 1,800 mAh, just 194 mAh above the Neo 2’s.

The DJI Neo 3 flight battery label: 1,800 mAh, 10.5 V nominal, 18.9 Wh, built by Xiamen Ampace Technology. Photo posted by Ángel (@gelon1983) on X in reply to Jasper Ellens.

The label names Xiamen Ampace Technology as the cell maker and SZ DJI Technology as the authorizing company, cites China’s GB 42590-2023 battery standard, and carries a Thai TIS 2217 safety mark next to an importer line, on a drone photographed in Indonesia. The cell code along the bottom edge begins 3INP6, the IEC designation for three prismatic lithium-ion cells in series.

Ángel wrote that the pack has “7 pins instead of 5. So, yeah, new set of batteries once again.” He pointed out that DJI kept one battery across the Mini 3, Mini 3 Pro and Mini 4 Pro, and that the same pack works in the Mini 5 Pro. For scale, the Mini 4 Pro’s standard battery is 2,590 mAh at 7.32 V, or 18.96 Wh: the Neo 3 pack holds the same energy at a higher voltage and lower capacity.

No document yet says how long that energy keeps the Neo 3 in the air. The spec sheet Igor Bogdanov leaked on October 1 gives no flight time, and the production listing puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 g against 151 g for a bare Neo 2. The Neo 2’s 1,606 mAh pack is rated for 19 minutes.

Changing a Neo 3 Propeller Means Unscrewing the Cage Hub and Then the Motor

Ellens’s answer is that you unscrew a diamond-shaped part from the bottom of the cage and then unscrew the motor. His photo of two cages from below shows a screw in the centre of each hub and a third where the two cages meet, with the blades inside the spokes.

Two DJI Neo 3 propeller cages from below, with the hub screws Ellens says come out first. Photo credit: Jasper Ellens / @JasperEllens

On the original Neo the guard unclips from the airframe without a tool, and each propeller is then held by a screw that DJI’s bundled screwdriver turns. The Neo 3’s cages are moulded into the arms, so the blades sit behind the structure instead of under a removable guard. Reader Taison looked at the photo and asked whether changing one propeller takes eight screws. Ellens had not answered him by Wednesday evening. The retail box DroneXL went through in September lists spare propellers and a screwdriver in the Fly More Combo.

The front photo shows the Neo 3 on a glass counter at the same dealer, with a DJI Lito X1 box on the shelf below it, the gimbal camera in its cradle and dark sensor windows on both arms. Ángel wrote that in the owner’s TikTok upload, where the music sits lower in the mix, the Neo 3 sounds as loud as the Neo 2 at about the same pitch. Ellens replied that he is still waiting for a pocket drone that “doesn’t scream in my ears when filming.”

Ellens closed the post with a line for readers who still think the images are generated: if you are still convinced you are looking at AI, “you are pretty much in denial and nothing will convince you.” DJI has not announced the Neo 3, and the aircraft holds no FCC grant, as DroneXL reported on Wednesday.

DroneXL’s Take

The battery is the biggest change DJI has made to the Neo since it launched the line, and it costs every Neo 2 owner their spares. Three cells at 18.9 Wh is Mini 4 Pro energy in a 193 g drone. My read is that DJI went to a third cell for motor headroom, because the Neo 3 weighs 42 g more than a bare Neo 2 and now carries cages and a bigger sensor, and I’d accept that the airframe needed the voltage. The cost is a pack that fits nothing else DJI sells today. Ángel is right that DJI ran four Mini generations on one battery, so DJI knows how to protect an owner’s spares when it wants to. If you already own three Neo 2 batteries, the Neo 3 is a fresh start at the checkout.

Jasper Ellens (@JasperEllens), October 7, 2026

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.

Amazon Prime Air Is Hiring in Australia. The Job: Get CASA to Say Yes

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 02:08:00 GMT

Amazon is hiring a Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia, for Prime Air, and the job ad says the hire’s success will be measured by the approvals obtained, the timelines hit and, in the ad’s words, “Australian customers receiving drone deliveries.” The role is based in Sydney or Canberra and reports to a Leader, Prime Air Expansion, Asia Pacific. The ad carries no posting date. The Register described it as recently published on September 28, and SmartCompany reported it in Australia on October 6.

Australia would be Amazon’s third country outside the United States. Prime Air flies in Britain from a single warehouse in Darlington under a trial permission that expires in December, and Amazon stopped its Italian program in December 2025 after test flights in San Salvo.

The ad’s second sentence says Prime Air “evaluates Australia and other countries.” I read the rest of it as a launch plan: it names the regulator, the airspace rules, the certificates and the government offices the hire has to get through, and it lists existing relationships inside CASA’s drone team as a preferred qualification.

The Ad Lists Every Australian Approval Prime Air Would Need

The hire owns type acceptance and airworthiness certification of Amazon’s aircraft with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), airspace authorizations under CASR Parts 101 and 102, operating certificates, and the safety documentation behind them. Land use permissions for flight corridors from state and local governments round it out.

The ad does not name an aircraft. The MK30 is the only one Amazon flies. Amazon wants five years in aerospace or aviation, prior formal applications to CASA or another national aviation authority, and familiarity with the Specific Operations Risk Assessment method CASA uses for drone approvals. Under preferred qualifications, the posting asks for established working relationships with CASA’s RPAS regulatory team that can speed up Prime Air’s approval timelines. Airservices Australia, the air traffic agency, is named for route and traffic management integration.

CASA is the regulator that in October 2025 refused to classify the DJI Mini 5 Pro as a sub-250 gram micro drone over the variance in what the drone weighs on a scale. It also opened a 12-month beyond-visual-line-of-sight self-assessment trial that same month, which Sydney’s Sphere Drones used to cut site approvals from months to days. That trial runs to October 15. The ad has the hire dealing with CASA on airworthiness for the aircraft and with its RPAS team for where it may fly.

Wing Flew More Deliveries in Australia Than Anywhere, Then Left in January

Wing, Alphabet’s delivery drone company, ended its DoorDash partnership in Australia on January 16, 2026 and stopped delivering there after seven years, Australian Aviation reported in May. A Wing spokesperson said the company stopped “to focus on increased demand and the pace of scale in the United States.”

Wing once made more deliveries in Australia than in any other country, per the same report. It delivered with DoorDash in Logan, Queensland, from 2022 and in 26 suburbs of eastern Melbourne from July 2024. Before that it ran Canberra from a warehouse in Mitchell for almost five years, until the end of August 2023, when spokesperson Jesse Suskin told Region the company had no suitable shopping centre to launch from and faced Commonwealth airspace in the capital. Wing’s Canberra story began with a trial in the suburb of Bonython in July 2018, and a 2024 paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A credits the Bonython residents’ noise campaign with pushing Wing out of that suburb.

Wing’s current aircraft weigh 14 and 24 pounds (6.4 and 11 kg) at takeoff in its FAA filings, per DroneXL’s aircraft tracker. Amazon’s MK30 weighs 83 pounds (37.8 kg) and carries no parachute in any of its FAA filings. SmartCompany noted that drone delivery in Australia can need aviation, planning and federal noise approvals, and that any flight beyond the pilot’s line of sight needs CASA’s sign-off.

Amazon has not said where in Australia it would fly or when. The Register said it had asked Amazon which other Asian countries it plans to enter and had no response when it published on September 28. SmartCompany said on October 6 it had asked Amazon for comment. In the United States, Amazon says it will reach nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of 2026, a figure DroneXL’s tracker reads as every municipality inside the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle around each hub Amazon has filed with the FAA, operating or planned. In Richardson, Texas, one resident counted 52 drones over her house in a day.

Australians who end up inside one of those circles will have a different rulebook than Americans, but the same company on the other end. US residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331, and anyone with an Amazon account can open the customer-service chat, pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed, and the Prime Air tracker lists every hub, aircraft and incident on record.

DroneXL’s Take

I read this ad as a decision, not a study. Amazon does not hire a head of approvals to find out whether it wants approvals, and when the ad asks for CASA relationships that can speed up its timelines, I take that to mean a timeline exists. If Amazon goes, I think Australia is the hardest test Prime Air has taken on. Wing, with a far lighter aircraft and more Australian deliveries than anyone, left Canberra in 2023 and the whole country in January, and CASA would not round a few grams off a DJI drone to make a rule fit. Amazon would be bringing an 83-pound aircraft with no parachute, flying consumer orders, to that regulator and those neighbors. I’m for delivery drones when the flight carries something urgent, and a phone charger in 30 minutes is not that. Watch CASA’s airworthiness file on the aircraft and the federal noise approval, because I expect the hard questions to be answered there before any Australian hears the drone.

Sources: Amazon Jobs, Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia, Prime Air, The Register, September 28, 2026, SmartCompany, October 6, 2026, Australian Aviation, May 28, 2026, Region, September 19, 2023.

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

Laredo Police Vow to Take Down Drones at Hotel Fire. FAA Lists No TFR

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 01:55:00 GMT

Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez told reporters Wednesday morning that officers will mitigate and take down any drone flown over the DoubleTree by Hilton fire scene at 800 Garden Street in Laredo, Texas. The three-alarm fire was reported at 12:52 a.m. on October 7 and spread across several floors of the 14-story hotel. Four people went to Laredo Medical Center for smoke inhalation, four more sought care on their own, and nobody died.

Mayor Dr. Victor Treviño declared a local state of disaster at 10 a.m. that runs through October 14. Fire Chief Guillermo Heard said the building is structurally unstable, Treviño said officials saw cracks in parts of it, and the declaration cites a possible collapse, so the city is flying a drone of its own to inspect it before anyone goes back in.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s list of active flight restrictions carried none for Laredo as of Wednesday evening.

Laredo Police Will Mitigate Drones While the City Flies Its Own

Rodriguez told the Wednesday briefing that officers hold a closure perimeter around the hotel, from Jefferson Street south to Shea Street, while firefighters and engineers work the building. The perimeter could stay up into the weekend. Of the 203 registered guests, 115 had been accounted for by the briefing.

Rodriguez said drones could interfere with firefighters, engineers and other emergency personnel at the scene, and officers would step in if anyone flew one. “If they are flying drones, we’re going to mitigate the drones,” Rodriguez said, according to the Laredo Morning Times. “We’re going to take them down.”

Treviño called drone technology essential to assessing and investigating the fire. Out of an abundance of caution, he said, “a drone is being used to help assess the structural integrity of the hotel.”

Laredo PD knows the hardware. It runs a drone-as-first-responder program on BRINC aircraft launched from fixed stations, and in May its RAVEN drones found a burglary suspect hiding in brush. Rodriguez also said videos of drivers stopping on Interstate 35 to watch the fire were circulating on social media, and that the fire left him without enough officers to deal with them, LMT reported.

Federal Law Lets Local Police Take Down Drones Only With FBI Certification

The SAFER SKIES Act, signed December 18, 2025, and a Justice and Homeland Security interim final rule in force since July 1 let state and local police mitigate drones under their own authority. Each officer needs Mitigation Certification from the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center, a two-week residential course.

As of July 1, when the rule took effect, 61 officers at roughly 46 agencies nationwide held that certification, and the FBI’s drone program chief put the number trained since then at roughly 500 by September. DroneXL covered the numbers when 1,500 agencies lined up for counter-drone powers in September, and the 2026 defense bill that created the authority in December.

Certification is only the entry ticket. A mitigation needs a signed operations plan, a credible-threat finding, equipment from the federal Authorized Systems List, notice to air traffic control within five minutes of switching the system on, and a report within 48 hours. Uncoordinated mitigation draws civil fines of up to $100,000 per violation.

Neither the chief’s remarks nor the city’s statements on Wednesday said whether any Laredo officer holds the mitigation certification. In Wednesday’s statements and in DroneXL’s coverage of the department’s drone program since 2025, Laredo PD has described flying aircraft, not downing them.

No FAA Flight Restriction Covered Laredo on Wednesday Evening

The FAA’s temporary flight restriction list showed 91 active restrictions at 6 p.m. Central on Wednesday. None covered Laredo. The nearest Texas entries were a VIP movement and a security restriction in San Antonio, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) to the northeast, and both expired the same day.

A fire department or city can ask the FAA for a disaster-area restriction under 14 CFR 91.137, the rule used for wildfire TFRs. Once one is in place, flying inside it is a federal violation and most consumer drones show the boundary in their flight app.

Without one, the federal hooks are thinner than at a wildfire. The 2018 drone statute, 18 U.S.C. 39B, makes it a crime to knowingly or recklessly interfere with an occupied aircraft, and its companion, 18 U.S.C. 40A, covers wildfire suppression. A hotel fire with no helicopter overhead is neither, which leaves the FAA’s careless-operation rule under Part 107. The federal statutes fit when a drone pilot hit an LAPD helicopter in 2020 and when drone incursions grounded firefighting aircraft over Spokane in August.

DroneXL’s Take

Rodriguez is right about the airspace. Nobody flying a Mini over a burning high-rise with a collapse risk is doing anything but getting in the way of the city’s own drone and the crews under it, so stay home and watch the news like everyone else.

He is wrong about the remedy, and the gap matters because the law changed this year to make it precise. Taking a drone down is now a federal process with a named course, a named list of hardware and a $100,000 fine for skipping the paperwork. A chief who means it has one certified officer and an operations plan on file, and a chief who does not has a figure of speech.

Mitigate at a briefing can also mean finding the pilot and ordering the drone down, which needs no certification at all. I think Rodriguez meant the figure of speech or the order to land, because a department holding the certification would have said so. Either way, a chief should only promise the takedown he can legally carry out.

The tool Laredo actually has costs nothing. A request to the FAA can put a disaster TFR over Garden Street, and DJI’s app then flags the zone for every pilot in Webb County. That stops more hobby pilots than a threat ever will, and it keeps the officers at the scene on the right side of the same federal rules they are enforcing.

Sources: Laredo Morning Times, Laredo Morning Times, KGNS, FAA TFR list, Congressional Research Service

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

Worcester Asks If It Can Stop Amazon Drones. Shrewsbury Says It Can't

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 21:09:00 GMT

Worcester’s City Council on Tuesday night, October 6, asked City Manager Eric D. Batista for a report on whether the city has any authority to restrict or control the Amazon Prime Air drones Amazon wants to launch from its Otis Street warehouse in Westborough. Parts of Worcester, New England’s second-largest city, sit inside the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) delivery circle Amazon drew around the site.

Hopkinton’s Select Board voted the same night to organize against the plan. Westborough’s Planning Board, which reviews the site plan for the MK30 launch pad, had Amazon’s request to continue its hearing to November 10 on the agenda, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No. A residents’ appeal of the pad’s zoning status, covered in Amazon’s Westborough Drone Launch Now Hinges on a Zoning Appeal, is still pending.

Shrewsbury’s town manager said in a statement published that morning that Amazon needs no approval from the towns where its drones only deliver.

Worcester’s Council Added a Jobs Report to Rosen’s Drone Order

Councilor-at-Large Gary Rosen’s order asks what regulatory authority Worcester has over the drones and how residents will be consulted on the project’s effects. Vice Chair Khrystian King amended it to add a report on workforce impacts in communities with drone delivery, and the council approved it, MassLive reported.

Rosen questioned in the chamber whether local businesses could compete with one-hour delivery. “I don’t see any good coming from this,” he said. He had told MassLive on Monday that he was presently opposed, and told Spectrum News the service may raise privacy, environmental and noise issues, and safety issues for animals, young people and seniors.

Councilor-at-Large Morris Bergman backed the report but said drones could one day bring prescriptions to people at home, and that he did not know whether the city could stop the technology. “I don’t know if we should,” he added.

Hopkinton Voted to Oppose an Amazon Hub It Says It Cannot Stop

Hopkinton’s Select Board voted unanimously on October 6 to reach out to stakeholders and officials to oppose the hub, the Hopkinton Independent reported. Members conceded the town cannot stop it, though the circle covers western Hopkinton. Amazon did not answer Chair Shahidul Mannan’s invitation to attend.

Member Amy Ritterbusch said it doesn’t sound like the town has any jurisdiction, because the FAA controls aircraft and flight patterns, and suggested writing to Hopkinton’s state and congressional delegation. Member Matthew Kizner called Westborough’s role “a wildly hostile act.” Member Brian Herr pointed to the coalition of neighboring towns that formed against a proposed casino in Milford as the model.

Shrewsbury Says Towns Can Regulate Launch Sites, Not Flights

Shrewsbury Town Manager Kevin Mizikar based his answer to Spectrum News on federal preemption. “Commercial drones fall under the regulations of the FAA; thus, local regulation is preempted.” His town is now reviewing its zoning bylaws in case a company wants to launch drone deliveries from a site in Shrewsbury.

Mizikar told his Select Board on August 12 that the town keeps authority over the ground end of the operation, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Wants Drones Over 6 Massachusetts Towns. Not All Have Been Told. Tallahassee’s city attorney told commissioners in September that Florida law bars a city drone ordinance and limits what the city can do about the drone port itself. Castle Rock, Colorado, went after the ground instead and froze drone hub applications for six months, a move DroneXL covered in Castle Rock Froze Walmart’s Drone Hub 7-0.

In Westborough the ground fight runs through two boards. Wednesday’s reports from MassLive and the Hopkinton Independent do not say how the Planning Board voted on the continuance, and Westborough’s online Agenda Center had posted no minutes for the meeting by Wednesday afternoon. MassLive, citing the town website, expects the next hearing no earlier than November 10. Westborough’s posted agendas through October 15, checked Wednesday, list no Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on the appeal. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the Westborough hub as in review. The MK30 it would fly weighs 77.9 pounds (35.5 kilograms) empty and has a maximum takeoff weight of 83.2 pounds (37.8 kilograms) with a full five-pound (2.3-kilogram) package, according to an August 2025 FAA environmental re-evaluation. It has no parachute, as DroneXL reported in Amazon’s 83-Pound MK30 Heads To 500 Cities.

Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed.

DroneXL’s Take

I expect the city’s report to tell the council what Mizikar told Spectrum News, that Worcester has no say over a single flight. Bergman asked the better question in the chamber when he brought up prescriptions. A drone that brings medicine to someone who can’t get to a pharmacy is the case for this technology, and I’d want it flown the way Zipline flies its P2, which lowers the package on a tether from a hovering aircraft. Amazon wants to fly consumer orders over parts of Worcester with a 77.9-pound MK30 that weighs more than 15 times the five-pound package it can carry and has no parachute. I’m against that, and so is Rosen.

Sources: Spectrum News 1, MassLive, October 7, MassLive, October 5, Hopkinton Independent, Town of Westborough Planning Board agenda, October 6, 2026.

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 Flies in First Leaked Video on a Remote With a Scroll Wheel

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:57:00 GMT

The DJI Neo 3 has flown on camera. A 91-second video posted to X on Wednesday at 11:34 a.m. Eastern by Jasper Ellens, who writes for DroneXL, shows the unannounced drone lifting off a residential street in Indonesia, hovering over a row of potted plants and landing on the pavers, steered from the DJI RC Mini controller the pilot holds in one hand.

Ellens said the clips come from an Indonesian owner who has been posting videos of his new Neo 3, including a comparison with the DJI Neo 2 and a first flight. He posted them, in his words, “to end the AI questions,” after readers asked whether the earlier Neo 3 footage, including Tuesday’s unboxing video, was AI-generated.

The video also shows the one part of this kit DJI can legally sell in the United States. The RC Mini has held an FCC grant since December 19, 2025. The drone it is flying has none.

Jasper Ellens (@JasperEllens), October 7, 2026

The RC Mini Pairs From Its Own Screen and Carries a Scroll Wheel on Its Back Edge

The RC Mini’s screen walks the pilot through pairing with no phone involved. It reads “Connect to Aircraft,” says to press once, then press and hold the aircraft power button, and offers “Pair now” when the drone does not connect by itself. In flight it shows the camera’s live view.

Below the screen sit the DJI logo, two short control sticks, a combined return-to-home and pause button, an orange shutter button and four green battery LEDs. When the pilot turns the controller over, a ribbed scroll wheel appears on the back edge, next to a sliding cover and a hinged clip on the side. Ellens called it “a new control wheel on the bottom.” Nothing in the footage shows what it adjusts. On DJI’s full-size controllers, a wheel in that position tilts the gimbal.

The scroll wheel on the back edge of the DJI RC Mini, with a sliding cover and a side clip. Screenshot from video shared by Jasper Ellens.

The pairing screen, the sticks and the wheel are the first look at how the RC Mini works. The retail box DroneXL went through on September 15 only showed its face. The RC Mini AG, the pocket controller DJI launched for its spray drones in China last November, has a 1.97-inch, 800-nit display and three hours per charge. Whether the consumer RC Mini shares that hardware is not something the video can settle.

A reader asked Ellens whether the RC Mini could fly the Mini 5 Pro. “DJI should do that, but don’t know man,” he answered. DJI planned a pocket controller for its bigger drones once before: the RC Track leaked alongside the Air 3S in October 2024 and was cancelled before launch.

The Neo 3 Makes the Neo 2 Look Small on the Same Table

Early in the clip the owner stacks the Neo 3 on his grey Neo 2, and the new drone appears to overhang the old one on every side. The production listing puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 grams, against 151 for the Neo 2, or 160 with its transceiver.

The DJI Neo 3 stacked on a DJI Neo 2. Screenshot from video shared by Jasper Ellens.

The Neo 3’s cages are taller and its arms thicker. The top of the Neo 3 carries a power button, four battery LEDs and a small rectangular screen behind the gimbal that glows blue when the drone is on. The underside is ribbed with vents along the full length of the fuselage. Both details match Tuesday’s unboxing video and the spec sheet Igor Bogdanov leaked on October 1.

The flight itself is short and uneventful: a takeoff from the pavers, a slow hover a few feet up along a garden wall, a landing. The footage is shot on a phone from behind the pilot, so it does not show what the Neo 3’s camera recorded.

The DJI Neo 3 hovering over a residential street in Indonesia on its first flight, flown from the DJI RC Mini. Screenshot from video shared by Jasper Ellens.

Asked why the drone surfaced in Indonesia with no test program behind it, Ellens wrote that DJI’s smaller drones often show up early in Malaysia and Indonesia, and that it takes one or two people to treat an NDA unit like any other drone they can show customers. He has seen no sales date, and when asked for a guess he said six weeks. DJI has not announced the Neo 3.

DroneXL’s Take

The remote is the story now. DJI has spent two years trying to get a controller this size into pilots’ hands, and the RC Mini is the cancelled RC Track idea finally shipping, with a screen, a pairing flow that needs no phone, and a gimbal wheel on a controller DJI could have left as a two-stick toy. My read is that DJI built this controller for more than the Neo 3, and the reader asking about the Mini 5 Pro is asking the right question. The twist for American pilots is that the controller cleared the FCC and the drone did not. The Neo 2 never launched here either. Until DJI pairs the RC Mini with a drone that already holds a US grant, Americans get the approved controller and nothing to fly with it.

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.

Upstate Medical's New Drone Port Is Already Cleared To Fly To Utica

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:41:00 GMT

Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, New York, opened a drone port on Tuesday for Air Upstate, the program that flies lab specimens, medications and blood products between Upstate facilities. The program already has clearance to fly to Wynn Hospital in Utica, a hospital Upstate does not own, CNY Central reported.

Air Upstate has completed 8,838 medication deliveries by drone since 2023. CNY Central described the operation as running in partnership with Causey Aviation, the FAA-certificated company Upstate named as its drone operator in 2023. When Upstate announced its FAA waiver in April, its release described Air Upstate itself as the operator, a change DroneXL flagged three weeks ago when Upstate hired a former FAA official to run the program.

Upstate Medical University officials at the opening of the Air Upstate drone port in Syracuse on Oct. 6, 2026. Photo credit: CNY Central

Upstate Is Building Its Drone Program Around A 2027 Pathology Institute

Upstate is building its drone program around a pathology institute scheduled to open in June 2027. Robert Corona, the pathologist who runs Upstate University Hospital as CEO, said the drones will be central to the institute and can make deliveries in just three minutes, according to CNY Central’s report.

The institute, under construction in East Syracuse, includes a drone bay for recharging and maintaining the aircraft. Air Upstate already flies two routes. Lab specimens go between the Upstate Transplant Center in downtown Syracuse and the Upstate Cancer Center. Prescriptions go from the Upstate Outpatient Pharmacy to patients being discharged from Upstate Community Hospital.

Upstate Medical University President Dr. Mantosh Dewan called the opening a historic day: “We want to fly into the future.” He credited government support for getting Air Upstate launched.

Air Upstate Is Cleared For Utica, With Causey Aviation As Its Partner

Causey Aviation Unmanned holds an FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate. Upstate said in 2023 that Causey was the fifth US company to earn one for healthcare drone deliveries. Causey also flies Flytrex delivery drones in North Carolina and Texas.

Causey secured that certificate in February 2023, with Flytrex as its delivery partner.

Wynn Hospital belongs to the Mohawk Valley Health System and opened in downtown Utica in October 2023, replacing two older MVHS hospitals. It sits at the far end of the roughly 50-mile (80-kilometer) beyond-visual-line-of-sight corridor the FAA granted Upstate in February, a waiver that runs through June 2029. The aircraft built for that distance is already in Upstate’s fleet: in 2023, Upstate became the first US owner of the RigiTech Eiger, a fixed-wing VTOL with a nine-foot (2.7-meter) wingspan that RigiTech rates at up to 60 mph (97 km/h).

CNY Central’s report gives no date for a first delivery to Wynn and does not say whose certificate the Utica flights will run under.

DroneXL’s Take

The drone port is the photo op. Whether drones ever land at Wynn Hospital depends on who holds the FAA certificate for that run, and Upstate’s public answer has moved from Causey in 2023, to Air Upstate itself in April, to a partnership with Causey in this week’s coverage.

Michigan has the counterexample. Munson Healthcare’s medical drone trial in Traverse City was supposed to start its second phase in May with DroneUp as the licensed operator. DroneUp quit the project, and the flights were rescheduled to restart this Tuesday, with aircraft maker blueflite taking over the FAA paperwork. Hospitals buy the drones and stage the press conferences. The certificate usually belongs to someone else, and that company can leave.

Nothing on the record says Upstate has that problem. It owns its aircraft and holds a waiver through 2029. I’d still like Upstate to name the operator for the Utica run before the first flight, because a delivery into another health system’s hospital is where an unclear certificate holder stops everything.

Source: CNY Central, “New drone port at Upstate speeds transport of lab specimens, meds and blood products,” by Matthew Benninger, Oct. 6, 2026; RigiTech via UAS Magazine

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

Anduril's $3.7B Maryland Shipyard: Trump Adds Drone Subs, 40% Stake

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:27:00 GMT

Anduril Industries will spend $3.7 billion to build Arsenal-2, a 2-million-square-foot shipyard at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point, Baltimore County, Maryland. The Navy has awarded the company a contract worth up to $2.9 billion for submarine components, including torpedo tubes and doors, with payments tied to production. President Trump announced the project on October 6 at the site, a former Bethlehem Steel complex, with first operations planned for 2030 and 3,100 direct jobs promised.

This is Anduril’s second Arsenal. The first, outside Columbus, Ohio, was set to start building FURY combat drones in March, about four months ahead of its July 2026 target.

Trump told the crowd that Sparrows Point would build autonomous submarines. Anduril’s own announcement, published the same day, describes a yard for Virginia-class components and does not say it will build uncrewed vessels.

Arsenal-2 Starts With Torpedo Tubes For Virginia-Class Boats

Arsenal-2 will build Virginia-class components and large assemblies for final assembly at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, Anduril’s announcement says. Anduril president Chris Brose said the company starts with torpedo tubes.

Anduril's rendering of Arsenal-2 at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point, Maryland. Image credit: Anduril Industries

From there Anduril moves to more complicated modules and potentially full ship sections such as bows and sterns, Brose told reporters, Fox45 reported. He also said Anduril wants to hire workers without college degrees and use software to break submarine work into tasks they can learn.

The Navy contract pays on output. Payments are “tied directly to demonstrated production outcomes,” and Anduril says that leaves it carrying most of the execution risk. An industry official told reporters the federal money pays for what Anduril produces, not for the shipyard Anduril is financing. The administration is looking mainly to fiscal 2028 and later budgets to fund the contract, according to Fox45.

The work starts before the yard exists. Anduril is opening a 160,000-square-foot plant in Orange County, California, to prototype torpedo tubes and qualify its production for SUBSAFE, the Navy’s submarine safety certification program. That gives it a two-year head start on Baltimore, the same playbook it ran in Ohio.

Anduril’s Drone Subs Come Out Of Sydney And Rhode Island

Anduril already builds uncrewed submarines at two other sites. Its factory in Sydney, Australia, makes the Ghost Shark and the Dive-XL. A 150,000-square-foot plant at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, opened in late 2025 to build the smaller Dive-LD, according to Defense Daily.

Anduril plans a second Quonset Point line for the Dive-XL, which the Navy and the Defense Innovation Unit picked in March for an extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle program. Trump’s line, as Reuters reported it, put “autonomous subs, torpedo tubes, and critical components” in Sparrows Point. Anduril’s release lists Sydney and Quonset Point as separate sites in its production network.

Nothing in Anduril’s release rules out drone subs at Arsenal-2 later, and I read its “reconfigurable production lines” as leaving room for them. But the contract, the timeline and every component Anduril named are for crewed attack submarines. Anduril also has competition for Navy drone sub money, including a Philadelphia startup building Ghostfin attack drones in a former marble showroom.

Anduril Says The Navy Needs Up To Three Virginia Subs A Year, Gets One

Anduril says the Navy needs two to three Virginia-class submarines a year and gets barely one, and its chart puts today’s rate at 1.2 to 1.4 boats. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said in May the two-a-year build rate won’t arrive until the 2030s, USNI News reported.

Anduril's chart puts today's Virginia-class rate at 1.2 to 1.4 boats a year, or six submarines in five years, against a future need of three a year. Image credit: Anduril

Meeting the Navy’s fleet goals and the AUKUS commitment to Australia takes more suppliers working in parallel, Anduril argues, and Arsenal-2 sits between the two builders. By Anduril’s count it is about 300 miles south of Groton and 200 miles north of Newport News.

Anduril's map places Arsenal-2 in Baltimore County between Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News, Virginia, and General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut. Image credit: Anduril

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey called it “America’s largest shipyard since WWII.” The company’s own posts use a narrower claim, the biggest investment in a new American shipyard since World War II, and the boats will still be finished in Groton and Newport News.

Anduril's "The Shipyard is the Weapon" poster, released with the Arsenal-2 announcement. Image credit: Anduril

Trump’s 40% Taxpayer Stake Isn’t In Anduril’s Or Maryland’s Releases

Trump also told the crowd that American taxpayers will receive a 40% stake in the new shipyard, and he did not say how. Anduril’s release and its Arsenal-2 page don’t mention government ownership, and neither does the Maryland Department of Commerce announcement, all checked October 6.

Reuters reported the visit was part of a pre-election tour ahead of November’s midterms, in which Trump has been announcing or claiming credit for private investments and government spending.

Maryland and Baltimore County have committed to match up to 13% of Anduril’s investment through existing programs and new appropriations, some of which still need approval from the Maryland General Assembly and the Baltimore County Council. Fox45 put the full 13% at about $481 million, a figure state officials have not committed to. The state puts total support at more than 14,000 jobs and $2 billion a year in economic output, and Anduril’s Arsenal-2 page puts the 3,100 direct jobs at 2034.

Governor Wes Moore praised the deal in the state’s release but skipped the event. His spokesman said Moore was blocked from speaking, and the White House said he boycotted it, the Associated Press reported.

DroneXL’s Take

Arsenal-2 is a good bet, and its contract is the best part. The Navy pays on demonstrated production, and Anduril says it carries most of the execution risk. I’d like to see every drone and defense contract written that way, including the ones DroneXL covers every week.

The president described a different project, though. Anduril’s release and Arsenal-2 page support neither the autonomous subs nor the 40% stake, and the stake is the one that matters. Luckey is also co-directing the Pentagon’s Project Meridian future-warfare study, which DroneXL reported last week. Nothing I’ve seen ties Meridian to this contract, and that’s why the terms belong on paper. Until the Navy or Anduril publishes them, I’m treating the 40% figure as a campaign line.

Sources: Anduril Industries, Maryland Department of Commerce, Reuters, Associated Press, Fox45 Baltimore, Defense Daily, Naval News, USNI News, Anduril Industries on X, Palmer Luckey 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.

Wing Lists 19 Walmart Metros. Walmart's Hometown Isn't One of Them

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:45:00 GMT

Wing’s Walmart delivery page lists 19 metros, five marked “Now serving” and 14 “Coming soon,” after Monday’s addition of Denver and Seattle for 2027. Bentonville, Walmart’s hometown, is not on it, and neither is anywhere in Arkansas.

Walmart executive Greg Cathey said at the UP.Summit conference, Fortune reported on October 1, 2025, that Walmart would add drone delivery at a Walmart across the street from its old Bentonville headquarters and at a store in nearby Rogers. A month earlier, Bentonville’s Planning Commission had voted 7-0 to approve a Wing drone nest in 27 parking spaces at Store #100, 406 S. Walton Blvd.

13 of Wing’s 14 Coming-Soon Metros Were Named After Walmart Picked Bentonville

Of the 14 metros Wing marks coming soon, only Tampa, named in June 2025, was announced before Cathey spoke. Wing and Walmart added Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami on January 11, 2026, seven more metros on June 8, and Denver and Seattle on October 5.

Wing’s October 5 release named Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Houston and Orlando as places the partnership already reaches, and quoted Cathey, now Walmart’s senior vice president for eCommerce transformation, on Seattle and Denver. It did not mention Bentonville, and Wing’s Walmart page does not mention Arkansas as of October 6.

Bentonville’s Permit Allows a Wing Nest About 210 Feet From Residential Property

Walmart’s engineering firm, CEI, asked for two fenced enclosures at Store #100: a Nest where drones charge and park, taking 27 spaces, and an Autoloader where staff load orders. Flights would run 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, with the nearest residential property about 210 feet (64 meters) east.

City staff recommended nine conditions, including monthly reports of average daily flights and any NTSB-reportable events on request, a 24/7 emergency contact, property-line noise checks, a quarterly airspace meeting with city and Bentonville Municipal Airport staff, an eight-foot fence, and validity for one year from approval. The commission discussed the hours, the airspace meeting and the fence, then approved the permit 7-0 with no public comment, according to the staff report and minutes. The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported it that day as a one-year permit. Under staff’s recommended term, the permit would have run to September 2, 2026. The minutes do not restate the one-year condition. No renewal or extension has appeared on a Planning Commission or City Council agenda since (a staff-level extension would not need to), and DroneXL has not asked the city whether the permit remains in force. Fortune’s account of Cathey’s remarks a month later named neither the store number nor the drone operator.

A Wing nest seen from above: drones park and charge on pads inside a fenced section of a store parking lot. Bentonville's permit covers this kind of layout across 27 spaces at Store #100. Photo credit: Wing

The lot has hosted delivery drones before. DroneUp ran a two-story hub for Store #100, which DroneXL covered in 2022, and CEI’s application says the earlier tower was demolished when the store expanded into that area. The next line reads: “Walmart has changed to a new drone company, Wing.” Walmart ended its DroneUp partnership at the end of 2024.

The FAA’s Public Reviews List Only Zipline in Arkansas

The FAA’s national drone delivery assessment, signed July 28, 2026, lists Wing’s completed reviews in Texas, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina. Arkansas appears in its operator table once, under Zipline’s Pea Ridge hub. The FAA cleared that hub on March 24, 2026 for 400 deliveries a day.

The table, in the FAA’s programmatic assessment, is dated July 2025. The agency’s public list of drone delivery reviews, last updated September 24, 2026, has since added Wing decisions for Houston and Atlanta, and its only Arkansas documents are Zipline’s, including the Pea Ridge re-evaluation that places the hub in a Walmart parking lot. Walmart U.S. chief executive David Guggina said on Walmart’s May earnings call that its drone delivery covered 66 locations across four states, Arkansas among them, Retail Dive reported.

The Democrat-Gazette has described Wing as already flying here. Its reporter Serenah McKay wrote in January that “Wing also operates from Walmart stores” in Dallas-Fort Worth and Northwest Arkansas, wording close to Walmart’s own June 2025 release about “existing operations in Northwest Arkansas.” A Nexstar wire story in June and KNWA on October 6 listed Bentonville among Wing’s announced expansion plans. DroneXL found no Wing release, FAA environmental document or city agenda describing Wing flights from Store #100, though none of those records would necessarily show a launch.

A Wing launch would not need a public FAA review of its own either. Under the national assessment, a site that fits its limits can be approved through an internal FAA checklist without a new comment period, as DroneXL’s guide to how drone delivery approval works explains.

DroneXL’s Take

Bentonville wrote the most useful drone nest conditions I’ve read this year. Monthly flight counts and property-line noise checks are figures Wing has not given DroneXL: we sent Wing 30 written safety questions on September 8 and have not had one answer. Walmart’s hometown got a staff condition making those flight counts available to the city on request, in a single meeting.

If you live near Store #100, ask the Planning Department whether case CU25-0028 is still active and whether the city has ever requested a flight report under it. If the permit has lapsed, the next Wing application in Northwest Arkansas should carry the same conditions. Northglenn, Colorado, where staff expect a first reading of a drone hub ordinance on October 12, could borrow them too. I suspect Store #100 cleared its city paperwork and then stalled. Nothing public puts it among the 19 metros on Wing’s own list, and the only Walmart drone site in Arkansas with a public FAA record is Zipline’s Pea Ridge hub.

Sources: City of Bentonville Planning Commission packet, Sept. 2, 2025, case CU25-0028, Bentonville Planning Commission minutes, Sept. 2, 2025, Fortune, Oct. 1, 2025, FAA programmatic environmental assessment for Part 135 drone package delivery, FAA re-evaluation for Zipline, Pea Ridge, Arkansas, Wing, October 5, 2026 announcement, Wing Walmart delivery page, 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.

RayNeo GT Max Review: Flying a Mavic 4 Pro on a Truck-Sized Screen

Russ 51 Drones — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:37:07 GMT

I was not prepared for how much fun it was going to be to fly my DJI drone using AR glasses. These are the RayNeo GT Max AR glasses, and after flying my Mavic 4 Pro with them for just a couple of minutes, I can tell you this is an amazing experience. Every once in a while something comes along that makes flying a drone more immersive and more fun, and these are it.

Full disclosure: RayNeo did send these to me and they are sponsoring this video, but I have full autonomy to share my honest opinion, including the things I don’t like. And these are definitely not just for drone pilots. I’ve also been using them for movies, gaming and my computer.

The GT Max Becomes a Giant Screen for Whatever You Plug In

The RayNeo GT Max is a massive personal display you wear like glasses, with no camera on the front, and when you connect it to a compatible phone, tablet, laptop, gaming handheld or, with the correct setup, a drone controller, it becomes that device’s screen.

Each eye gets a full HD micro-OLED display, 1920 by 1080, with 10-bit color and up to a 120Hz refresh rate. The field of view is 59 degrees. The virtual screen defaults to the equivalent of 267 inches, and you can drop it to 85% of that or push it to 115%, which is the equivalent of a 307-inch screen. There isn’t really a 300-inch TV floating in front of your face, but that’s honestly what it feels like.

There is a little AI processing involved: the glasses convert normal SDR footage to look more like HDR, and in darker movie scenes and games I could see more detail in the shadows instead of everything disappearing into the black. RayNeo rates the brightness at 1,200 perceived nits with eight levels, and in a dark room, beside a bright window or out in the sunlight, I never felt they weren’t bright enough.

My Mavic 4 Pro Feed Filled a Screen as Long as My Pickup

I plugged the GT Max into the RC Pro 2 over USB-C and saw the live view instantly. Superimposed on my pickup, roughly 20 feet (6 meters) long, the image ran the length of the truck and stood about one and a half times as tall.

I’ve been flying drones for 10 years, and even an incredible drone like the Mavic 4 Pro starts to feel a little too familiar. This made flying feel new again. It is kind of disorienting at first, because in follow mode the screen moves when your head moves, but it only takes a few minutes to get used to. At brightness level eight in the sun, it was so clear.

I can also see underneath the glasses to check the controller screen, and over the top of them. I didn’t need a visual observer: I could look up and see my drone right there, 215 feet (66 meters) away, so I still had situational awareness. I will definitely be using these on a regular basis with the Mavic 4 Pro.

Follow Mode Got About 90% of My Viewing Time

I’ve used follow mode about 90% of the time. The screen can also be pinned in one place, or set to steady mode for riding in a vehicle, since it helps prevent motion sickness. Pinned is the way to go for gaming.

I pinned a giant monitor in front of me and played Valheim, one of my favorite games, with the glasses on. A whole new experience. On my MacBook, an extended display as big as my office’s back wall was very cool, but the glasses are pretty dark and my physical monitor was hard to read through them, so mirroring made a lot more sense.

The 78-Gram GT Max Stayed Comfortable Through a Whole Movie

The glasses weigh 78 grams, heavier than sunglasses, but thick nose pads, flexible arms and stick-on temple pads make them surprisingly comfortable, and I’ve worn them for a couple of hours watching a movie with no discomfort. I do wish the arms adjusted vertically, even one or two clicks.

Swapping the different-size nose pieces raises or lowers the glasses on your face instead. RayNeo offers small, medium and large sizes based on your interpupillary distance, so measure yours before you order. Mine is 67 mm and I have the large. Clip-on prescription inserts are available, and there’s a sample in the package.

The Bang & Olufsen Audio Became My Favorite Feature

The four open speakers are tuned with Bang & Olufsen, and they were the one thing I didn’t expect to be impressed by. They’re my favorite feature. They sound crisp and have a little bit of bass, which I don’t understand from tiny speakers right above your ears.

Because they’re open, you hear what’s around you, and someone close by might hear your audio if it’s too loud. Volume goes to level 15. I tested it in the video with the camera about two and a half feet (0.8 meters) away, and level eight is a perfect listening level for a car or an airplane. I don’t think the person next to me would hear it.

You essentially have your own private movie theater: in bed while your spouse reads, in a hotel room, or on a plane instead of that little seatback screen, which I can’t wait to try. Mostly I’ve used them on the couch while my wife watches yet another crime documentary on Netflix, and I watch the Vikings win on my own private screen. The RayNeo XR app on your phone can also convert some 2D videos into immersive AI 3D, and it feels like you’re inside the movie.

The Cable and Video Output Are the Catches, Not Deal Breakers

The GT Max needs a video signal, and a USB-C port doesn’t always output video. The glasses definitely work with the RC Pro 2, DJI Smart Controller and DJI RC Plus 2, and the only device in my house they haven’t worked with is one of my drone controllers.

Separately, I can’t confirm the GT Max works with the DJI RC 2, though I know other RayNeo glasses work with the RC 2. Do your own research before you buy.

They also require a cable at all times. It runs from the back of the arm, behind your ear, to the controller, because the glasses have no battery and take power and video from your device. I haven’t flown with a cable in three or four years, so it felt cumbersome at first, but I got used to it really quickly. With a private display that big, the cable is not that big of a deal.

After about two weeks, the standout for me was flying my Mavic 4 Pro. It’s a whole different way to experience a drone I already love flying, and that made these glasses much more interesting than I expected. Could you see yourself using something like this regularly? Let me know in the comments on 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.

FAA Raised Amazon's Omaha Drone Band on Paper. Its Noise Model Didn't

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:24:00 GMT

The Federal Aviation Administration’s final environmental assessment for Amazon Prime Air’s Omaha hub expects MK30 drones to cruise between 205 and 370 feet, up from the 180-to-377-foot band in the June draft. The noise report attached to it still models the draft’s numbers, with a typical outbound cruise of 200 feet.

FAA branch manager Joseph Hemler Jr. signed the decision on September 9, 2026, nearly six weeks after MK30 drones began delivering from Papillion on July 30. It was missing from the FAA’s list at the September 11 update cited in our report on the eagle buffer and noise complaints, and it was posted by the September 24 update. Neither the decision nor the FAA’s answers to 21 public comments explains the altitude change.

The FAA’s Final Omaha Assessment Expects Outbound Drones at 205 to 250 Feet

The June draft expected outbound MK30 flights between 180 and 279 feet and inbound flights between 279 and 377 feet. The final assessment expects 205 to 250 feet outbound and 325 to 370 inbound, and says its noise analysis assumes a 205-foot outbound cruise.

The noise report it cites says something else. Appendix E, consultant ESA’s technical report still dated September 2025, models a typical outbound cruise of 200 feet within a 180-to-279-foot range and an inbound cruise of 345 feet within 279 to 377. Its results are the draft’s results: en route noise of up to DNL 46.0 decibels at any location, under the FAA’s 65-decibel threshold, and 92.1 decibels SEL at 25 feet for a single delivery, from Amazon’s October 2024 tests at Pendleton, Oregon. Amazon’s Baton Rouge operations manager told a Rotary Club in September that the drones are quieter than an idling delivery truck.

DroneXL read the final assessment, the decision and the FAA’s answers to all 21 comment submissions on October 6, and none explains the change. Two commenters quoted the draft’s 180-to-377-foot band, and the FAA’s general reply describes the new 205-to-370 band without saying anything moved. Amazon has raised MK30 altitudes after complaints elsewhere: in Richardson, Texas, it lifted its average outbound altitude to 225 feet.

The FAA's map of the 7.5-mile operating area around Amazon's OMA2 hub, from the final assessment. The circle covers southwest Omaha, Chalco, La Vista, Papillion, Gretna and Springfield, and stops short of Offutt Air Force Base. Image credit: FAA

The FAA Answers 21 Omaha Comments With Its 65-Decibel Threshold

The FAA logged 21 comment submissions during the June 23 to July 22 window and noted general support in one reply. Commenters raised noise, privacy, wildlife at Chalco Hills, and low-flying traffic from Offutt Air Force Base and Millard Airport, and the noise replies rest on the 65-decibel threshold.

One reply goes further and says there will be no “ongoing noise monitoring of drone operations” once flights begin, because monitoring falls outside the environmental review. On local control, the FAA’s stock answer is that it does not choose where commercial drone operators fly from and that zoning is typically a state and local matter. On eagles, the final text keeps the draft’s conditional promise of 1,000 feet (305 meters) of separation from any nest Amazon identifies. Amanda Grint of the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District said in September that Amazon had agreed with federal officials in August to keep that distance from the nests at Chalco Hills.

Residents with a complaint can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 or use Amazon’s customer-service chat, choosing “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what else works, and the Amazon page on our drone delivery tracker now shows Omaha as operating with a September 9 decision.

Omaha’s Decision Opens Its Own Federal Appeal Window

The decision is a final FAA order open to challenge in a federal appeals court within 60 days of its issue, under 49 U.S.C. § 46110. Its “Issued on” line is blank. Sixty days from the September 9 signature is Sunday, November 8. That rolls to Monday, November 9.

Counted from the FAA’s September 22 notice of availability, the window would run to November 23, and the FAA has not said which date governs. Either way it is separate from the lawsuit 15 states filed in the Second Circuit on September 28 against the FAA’s national drone delivery finding, and Nebraska is not one of the petitioners.

The final assessment still describes Amazon as seeking authorizations “needed to integrate the MK30 drone and commence commercial drone package delivery operations,” language carried over from the June draft, and it does not mention the July 30 start. Neither that document nor the FAA’s review page, checked October 6, says which authorization covered the Papillion flights from July 30 to September 9. The national finding, which lets the FAA approve new delivery markets against one national study, was signed July 28, two days before launch.

DroneXL’s Take

If Amazon flies the new band, I think 25 more feet helps the people under the outbound routes, and I’d like to know who asked for it. The FAA wrote the higher numbers into its assessment and left the noise model on the old ones, so the document can’t tell a Papillion resident what the change does to the sound in their yard. By the time the decision was signed, the drones had been flying for nearly six weeks under an authorization nobody has named.

My position on the aircraft hasn’t changed. Drone delivery earns its noise when it carries medication or a defibrillator, and Zipline’s P2 is the reference, with a lighter airframe and a parachute. The MK30 has an 83-pound maximum takeoff weight, carries up to five pounds, and no parachute appears in any of its FAA filings. In Omaha it is delivering retail orders from a fulfillment center.

Sources: FAA Final Environmental Assessment and FONSI/ROD, Amazon Prime Air, Omaha, Nebraska, September 2026, FAA Appendix E, technical noise report, FAA Appendix F, public comments and responses, FAA Draft Environmental Assessment, Omaha, June 2026, FAA Public Involvement and Environmental Review for Drone Operations

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

Pentagon Picks 3 Lasers And A Drone-Frying Microwave For US Bases

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:37:00 GMT

The Pentagon has picked the four directed-energy weapons that will defend US military bases against drones for the next year: high-energy lasers from AeroVironment, Kord and Boeing, plus Epirus’ Leonidas, a high-power microwave that knocks drones out of the sky by the swarm. The Department of War announced the selections on October 5 for the pilot run by Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), the Army-led counter-drone task force.

Congress ordered the pilot in the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. The task force named five host installations in May: Fort Huachuca in Arizona, Fort Bliss in Texas, Naval Base Kitsap in Washington, Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. DroneXL reported in September that the weapons will run there for 365 days.

The announcement leans on an FAA safety assessment at White Sands Missile Range to call the program safe. The laser the FAA assessed there came from AeroVironment’s LOCUST family, the company says.

Three Lasers And One Microwave Made The Pentagon’s First Cut

AeroVironment’s Palletized High-Energy Laser, Kord’s Firefly and Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapon System are the three lasers in the pilot. Epirus’ Leonidas is the lone microwave, and the only pick designed to disable an entire drone swarm with a single pulse of energy.

AeroVironment’s entry is the roll-on, roll-off version of LOCUST, the configuration that downed drones from the flight deck of USS George H.W. Bush in October 2025. The Army committed to the company in September with a $464.8 million production contract for the 30-kilowatt LOCUST X3, the deal DroneXL covered alongside the Army’s claim that its border laser cut cartel drone flights 75%.

Kord, a KBR subsidiary, builds Firefly as a palletized, mobile laser. Boeing said in October 2024 that its 5-kilowatt system had downed nearly 500 drones in demonstrations, swarms among them, including Group 3 aircraft weighing up to 1,320 pounds (600 kilograms) at the Red Sands exercise in Saudi Arabia.

Leonidas has the most dramatic record. At Camp Atterbury, Indiana, in August 2025, Epirus says it disabled all 61 drones it faced, finishing with a 49-drone swarm knocked out in one pulse. The Army has bought the system twice, with a $66.1 million contract in 2022 and $43.5 million in 2025.

Ross Doubts The Per-Shot Price That Sells These Weapons

The pilot exists to measure what directed energy costs a base to own and run: the October 5 release lists requirements, costs and best practices as the data it will collect. JIATF 401 director Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross has already questioned the number the industry sells these weapons on.

That number is the price of one shot, which AeroVironment puts at $3 for LOCUST. Ross told reporters in August that the math leaves out the hardware, Defense News reports. Describing a hypothetical $6 million system that fires once a year, he said “you can’t tell me that that shot only costs 8 cents.”

More weapons are coming. In December the Pentagon will host a directed-energy shoot-off at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to test additional lasers and microwaves, and Ross has said systems that perform there can go straight to a purchase order.

The FAA’s Safety Finding Covers AeroVironment’s Laser, Not Leonidas

The FAA announced on April 10 that a joint assessment found “a high-energy laser counter-drone system” posed no undue risk to passenger aircraft. AeroVironment later said that laser was its LOCUST. The October 5 release cites no FAA finding for Kord, Boeing or Epirus.

The Army fielded that LOCUST as AMP-HEL, and during the March 7 test at White Sands it shut itself off automatically when a commercial aircraft bound for Albuquerque drifted into its tracking angle. The FAA’s statement says the same methodology will be built in from the start for systems used in the homeland.

That assessment was a repair job. In February, a laser near Fort Bliss fired at what turned out to be party balloons and the FAA closed El Paso’s airspace. Two weeks later the same program shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone because CBP had not told the Pentagon it was flying.

A microwave raises a different safety question than a laser, because its pulse covers an area. Epirus calls that pulse low-collateral and says Leonidas picked one of two drones flying side by side at Camp Atterbury, then dropped another inside a software-defined safe zone. Nothing the FAA or JIATF 401 has published describes how far the pulse reaches or how those zones will be drawn on a US base.

DroneXL’s Take

Picking a microwave is the right call. A base cannot fight a swarm one beam at a time, and Leonidas is built for the problem Northcom’s deputy commander admitted in August: his command cannot stop a swarm launched inside US borders.

But the paperwork does not match the pitch. In May the Department of War wrote that White Sands validated that “the systems” pose no undue risk to passenger aircraft. The FAA’s own statement says it assessed one system, and AeroVironment says it was its own. El Paso is what happened the last time the Pentagon got ahead of its coordination with the FAA.

My read is that each of the other three weapons, the microwave first, needs its own FAA finding announced in public before it switches on at a base with civilian neighbors. The Camp Atterbury safe-zone demo is a claim from the company selling the weapon, and the FAA should test it the way it tested AeroVironment’s laser, on a range, before the pulse goes live over a US base.

Correction, October 7, 2026: An earlier version of this article reported, citing Defense News, that Brig. Gen. Matt Ross gave reporters a four-base list in August and that JIATF 401 had not told Defense News whether all five installations named in May remain in the pilot. Defense News has since removed both statements from its article, and they have been removed here, along with the section heading that referred to them.

Sources: U.S. Department of War, Federal Aviation Administration, Defense News, DefenseScoop, Epirus, Boeing, KBR

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

Bellingham Police Pick Skydio for DFR, 1 Response in 23 Logged Flights

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:46:00 GMT

The Bellingham Police Department in Washington is running its new Drone as First Responder program on Skydio, a detail left out of both the City Council’s agenda bill and the Bellingham Herald’s report on it. The vendor shows on the program’s public flight dashboard, which runs on Skydio’s cloud under a “Powered by Skydio” footer.

A $475,417 state grant pays for it through 2028. Police Chief Rebecca Mertzig briefed the council’s Public Health, Safety, Justice, and Equity Committee on Monday. The drones sit at the police station, the city’s Pacific Street Operations Center and Bellis Fair mall.

When I pulled the dashboard on October 6, it listed 23 flights since August 19. One of them is tagged as an incident response.

A $3.7 Million State Award Pays for Bellingham’s Drones

The $475,417 is one line in a $3.7 million award Bellingham Police received from Washington’s Criminal Justice Training Commission, which the city announced in May. The money traces to House Bill 2015, the 2025 state law that created a $100 million public safety grant program for cities and counties.

The drone line works out to about 13 percent of the total. Among other items, the city’s May 28 announcement lists refilling three officer positions frozen in 2025, a new warrant officer, dashcams for every patrol car and new tools to stop pursuits.

The agenda bill for Monday’s meeting says the grant “fully funds” the program and lists the source as “CJTC House Bill 2015.” It does not say who pays after 2028. The same law lets cities adopt a 0.1 percent public safety sales tax by council vote until June 30, 2028, after which voters must approve it, according to the Association of Washington Cities.

The FAA Cleared Bellingham Police for DFR in February

FAA records released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation under FOIA show Bellingham Police received a public safety waiver for BVLOS flights on February 18, 2026, the same day the agency logged the application, covering the 200-foot shielded tier through February 28, 2030.

Bellingham is one of 20 Washington agencies on that list, alongside Everett and Bellevue police, Whatcom County Fire District 5 and Redmond police, who first flew a docked DJI drone to 911 calls in 2024. DroneXL went through the full list in August: more than 1,000 agencies cleared in ten months under the FAA’s expedited process.

The Herald cited EFF for “more than 1,000” DFR programs operating across the U.S. EFF’s report counts waivers, not launched programs, and Bellingham is the example. It held its waiver for six months before the first flight on the dashboard, and the state money was only announced in late May.

Bellingham’s Flight Log Shows a Program Still in Training

Twenty-two of the 23 logged flights are labeled as training or carry no purpose label. The only incident response came on September 30: a 12-minute Public Works assist. Mertzig told the Herald the program starts with four operators, and staffing it around the clock will take time to train more.

Flights so far run from two to 23 minutes, and October 1 was the busiest day, with six training flights. Across the state, Spokane’s four Skydio X10s flew about 400 missions in the first three weeks of its pilot.

The city’s DFR page promises a drone over the scene in two minutes or less and sets out the privacy terms. The camera stays level with the horizon in transit and tilts down only at the scene. The drones carry no license plate readers and never fly without a human pilot. Video goes into the same evidence system as body-camera footage, and the city says its vendor agreements bar Skydio from accessing it.

Other city departments will get the video, but “Only BPD officers will pilot the drones,” Mertzig told the Bellingham Herald. She pointed to the 2023 Harris Avenue fire as a case where a thermal camera could have located people inside the building. The department has flown drones under a separate program since 2019.

DroneXL’s Take

Bellingham did the most useful thing a city can do with a police drone program: it published the flight log before the program went fully live. That log shows a training operation with one real job on the books, and it is the only city record I found that names the vendor. Drones that reach a 911 call before a patrol car are drones for good, and a city earns the public’s patience for them by answering questions before anyone asks. I’d call Bellingham most of the way there. Two of the August 21 flights still carry no purpose. The city should label every flight and put the aircraft’s name on its DFR page.

Source: The Bellingham Herald, City of Bellingham agenda bill 25079, City of Bellingham DFR program page, Bellingham Police DFR flight dashboard, Electronic Frontier Foundation FAA waiver records.

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

Manna Adds Two East Tulsa Drone Bases Rated for 'Thousands' a Week

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:34:00 GMT

Manna Air Delivery is launching drone delivery from two new bases in east Tulsa this week, one at The Shops at Alameda near 21st Street and Sheridan Road and one behind Plaza Santa Cecilia at 2160 S. Garnett Road. A third base, near 31st Street and Garnett Road, is due in the coming weeks. The expansion lands eight weeks after Manna opened its first full-scale US base on Cherry Street on August 12, and two weeks after it and the Tulsa Fire Department presented a drone defibrillator pilot.

Residents within two miles of each new base can order from Sr Lucas, Baga Sushi and Cakes & Churros through the Manna app. Each base has “the capacity to complete thousands of deliveries each week,” CEO Bobby Healy said. They launch with three aircraft apiece, flying noon to 8 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday by FOX23’s account.

Manna Goes From East Tulsa Permit Filings to Launch in Six Weeks

Manna filed city permit applications for all three east Tulsa sites on August 25, the Tulsa Flyer reported, and two of them launch this week, six weeks later. The third, in a lot east of Citi Trends at 11215 E. 31st St., awaits what News On 6 called final logistics.

Each new base copies the Cherry Street layout of three aircraft in a fenced operating area with an enclosed structure. Healy’s quote in FOX23’s report praised east Tulsa’s small-business scene, echoing the line Manna’s own release used for Cherry Street in August.

Dublin went the other way. Fingal County Council refused its Coolmine hub on May 19, a decision Manna answered with a Trinity College noise study, and by July 1 the company had announced it was pulling out of Dublin 15, Dublin People reported.

A Manna drone lowers an order on its tether over a residential street. Photo credit: Manna Air Delivery

Healy’s ‘Thousands’ Only Adds Up on a Full Week With No Downtime

On Healy’s own figure of up to eight deliveries an hour per aircraft, three aircraft reach 2,000 a week only on the full seven-day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule: 3 × 8 × 12 hours × 7 days is 2,016. The launch schedule caps each base at 768.

News On 6 lists the launch days as Wednesday through Sunday rather than FOX23’s Wednesday through Saturday. The extra day lifts the ceiling to 960, still short of one thousand. Healy gave the eight-an-hour figure in 2025 for flights within three miles, crediting hot-swapped batteries, and DroneXL walked through those unit economics at the time. Tulsa’s two-mile radius means shorter trips, which could lift the rate. The same 2025 figures had one loader at an eight-aircraft base handling 25 to 30 deliveries an hour, which points the other way.

Every one of those ceilings assumes a three-aircraft fleet flying eight sorties every hour it is open. Manna head of operations Stuart O’Callaghan told KJRH on September 23 that the aircraft do not fly in heavy rain or in winds above 20 knots (23 mph, 37 km/h). Neither Manna’s Cherry Street release nor the FOX23 and News On 6 reports put a date on the full schedule. News On 6 says only that it comes as operations ramp up.

DroneXL’s Take

I’m for this rollout. Small bases in shopping-center parking lots, a two-mile radius, local restaurants, and six weeks from permit filings to launch: that is how drone delivery should arrive in a US city, and it is what Fingal’s planners refused Manna at Coolmine.

My problem is the unit Manna keeps selling Tulsa in. In July, Healy told a town hall he hoped to reach 20 to 30 bases, per News On 6. Now it is thousands of deliveries per base, a figure its launch hours can’t reach at Healy’s own rate. Manna’s newsroom, checked October 6, carries capacity figures and no Tulsa delivery count. Tulsans will judge the service by how many orders actually landed in their yards, and only Manna can publish that number.

Sources: FOX23, News On 6, Tulsa Flyer, Manna Air Delivery, KJRH, Dublin People

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

DJI Mini 3 Hits $269 for Prime Big Deal Days, Matching Its June Low

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:32:00 GMT

The DJI Mini 3 with the RC-N1 controller is $269 on Amazon for Prime Big Deal Days, $150 under its $419 list price and level with the lowest price DroneXL has recorded for it. The price is exclusive to Prime members, and the two-day event runs through Wednesday, October 7.

The same listing carries the Mini 3 Fly More Combo with the screen-equipped DJI RC at $600, down from $719. That box adds two more batteries, a charging hub and a shoulder bag. A month ago DroneXL logged the base Mini 3 at $315 for Labor Day, so today’s price is $46 lower.

Get the DJI Mini 3 for $269 on Amazon

The Mini 3 unfolded, small enough to hold in one hand. Photo credit: Billy Kyle

The $269 Mini 3 Ties Its June Low, While the Fly More Combo Is $119 Off List

Prime members paid $269 for the base Mini 3 during Prime Day in June, and nothing DroneXL has logged has gone lower. The Fly More Combo with DJI RC at $600 is $119 under list and $25 under its Labor Day price. Gizmodo recorded it at $449 on June 30.

DroneXL called $335 the lowest ever on Black Friday 2025, and Amazon has gone under that several times since. Today’s listing is sold by Yeehui Innovations and shipped by Amazon. Dealnews listed the $269 price for Prime members in a June deal that expired on June 28.

The combo costs $331 more than the base kit. The biggest part of that is the DJI RC, whose 5.5-inch screen runs DJI Fly on its own, so your phone stays in your pocket. The middle configuration, the Mini 3 with DJI RC alone, shows only a used unit at $399 today, and DroneXL’s Prime Day roundup had it new at $339 in June. DroneXL checked all three prices at 3:32 p.m. Eastern on October 6.

The Mini 3 Shoots True Vertical Video on Its Full 1/1.3-Inch Sensor

The Mini 3’s gimbal rolls 90 degrees, so it records portrait photos and video on the full 1/1.3-inch sensor instead of cropping a horizontal frame. Video tops out at 4K/30 with HDR, and DJI’s dual native ISO, at 100 and 800, holds detail in highlights and shadows.

A 9:16 clip comes off the card ready for a vertical feed, and the Mini 3 still sells nearly four years after launch because of it. Billy Kyle reviewed the drone for DroneXL in December 2022 and said “vertical video is here to stay at least for the short term.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Billy Kyle's DJI Mini 3 footage. Photo credit: Billy Kyle

DJI Mini 3 Specs: Under 249 g, 38 Minutes, 10 km and No Obstacle Sensors

The Mini 3 weighs under 249 g and flies 38 minutes on a standard battery. DJI O2 transmission reaches 10 km (6.2 miles) under FCC rules. Top speed is 36 mph (16 m/s), and wind resistance is Level 5, or 24 mph (10.7 m/s).

The camera behind the f/1.7, 24 mm-equivalent lens shoots 12-megapixel stills, or 48 megapixels in high-resolution mode, and records at up to 100 Mbps. 2.7K and 1080p run at up to 60 frames per second. Footage goes to a microSD card, and QuickTransfer pulls files to your phone over Wi-Fi at up to 25 MB/s.

The only vision sensors point down, for hovering and landing, so the Mini 3 has no forward or rear obstacle avoidance and no ActiveTrack. Live view runs at 720p/30fps, which Billy Kyle found a little fuzzy next to the 1080p feeds he was used to. The propellers fasten with small screws rather than quick-release mounts.

The Mini 3's 24 mm-equivalent f/1.7 lens on its three-axis gimbal. Photo credit: Billy Kyle

A Plus Battery Pushes the Mini 3 Past 249 g and Into FAA Registration

On its standard battery the Mini 3 stays under the FAA’s 250 g threshold, so recreational pilots skip registration and Remote ID. The Intelligent Flight Battery Plus raises flight time to 51 minutes and weight to about 290 g, and then the drone must be registered and broadcast Remote ID.

The Fly More Combo ships with three standard batteries, so the catch only applies if you buy the Plus separately. Every recreational pilot still needs the free TRUST certificate, and anyone flying for money needs Part 107 and a registered aircraft at any weight.

The Mini 3 received its FCC equipment authorization in 2022, years before the FCC’s December 22, 2025 Covered List decision blocked new DJI models. That is why Amazon can still sell it.

DroneXL’s Take

The $269 Mini 3 is the camera drone I’d hand a first-time pilot this week, because full-sensor vertical video on a three-axis gimbal doesn’t get cheaper than this. The $600 Fly More Combo makes sense if you fly long sessions and want 114 minutes of rated flight time with a screen controller. Buy it for that kit and not for the strikethrough, since it sold for $151 less in June. And remember this drone can’t see the tree in front of it, so keep it where you can see it yourself.

Sources: Amazon DJI Mini 3 listing (checked October 6, 2026), DJI Mini 3 specs, Gizmodo

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

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.