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

Ring's $250 Drone Cam Finally Ships January 27, Pending FCC Approval

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 03:40:00 GMT

Ring finally has a drone. The Amazon-owned company announced the Ring Drone Cam on Tuesday, a 165-gram flying indoor security camera that ships to US customers on January 27, 2027 for $249.99. It is the same idea, at nearly the same price, that Amazon showed as the Always Home Cam in September 2020, promised for 2021, offered by invitation in 2021, and never shipped.

The drone launches alongside the Ring Rover Cam, a $999.99 wheeled security robot for businesses, under a new Ring Robotics label. Both run on what Ring calls AI Pilot, which maps a building, suggests patrol points and flies or drives to them on a schedule or when another Ring device trips an alarm. Ring founder Jamie Siminoff presented both at a media event in New York.

Amazon’s announcement offers an email sign-up for the Drone Cam rather than a preorder. Amazon’s announcement carries the standard notice that the drone has not yet been authorized under Federal Communications Commission rules and can’t be sold until it is. Since December 2025, those rules have blocked new authorizations for foreign-produced drones and drone components unless they qualify for an exemption.

Ring Rover Cam (left) in an office and Ring Drone Cam (right) in a home. Image credit: Amazon / Ring

Ring Rebuilt The Drone Around The Cloud After Scrapping Two Designs

Ring started over about a year ago. Siminoff told The Verge the company had worked on the drone since 2016 and nearly shipped two earlier models. The new design carries little onboard sensing, and moving its brains to the cloud is how Siminoff says Ring got it under $250.

Siminoff described the earlier attempts to Bloomberg as “a vicious cycle.” Each added sensor or processor needed a bigger battery, the extra weight needed stronger rotors, and flight stability got worse. The last version DroneXL covered was the CES 2023 demo, which The Verge’s reporter says was about four times the size of the new drone.

The trade-off is the internet connection. The Verge reports that without Wi-Fi the Drone Cam can do little beyond landing. Bloomberg says an unconnected unit can still take off and land safely. Ring rates it at five to eight minutes of flight, and every minute in the air costs eight minutes on the dock, so a five-minute patrol needs about 40 minutes to recharge.

The Drone Cam records 2K video with a 148-degree field of view, and two LED lights switch on in low light. Owners set it up by carrying the drone through the house so it can build a floor plan. It works with Ring’s existing cameras, doorbells, sensors and alarms, and with Amazon’s new Alexa Home Map. The camera is off while docked, an LED shows when it records, and video uses Ring’s Throw Away the Key encryption (TAKE). Amazon’s release says the propellers “aren’t quiet,” and Ring is pitching the noise as a deterrent. A compatible Ring Protect plan is required for scheduled flights, and Amazon’s announcement doesn’t name the plan or its price.

Siminoff told CNBC that Ring has put “guardrails in there to make it so it doesn’t fly outside.” Journalists at the preview watched preproduction units fly preset routes but were not allowed to control them, according to Bloomberg.

Ring Rover Cam Is Amazon’s Astro Rebuilt As A Business Security Robot

The $999.99 Rover Cam ships December 16. Preorders are open on Amazon. It is a security version of Amazon’s Astro home robot, with a periscope camera on an adjustable mast, a siren, two-way audio, 4K recording while it moves and person detection while docked.

The Ring Rover Cam with its periscope camera raised. Photo credit: Amazon / Ring

Bloomberg reports it patrols for up to 30 minutes and covers up to 5,000 square feet. Amazon’s release says the Rover grew out of Astro owners’ feedback, and Siminoff told Bloomberg most of the hardware is unchanged. The new piece is a light tower that projects a ring onto the ceiling so staff can see where the robot is. Amazon has tried this market before. It discontinued Astro for Business in July 2024, and those robots stopped working that September.

Ring Says The Drone Cam Is Assembled In The US As It Seeks FCC Approval

The Drone Cam needs an FCC grant under a rule that, since December 22, 2025, has covered drones and critical components produced in a foreign country, unless an exemption applies. Siminoff told The Verge the drone “does comply with” FCC regulations and is assembled in the US.

Ring told The Verge its FCC certification is in process, and the outlet notes that new gadgets routinely go through it before launch. CNBC reports the January ship date is pending FCC approval.

The same rule is why no new DJI aircraft can be certified for the US. The determination the FCC adopted lists flight controllers, navigation systems, batteries, motors, and sensors and cameras among critical components, and says the list is not exhaustive. Under the FCC’s guidance, a drone assembled in the US that contains foreign parts still qualifies if it is on the Blue UAS list or meets the Buy America standard of at least 65 percent domestic component value, exemptions now extended to January 1, 2028. Amazon’s announcement and the Verge, Bloomberg and CNBC reports do not say where the Drone Cam’s components are made or which path Ring is using.

The FCC has also shown it will pull a grant it later decides was issued in error. In August it told DroneXL the HOVERAir VERSA’s certification was granted in error, directed the company to stop sales, and said it was sending guidance to every certification body to strengthen its Covered List due diligence. Nothing in the public record suggests a problem with Ring’s application. The rule also leaves a door open: the Department of War or Homeland Security can clear a specific drone, class of drones or component, as the Department of War did in January for Blue UAS-listed hardware and Buy America products.

DroneXL’s Take

Amazon’s drones run late, and Ring’s is no exception. Jeff Bezos told 60 Minutes in December 2013 that drone delivery could be four or five years away. Nearly 13 years later, Prime Air flies in 13 US metros by DroneXL’s count, and Amazon paused deliveries twice in 2025. Ring showed its home drone in 2020 for a 2021 launch, and the new version is due January 27, 2027. I’d rather Amazon ship flying hardware late than ship it broken, and by Siminoff’s account, Ring dropping two designs it nearly shipped counts in its favor.

Ring should tell buyers where the Drone Cam’s parts are made, beyond the final assembly Siminoff says happens in the US. If Ring is relying on the 65 percent domestic-content test, it should say which components come from where and show the numbers. If it needs a Department of War or DHS exemption, that’s fine too, as long as the same path is open to every other drone maker. My read is that how the FCC handles a 165-gram Amazon camera will tell hobbyists whether the Covered List is applied the same way to every company. If the Drone Cam ships on January 27, a grant has to exist first, and it will be listed in the FCC’s public equipment authorization database, where anyone can look it up.

Sources: Amazon, Bloomberg, The Verge, CNBC, CBS 60 Minutes

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

Skydio CEO Adam Bry Says Skydio Will Outsell DJI in the US This Year

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 03:05:00 GMT

Skydio CEO Adam Bry says his company will do more sales to US civilian customers than DJI this year, calling it “a pretty staggering fact” in an hour-long interview with Ti Morse’s Relentless channel published November 8, 2026. Bry recorded it inside Skydio’s factory, which he says will triple its output this year.

Bry also said DJI has copied “a huge number” of the things Skydio does, and that a battery-swapping dock adds value only “if it’s free and it’s perfectly reliable.” DJI launched its first battery-swapping dock, Dock 4, on October 14.

Bry Says Skydio Wins on Professional Sales Against a DJI That Still Sells Here

Bry’s claim covers US civilian sales only, and he says it rests on “the best available public data” about DJI plus Skydio’s own numbers. He stressed that DJI still sells drones in the US and competes with Skydio head-to-head, even though it cannot launch new models here.

He did not say which public data he used, or give a dollar or unit figure for either company. DJI, a private company, does not publish US sales figures.

Bry opened the interview by correcting his host, who said DJI cannot sell in the US. “This is not broadly understood,” he said. The FCC added DJI and all foreign-made drones to its Covered List on December 22, 2025, which blocks new FCC authorizations while leaving older models on sale. That is why the Dock 4 and Matrice 5TD launched in October with radio approvals listed for Canada, Europe, China and Japan, and none for the FCC.

Bry gave three reasons for Skydio’s lead. Skydio has “basically zero” consumer sales and, as he understands it, most of DJI’s revenue is consumer, so the comparison is fought on professional ground. He said Skydio benefits from an “overwhelming preference” among its customers to buy American. And he credited the shift from hand-flown drones to dock-based systems, which Skydio began investing in heavily around 2021, when there was no market for docks and the company was, in his words, “wildly unprofitable.”

Bry Says DJI Copied Skydio. Skydio Showed a Dock First, DJI Had Vision First

Bry said DJI copied Skydio’s fisheye, computer-vision-centric drone design, and that Skydio showed a dock before DJI announced one. The dock dates hold up. Skydio unveiled its Skydio 2 Dock in October 2019, and DJI announced its first Dock in March 2022.

Bry was mild about it. DJI products “kind of look similar today,” he said, adding, “that’s just the way it goes.” Neither company reached market much ahead of the other. Skydio’s 2019 dock led to the Skydio Dock and Dock Lite, launched in December 2022. DJI slated its first Dock, unveiled with the Matrice 30, for sale from the fourth quarter of 2022.

The vision claim holds up less well. DJI’s Phantom 4, launched March 1, 2016, was billed by DJI as the first consumer quadcopter camera to use “highly advanced computer vision and sensing technology,” which it used to sense and steer around obstacles. Skydio’s first drone, the R1, shipped two years later. Skydio pushed vision-based autonomy much further with its fisheye navigation cameras, but DJI was selling a drone that steered by computer vision first.

Bry’s verdict on the R1 itself was unsparing: “technology marvel but commercial failure.”

Bry Says Battery Swapping Costs Reliability, and DJI’s Dock 4 Bets Otherwise

Ti Morse recounted an off-camera meeting where, by his account, Bry said swapping would add about 5% to flight time in few of Skydio’s use cases. On camera, Bry said swapping adds some value “if it’s free and it’s perfectly reliable,” but the extra mechanism costs money and reliability.

Morse said several companies, “I think DJI included,” are building such docks. Bry did not mention Dock 4. DJI’s Dock 4 swaps the Matrice 5TD’s battery in 25 seconds and turns the aircraft around from landing to takeoff in 45, with a Task Relay mode that alternates two aircraft over one scene. Skydio’s F10 MegaDock handles continuous coverage with more aircraft instead: it holds up to five fixed-wing drones and keeps three in the air while two charge.

Skydio’s customers outside the military fly about 40,000 flights a week, Bry said, a number doubling year over year. The interview cites no published data behind the battery-swap estimate, so it can’t be checked from outside Skydio. US police departments can’t test the other approach either, because Dock 4 has no FCC authorization.

China’s Sanctions Cost Skydio Batteries, and Bry Says It Gained Flight Time

Bry said Chinese officials shut down Skydio’s battery supplier and seized its equipment on the day of the October 2024 sanctions, cutting Skydio to one battery per drone. Replacement cells sourced from the US and allied countries added “a couple minutes in flight time,” he said.

DroneXL reported the battery rationing in October 2024, with Dongguan Poweramp as Skydio’s sole battery supplier. Bry also disclosed an internal split. One camp at Skydio wanted to work with the US government to “get some relief here and maybe broker some kind of deal.” Bry said he took the other side, treating the sanctions as a reason to cut China out faster.

He called Skydio’s supply chain, now at what he described as zero China dependence, “still a kind of fragile endeavor.” Skydio plans to spend about $1 billion with US suppliers over five years, part of the $3.5 billion US investment it announced in April.

DroneXL’s Take

Bry said the rise of OpenAI and Anthropic has been great for Google, because a real rival forced it to focus. He wants Skydio “to be winning against the best,” whether or not DJI can sell in the US. I agree, and it’s the best line in the interview.

It’s also why the US sales claim tells us less than Bry thinks. By his own account Skydio is beating the best in a market where the best can’t ship its new hardware, while DJI’s battery-swapping Dock 4 is already being tested by Polish mountain rescuers. Morse opened the interview by recalling Bry’s talk of expanding overseas faster to meet DJI head-to-head. That’s the scoreboard I’d watch, because outside the US both companies are selling their newest drones.

Source: Relentless, “Outcompeting DJI | Adam Bry, Skydio” (YouTube, November 8, 2026), Skydio, DJI, FCC.

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

FAA Touts 2.2 Million UTM Drone Flights at AUVSI. Part 108 Still Waits

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 02:33:00 GMT

The FAA told AUVSI’s Drone & AAM Policy Symposium in Washington this week that drone traffic management is no longer an experiment. Jessica Jones, executive director of the agency’s Office of Advanced Aviation Technologies, said 2.2 million flights have gone through strategic deconfliction under UAS Traffic Management (UTM) since January.

Acting Deputy Administrator Liam McKenna, the Day 1 keynote at Nationals Park, said the FAA has started looking at how it certifies aircraft and how it writes rules. The two-day event, which also produced a new AUVSI CEO, closed on Tuesday, November 10.

Neither official gave a date for Part 108, the rule that would make beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight routine, beyond the message that action would come soon. Congress set December 7 as its deadline.

FAA Says UTM Already Runs at Scale Before Any BVLOS Rule

Jones presented the 2.2 million deconflicted flights as proof that drone integration has moved past research, according to Autonomy Global’s report from the room. “UTM is here and it’s now,” she said. The report does not say which operators or programs the figure covers.

Jones also said the agency has seen too little data sharing because developers test in isolation, and she asked them to bring the FAA in early and use its test sites. Two of those sites, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Indiana, were added in January, the first new designations in nearly a decade. McKenna made the same pitch to counter-drone makers when he described the interagency counter-UAS agreement on stage, the day DHS announced it.

NASA’s Parimal “PK” Kopardekar, who shared the stage, described wildfire research that takes the agency’s UTM work into portable airspace management. The aim is to let responders plan and deconflict drone flights around the clock, including when smoke or darkness limits conventional aerial operations, and NASA plans to move the technology toward broader use by states and industry.

McKenna Opens a Type Certification Rethink With No Timetable

McKenna said the FAA has begun examining changes to aircraft type certification. Neither safety nor innovation, he argued, justifies “a process that takes this long that is this cumbersome.” The work is early: he announced no reform package and no timetable, and asked industry for feedback, especially on eVTOL.

He also listed rulemaking changes under consideration. They include shorter rules, a faster path from concept to publication, artificial intelligence to help with research and comment review, and more transparency between a proposed rule and the final version.

None of that touches the rules already in the pipeline: Part 108, Part 149 and the Section 2209 limits on drone flights over critical infrastructure. Officials put no date on any of them.

Part 108 Has Sat at the White House Since July 10

The final Part 108 rule, titled “Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations,” is still listed as pending at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The OIRA review list dated November 10 shows it received on July 10 with a statutory deadline.

While the rule sits there, its publication date is a White House call as much as an FAA one. The statutory deadline is December 7, 16 months after the August 2025 proposal, as set by the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act. The long-range approval the FAA announced on Monday, the Skyways flight from a Shell facility to a Gulf platform, came through a Section 927 waiver, one operator at a time, because Part 108 does not exist yet.

The FAA’s own $12 million research round for its test sites, announced in October, is also meant to generate data for a rule that has not been published.

DroneXL’s Take

The FAA brought the best argument for Part 108 to AUVSI itself, and then left it on the stage. If 2.2 million flights have been deconflicted through UTM this year, the agency is telling industry that the airspace management Part 108 depends on already works, and operators flying waiver to waiver should not have to wait on a White House desk to use it. I’m glad McKenna is questioning how long type certification takes, and his own words concede the process is slow. But a certification rethink with no timetable is a promise, and Part 108 is already written and under White House review. The test of this week’s talk about faster rules is December 7. If the rule is not out by then, every number the FAA put on that stage is an argument against the administration’s own delay.

Sources: Autonomy Global, OIRA review list (reginfo.gov), AUVSI symposium program.

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

HOVERAir VERSA Goes On Sale In Europe And Canada, But Not The US

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 23:46:00 GMT

HOVERAir put the VERSA on sale today, November 10, through its own web stores, Amazon and retail partners. The 2-in-1 camera costs €499 (£429) on its own, and the FlySmart bundle that adds the clip-on Flight Kit costs €599 (£519). HOVERAir’s price list also covers Australia and its Canadian store.

The United States is not on that list. A US visitor who clicks Shop on hoverair.com is sent to HOVERAir’s global store, set to Canada, and the company’s own price sheet says “VERSA is currently not available in the US.”

VERSA Packs A Flying Camera Into A 163-Gram Handheld

In handheld mode the VERSA weighs 163 grams and shoots 4K at 60 frames per second on a 1/1.3-inch sensor through a 3-axis mechanical gimbal. Snapping on the 67-gram Flight Kit turns it into a 230-gram self-flying camera rated for 14 minutes in the air.

Without the Flight Kit, the VERSA is a pocket gimbal camera with a flip screen. Photo credit: HOVERAir

Co-founder MQ Wang, in a background interview HOVERAir sent out with its launch kit, spends much of it on the joint between the two halves. The patent-pending MagLatch mount went through 5,000 attach cycles plus vibration, pull and torsion tests so the propeller cages stay attached at up to 22 mph (36 km/h) and in Level 5 winds. The pogo pins, rated for up to 5 amps, took nearly two years of custom work.

The VERSA camera docks into the Flight Kit through HOVERAir's MagLatch mount and its pogo-pin power contacts. Photo credit: HOVERAir

The camera runs on a 4-nanometer chip with no fan. It cools passively in the hand and from propeller airflow in flight, which Wang says keeps fan noise off the built-in microphone. A 2,070 mAh swappable battery covers both modes, good for up to three hours of handheld recording or one 14-minute flight. HOVERAir rates the sensor at up to 17.5 stops of dynamic range, a figure from its own spec sheet, and its 3D Worlds mode flies a 360-degree path to build a scene with Gaussian splatting.

Wang’s case for the product is that most people don’t want to become drone pilots, they want the aerial perspective. The VERSA puts that idea inside a camera people carry whether they plan to fly or not.

The FCC Said In August That Even The Camera Alone Is Covered

HOVERAir’s price sheet does not give a reason. In August, the FCC set aside the VERSA’s equipment authorization days after Indiegogo pre-orders opened. It said the camera alone is a prohibited UAS critical component under its Covered List and the camera with the Flight Kit is a foreign-made drone.

DroneXL initially reported on August 18 that the VERSA had cleared the FCC, based on HOVERAir’s statement and a grant that appeared in the agency’s database. ZeroZero Robotics had sought authorization for the camera alone, with the propeller cages treated as an accessory. The FCC then told DroneXL the grant was issued in error, that selling the device in the US is “a violation of U.S. law,” and that it was weighing further action against HOVERAir for an apparently willful violation. The rule behind it is the FCC’s December 22, 2025 decision to add all foreign-produced drones and their critical components to the Covered List. After the VERSA case, the FCC said it was sending guidance to all Telecommunications Certification Bodies, the private labs that issue grants, to strengthen their screening.

When DroneXL checked the global store from a US connection on November 10, it showed Canadian pricing in US dollars: $539 for the camera and $649 for the FlySmart bundle. Its country selector had no US option, and the price sheet’s footnote says the USD prices apply to the Canadian store only.

The Indiegogo campaign now says shipping is underway and most orders were expected out by the end of October. Backers can request a refund through HOVERAir’s customer support until their order ships. As of November 10, the campaign page does not mention US backers. The VERSA is the second HOVERAir product this year, after the waterproof AQUA in May, to go on retail sale without the US.

DroneXL’s Take

Calling the Flight Kit a drone is the Covered List doing exactly what it says, and in my view HOVERAir earned the August reversal by certifying the camera alone. The camera half is harder to defend. As I read the FCC’s statement, the only thing making a 163-gram handheld gimbal a drone part is the kit it docks into, so an optional accessory keeps it off US shelves. American buyers already watched DJI’s Osmo Pocket 4P launch without them in July because DJI itself is on the Covered List. The FCC’s published test asks whether a part is designed and intended primarily for drone use, and its VERSA statement never explained how a handheld camera meets it. I think the agency owes manufacturers that explanation in writing, because right now nobody building a camera with an optional flight module can be sure it is legal to sell here.

Sources: HOVERAir launch release and 2026 price overview, HOVERAir VERSA specifications, HOVERAir background interview with MQ Wang, HOVERAir, Indiegogo, FCC spokesperson statement provided to DroneXL in August 2026

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

FAA Clears First Coast-to-Gulf BVLOS Flight for Skyways and Shell

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 23:06:00 GMT

The FAA said on Monday, November 9, that it has issued its first authorization for a drone to fly beyond the operator’s visual line of sight from the U.S. coastline out over the Gulf. The operator is Skyways, the Austin, Texas company that flew cargo to a Baltic Sea wind farm for RWE last year.

Skyways will fly its autonomous V2 vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from a Shell Pipeline Company facility in Gibson, Louisiana, to a Shell platform in the Gulf. On the way out it will inspect a pipeline right-of-way. At the platform it will fly a simulated equipment delivery. The FAA approved it as a Section 927 waiver, not under the BVLOS rule the industry is still waiting for.

Skyways says it expects the approval to lead to regular inspections and paid cargo runs across the Gulf. The FAA’s announcement describes a single flight with a simulated delivery, and neither release gives a date or a distance for it.

Section 927 Lets the FAA Approve Gulf Flights Before Part 108 Is Final

Section 927 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 lets the agency approve some drone operations by waiver instead of rulemaking or an exemption. The FAA applies its exemption safety test, but a Section 927 applicant does not have to show the relief is in the public interest.

The FAA’s Section 927 waiver page spells out the over-water route. The agency says it is considering near-term approvals for operations more than 12 nautical miles from the United States, as long as they stay out of another country’s territorial airspace and meet the Section 927 criteria. Skyways describes its own waiver as covering flights from the U.S. coastline over the high seas.

Part 108, the FAA’s rule for routine BVLOS flight, is still not final and has sat at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs since July 10. The 2024 Reauthorization Act gave the agency 16 months from its August 7, 2025 proposal to finish it, which runs out on December 7. Until then, every long-range flight like this one is a one-at-a-time approval. The White House framed this one as a preview anyway. Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in the FAA’s announcement that the administration wants a future where “advanced drone operations are routine.”

Skyways V2 Combines Electric Lift With a Heavy-Fuel Cruise Engine

The V2 takes off and lands on electric motors, then switches to a heavy-fuel engine for cruise, according to Skyways’ announcement. It flies on satellite-based command and control, so the link does not depend on line-of-sight radio. Skyways plans and monitors missions through its own SkyNav software.

Skyways V2 in flight over water. Photo credit: Skyways

Skyways puts its record at 3,500 autonomous flights and about 90,000 kilometers (roughly 56,000 miles) flown for customers that include the U.S. Navy, Japan’s Ministry of Defense, DSV, Skyports Drone Services and All Nippon Airways. Those are the company’s own totals. When the Austin American-Statesman profiled the company in February, Skyways said the V2 carries 30 pounds over 450 miles.

CEO Charles Acknin said the approval “opens up a much larger operating envelope for us in the US.” Its Arkona flights in Germany ran about 50 miles round trip from a port base. Europe has flown shore-launched offshore missions as well. In October, Glasgow’s Airspection announced beach-launched BVLOS flights to a Liverpool Bay wind farm inside the UK CAA’s BVLOS sandbox, an 8.7-mile round trip.

Shell Already Runs Its Own Drone Flights From Gulf Platforms

In September, the Journal of Petroleum Technology reported that Shell had become the first Gulf operator with FAA approval to self-authorize BVLOS drone flights from any of its Gulf facilities. Its team ran 44 drone-in-a-box flights from the Mars platform in April.

Those flights launch from the platform itself, while the FAA’s first covers a flight that starts on the coast. Skyways says Shell Pipeline Company already works with it on pipeline right-of-way inspection across the Gulf. Shell Pipeline Company president Wesley Stewart said the waiver will help “streamline offshore inspections, maintenance and logistics.”

Ross Doak, Shell’s senior robotics engineer, told JPT the company has been testing DJI and Skydio drones for its platform program. DJI’s is the most common system in use inside Shell, and the team is still building trust in the Skydio. He told the journal: “We’ve got very high confidence in the DJI system.” The aircraft on this waiver is built by Skyways in Austin, but the FAA headlined its release “American drone dominance” for a customer whose most common drone is a DJI.

DroneXL’s Take

Section 927 is the most useful tool the FAA has handed long-range drone operators this year, in my view, and this approval shows why. Skyways and Shell brought an aircraft with a flight record and a concrete mission, and they got a yes without waiting for Part 108 to clear the White House. That is how BVLOS should work while the rule is stuck. But one demonstration flight with a simulated delivery is not a Gulf drone network. Skyways says paid cargo comes next, and neither release says this waiver covers it. If Part 108 misses its December 7 deadline, I want to see the FAA issue these waivers by the dozen, because operators should not have to wait on OIRA to fly over open water.

Sources: FAA, Skyways, FAA Section 927 waiver guidance, Journal of Petroleum Technology.

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

AutoPylot Maps Nearly 2,000 Local Drone Rules That LAANC Doesn't Cover

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 22:33:00 GMT

AutoPylot, one of the FAA-approved providers of B4UFLY and LAANC, has put local drone rules on its flight map. The feature, called Pilot Reports, opened to every pilot in all 50 states on November 9 in the free AutoPylot app, on phones and on the web. It starts with nearly 2,000 local rules. Pilots can view them without an account and need one only to add a rule.

Federal data stops at the airspace. A pilot can hold a valid LAANC authorization and still be breaking a city ordinance, a state park order, or the sign at a trailhead, because none of those appear in FAA data. DroneXL has covered that gap in Raleigh’s park rules and in the ordinance Olathe, Kansas pulled after a local pilot pushed back.

AutoPylot already had a list of every local drone ordinance it could find, linked from its pre-flight checklist. Pilots have opened it close to 100,000 times.

AutoPylot Opened the Map to Pilots Because Its Own List Never Caught Up

AutoPylot’s ordinance list was a static help article that was never complete and sat outside the map pilots plan on. Pilot Reports moves those rules onto the flight map and opens it to submissions, so pilots can add rules the company missed, including posted signs.

In its Pilot Reports announcement, AutoPylot says local rules are spread across thousands of separate municipal websites, often in code sections that never mention drones by name. Founder Tauty Shalna, in a message to DroneXL, called Pilot Reports “Waze, but for local airspace regulations instead of traffic.”

Pilots can file three kinds of report. A Posted Sign needs a photo and one line of description. A Rule or Permit needs the rule text and a source. A Pilot Spot marks a place where pilots fly and makes no claim about whether flying there is allowed. Each submission gets a boundary (the single spot, a park or property, a whole town, a county or a state) and a pin the pilot drags into place, with optional links or photos as evidence.

The Pilot Reports flow, from a local rule on the flight map to a pilot's own submission. Image credit: AutoPylot

Pilot Reports Separates Rules That Apply From Rules That Might

Pilot Reports marks a rule as applying when it covers the whole area a pilot is planning in, such as a city ordinance for the entire municipality. A rule covering only that city’s parks or beaches shows as possibly affecting the flight, because the pilot may not be in one.

AutoPylot reviews every submission before other pilots see it, usually within 48 hours. Until then, only the pilot who filed a report can see it. Once approved, it shows up for anyone planning a flight within one mile, and the submitter learns how many pilots it reached.

Every rule card carries its source. Pilots can mark a rule as still accurate or out of date with a single tap, which AutoPylot expects to be the most common way pilots contribute. The nearly 2,000 rules on the map so far came from the company’s own research and from pilots during a beta that Shalna says started a few weeks ago.

A rule marker, the Local rules nearby header and the rule card at Strands Beach in Dana Point, California. Image credit: AutoPylot

DroneXL’s Take

I’d tell pilots to tap the source link on every card before anything else. A lot of local “drone laws” govern the ground, where a city can legitimately control takeoffs and landings on its own property, and some reach for the airspace, which belongs to the FAA. Raleigh’s park guidelines restated federal flight rules as if they were city rules. Showing the source, and marking a parks-only rule as one that might not apply, lets a pilot read the actual text and decide what it covers. When the University of Alabama repeated its game-day drone ban at Bryant-Denny Stadium, I pointed readers to B4UFLY or AutoPylot for the stadium flight restriction, and neither would have told them about a sign at a trailhead. A park ranger writing a ticket doesn’t care about your LAANC approval. Check the local layer before you drive out.

Sources: AutoPylot, FAA B4UFLY

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

AUVSI Hands CEO Job To Counter-Drone Executive Brett Feddersen

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 21:59:00 GMT

The Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) has named Brett Feddersen its president and CEO, effective December 1. Feddersen comes from counter-drone company D-Fend Solutions, where he was vice president of strategy and government affairs, and he moves into the job from a seat on AUVSI’s own board.

He replaces Michael Robbins, who left for the Semiconductor Industry Association at the end of September. Chief operating officer Heather Lee has run the association as interim CEO since October 1. AUVSI announced the pick on Monday, the opening day of its Drone & AAM Policy Symposium in Washington.

The announcement says AUVSI under Feddersen will push autonomous systems into routine, scaled deployment, with dual-use programs, domestic and allied manufacturing, and advanced air mobility on the list. It does not mention the FCC Covered List, which has kept new foreign-made drones off the U.S. market since December 2025.

Feddersen Spent Most Of His Career On Drone Security

Feddersen’s resume is almost entirely security work. AUVSI lists Pennsylvania State Trooper and helicopter pilot, Army lieutenant colonel, White House director for transportation and border security, and executive director for national security programs at the FAA. The association says he wrote the national framework for mitigating drone threats.

DroneXL first wrote about him in 2020, when he joined AccelerātUM, a group of former FAA executives set up to speed up drone operations. That article credited his federal work with promoting the drone industry’s economic competitiveness as well as countering drone threats. He then went to D-Fend, whose EnforceAir system takes over a drone’s control link and lands it. Motorola Solutions agreed to buy D-Fend for $1.5 billion in June and closed the deal on August 20, so Feddersen arrives at AUVSI from a Motorola company.

In September 2025 he testified to the House Judiciary crime subcommittee as D-Fend’s vice president and as chair of the Security Industry Association’s drone security subcommittee. He asked Congress to give detect-and-track authority to state and local police and to trained security staff at critical infrastructure, and to expand the 2018 federal mitigation pilot to the same groups. Three months later Congress handed trained state and local police some of that authority in the FY2026 NDAA.

Brett Feddersen becomes AUVSI president and CEO on December 1. Photo credit: AUVSI

Feddersen Told Congress Drones Should Stay Aircraft Under The Law

At the same September 2025 hearing, Feddersen defended the federal framework drone pilots fly under. Rep. Brad Knott (R-N.C.) said a drone is not an airplane and asked about a facility-specific code for unmanned aircraft. Feddersen disagreed and said the aircraft designation gives operators more protection.

“Aircraft is the right designation for that,” he told the subcommittee, according to the official hearing transcript. He also pushed back on the idea that only federal agents can be trusted with counter-drone gear, citing his years as a trooper.

The same hearing shows where his security instincts point. Asked by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) whether China may have had a hand in drone activity around U.S. military sites, Feddersen said yes and called drones a tool for criminal networks and foreign adversaries. None of his answers that day took a position on DJI or the Covered List.

AUVSI’s Announcement Names Inspectors And Responders, Not Their Fleets

Feddersen’s statement names the people who fly for a living: a commercial drone inspecting energy grids and a first responder deploying a life-saving system. It says AUVSI members need technology that is “safe, certifiable and secure.” It says nothing about the hardware those operators already own.

That gap is what the Drone Service Providers Alliance asked the board to close. In August DSPA called on AUVSI to reset after Robbins, judging drones on measurable risk instead of country of origin. Robbins had welcomed the FCC’s December action within hours and defended the broader version in May at XPONENTIAL Detroit, where DroneXL was in the room. In the October announcement of this week’s symposium, Lee said that restrictions protect the industry and strategy is what builds it.

The next fight lands on those fleets directly. The FCC is still weighing a ban on imports and sales of previously authorized foreign thermal, LiDAR, spray and docking drones, senior national security counsel Adam Chan said on a podcast published October 30. In the comment record, 1,686 of the 1,701 filings that answered the FCC’s economic-impact question described severe harm.

DroneXL’s Take

I’m carefully hopeful about Feddersen. A former trooper who tells Congress that drones belong under the aircraft rules, and that local police can be trusted with the same tools as the FBI, sounds to me like someone who knows most people flying drones in this country are doing a job. That is a better starting point for operators than the manufacturing-first case AUVSI made in Washington under Robbins.

I’m less sure about where he has spent his career. He comes from the detect-and-defeat side, and his last employer sells drone takeover systems to federal agencies and, through Motorola, to police. AUVSI already speaks fluent threat. Drone service providers need it to tell the FCC that a surveyor’s or a fire department’s existing fleet is not a national security problem until someone shows it is. If AUVSI says that while the thermal and spray drone ban is still on the FCC’s desk, DSPA got the reset it asked for in August.

Sources: AUVSI announcement, November 9, 2026; Motorola Solutions announcement, August 20, 2026; House Judiciary subcommittee hearing transcript, September 16, 2025.

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

China's GJ-11 Stealth Drone Lost Its Target in Cloud, Then Hit It

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 01:03:00 GMT

China’s state broadcaster CCTV aired new footage of the GJ-11 stealth combat drone on Monday, including the first close-up look at its internal weapon bays. The report ran as part of CCTV’s countdown to the 77th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) on Wednesday.

CCTV also said the flying-wing drone hit its target in its first live-fire test, after thick cloud nearly kept it from finding that target. The broadcaster did not say when the test took place or which weapon the GJ-11 fired.

GJ-11 Footage Shows Serrated Bay Doors Built for Stealth

Serrated edges run along the doors of the GJ-11’s internal weapon bays, the detail the new footage shows most clearly. The South China Morning Post, which reported the footage on Monday, said the design suggests the drone can carry relatively large missiles without giving up its stealth.

The Aviationist counts two bays on the underside, set between the main landing gear. The clips also show a shielded jet nozzle and a low-visibility coating. A faceted optical window under the nose looks similar, the Post said, to the electro-optical targeting system on China’s J-20 stealth fighter.

The GJ-11 retracting its landing gear after takeoff, with the shielded exhaust visible on top of the wing. Video still: CCTV

The Aviationist also noted that the landing gear now retracts on camera after takeoff. In the PLAAF’s November 2025 anniversary film, which showed the GJ-11 flying in formation with a J-20 and a J-16D, the gear stayed down.

The GJ-11, short for Gongji-11 or Attack-11, is the air force’s first stealth combat and reconnaissance drone. It is also known as Xuanlong, and Western coverage has long called it Sharp Sword. China unveiled it at the October 2019 parade for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic, and the Post says it entered service no later than 2025.

CCTV Says the GJ-11 Scouts and Strikes for Crewed Fighters

According to CCTV, the GJ-11 has operated in coordination with another drone and can also work with crewed aircraft. The broadcaster said the drones can act as “the eyes of crewed fighter jets,” scouting enemy air defenses, drawing fire as decoys, or launching guided munitions on a crewed aircraft’s direction.

The drone’s integrated control station and its operators can be loaded straight onto a military transport aircraft and moved where they are needed, CCTV said.

The GJ-11 is also going to sea. Chinese state media reported on October 30 that the GJ-21, the GJ-11’s carrier-based variant, had taken off from and landed aboard the Sichuan, China’s first Type 076 amphibious assault ship. DroneXL reported in 2024 on GJ-11 mockups spotted beside the Type 076 under construction in Shanghai.

GJ-11 Found Its Target Only After Circling Back

Operator Shi Xiaoran told CCTV that the GJ-11 could not find its target through thick cloud on its first run in that live-fire test. The drone circled back for another pass, located the target, launched its weapon and scored a hit on the second attempt, Shi said.

The report said the GJ-11 went through a series of tests at a desert facility in northwestern China. The Post noted that the air force runs a base at Malan in Xinjiang, where several of China’s new drones are believed to have been developed and tested.

US Air Force Fired Its First Drone Wingman Missile in July

The nearest US milestone came in July. On July 15 the Air Force said Anduril’s YFQ-44A had fired an AIM-120 AMRAAM at a digital target over California’s Mojave Desert, with a human operator ordering the shot. Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach declined to share more, citing operational security.

Anduril said the drone flew from Edwards Air Force Base and told Breaking Defense the test was an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike, with its Lattice software feeding the target track to the drone. The YFQ-44A first flew on October 31, 2025. General Atomics said in July that it was on schedule to fire from the internal bay of its YFQ-42A later this year. Both Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) designs got the green light for production in June, and the Air Force says they cost about a third of an F-35A. The Aviationist rates the GJ-11, a large stealth flying wing, closer in class to Lockheed Martin’s Vectis than to either CCA.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d treat the GJ-11 as a weapon the PLA already operates. China has had it in service since at least 2025 and has now taken its navy version to sea on the Sichuan. The cloud story points the same way, because state television had no need to admit that the drone lost its target on the first pass. CCTV gave no date or weapon for the strike, so the hit can’t be checked from outside China, and the Air Force held back further details of its own YFQ-44A shot for operational security as well. American planners should read that fumbled first pass as a sign the GJ-11 is past the demo stage, and plan for it on that basis.

Sources: South China Morning Post, The Aviationist, South China Morning Post on the GJ-21, Breaking Defense, Air & Space Forces Magazine

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

Shield AI Bets $5.3B on Echodyne's Drone Radar at a $28.8B Valuation

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 00:27:00 GMT

Shield AI has agreed to buy Echodyne, the Kirkland, Washington company whose radars sit inside hundreds of counter-drone and security systems in more than 40 countries, in a deal valued at up to $5.3 billion. The San Diego drone and autonomy maker announced the agreement on November 5. It pays $4.8 billion at closing and up to $500 million more if Echodyne hits agreed performance targets, with closing expected in early 2027 once regulators sign off.

To pay for it, Shield AI is raising $2.5 billion, including a $1 billion Series H at a $28.8 billion post-money valuation, up from the $12.7 billion investors put on the company in March. It is Shield AI’s fifth acquisition and its largest. The last time Echodyne raised money at a set price, in 2022, PitchBook valued it at $485 million.

Shield AI Is Paying for Echodyne With a $2.5 Billion Raise

Shield AI’s announcement splits the $2.5 billion three ways: the $1 billion Series H, a $1 billion structured equity investment from funds managed by Blackstone, and $500 million in debt arranged by JPMorgan Chase. Series H money goes principally to the acquisition.

Disruptive and Innovation X Capital co-lead the Series H, and Advent and JPMorgan’s Security and Resiliency Initiative are back in it. Those two led Shield AI’s $1.5 billion Series G in March, and Blackstone funds bought $500 million of preferred equity alongside that round. The new valuation is about 2.3 times the March one, set less than eight months later. The financing won’t go through if the acquisition falls apart, according to the companies. Shield AI’s November announcement also drops the “AI” and calls the company simply Shield.

Echodyne Keeps Its Team and Its Washington Factory

Echodyne keeps running as it does today. CEO Eben Frankenberg will report directly to Shield AI CEO Gary Steele and keep responsibility for Echodyne’s products and its customers. Its radars stay on sale as standalone products, and Shield AI says no Echodyne layoffs or relocations are planned.

The deal also puts more of Shield AI in the Seattle area. Echodyne opened a $40 million, 86,350-square-foot factory in Woodinville, Washington, in July, built to produce about 30,000 radars a year. Shield AI picked Washington in September as the production home of X-BAT, the vertical-landing jet drone the Navy put $50 million behind in August. The combined company will have about 2,700 employees.

Echodyne Grew Into a Profitable Counter-Drone Supplier

Shield AI is paying more than ten times Echodyne’s 2022 valuation for a radar maker that counter-drone demand has made profitable, according to early investor Madrona. Echodyne has raised only about $200 million in total, and its headcount grew from 260 in July to about 400.

The biggest recent order came in September, when the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 awarded Echodyne a contract with a $250 million ceiling to supply counter-drone radar to US and allied forces over 36 months. Both companies say they expect triple-digit revenue growth this fiscal year.

The radars use Echodyne’s patented Metamaterials Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) design, a solid-state flat panel that Echodyne says is built from standard materials and processes to cut the unit cost of high-performance radar. Integrators mount them on remote weapon stations and on directed-energy weapons such as high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves, and use them to cue interceptors toward incoming drones. When DroneXL covered Echodyne’s role in a $490 million Air Force counter-drone program in June, its EchoShield radar was a primary radar inside Trust Automation’s base-defense system.

Echodyne radars mounted on US military Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. Photo credit: Echodyne

Shield AI has so far served only government end users, Steele told Bloomberg, as GeekWire reported. Echodyne brings civilian customers too. Stadiums and airports use its radars to spot drones that shouldn’t be there, and police and fire departments use them to fly their own drones safely in shared airspace. BRINC agreed in 2024 to integrate Echodyne radar into its drone-as-first-responder system for flights beyond visual line of sight. Steele named the Super Bowl and FIFA as the kind of market he wants: “every single thing is going to need protection from drones.”

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that the big money in American drones has moved to the sensors. On the day Axon valued Skydio at $5.2 billion, Shield AI agreed to pay more than that for a company whose product finds drones. A year earlier, counter-drone radar maker Chaos Industries raised $510 million at a $4.5 billion valuation. Lasers and interceptors can’t do anything until a radar tells them where to point, and the investors writing these checks have priced that in. Police departments flying drone-as-first-responder programs need Shield AI to keep its promise to sell Echodyne radars on their own, and a factory built for 30,000 radars a year gives it every reason to.

Sources: Shield AI via PR Newswire, Shield AI Series G announcement, GeekWire, 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.

DHS Pact Gives FAA Counter-Drone Review as Hegseth Calls Lasers Safe

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 22:23:00 GMT

Five federal departments have agreed to give the FAA a formal safety review of new counter-drone systems, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Monday. The memorandum of understanding joins DHS with the departments of Transportation, War, Energy and Justice. DHS did not publish its text.

The announcement landed on the day of a counter-drone grant forum at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, where DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton spoke. States have until November 16 to apply for FEMA’s second $250 million counter-drone round, most of which must pass through to local and tribal agencies.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in the same announcement that border deployments have shown high-energy lasers can work safely alongside civilian aviation. In February, two laser engagements in Texas led the FAA to close airspace twice.

The Agreement Puts the FAA’s Safety Review Into Federal Counter-Drone Development

Under the memorandum, the FAA will quickly run safety risk assessments of proposed counter-drone systems and can add its own measures, including airspace restrictions, when it judges the risk too high. The signatories will work with the FAA and the FCC on technical requirements, field testing and data sharing.

The scope covers systems that detect, track, stop or take control of drones, according to the DHS announcement. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agreement “establishes a consistent process” for using that equipment without compromising aviation safety.

The White House Task Force to Restore American Airspace Sovereignty led the agreement. President Trump created it in his June 2025 executive order on drone threats, chaired by the national security adviser or a designee. DHS said the memorandum builds on the drone ban along the entire US-Mexico border and on the FAA’s safety assessment of the War Department’s high-energy laser.

Mullin framed it as border policy that will “help counter cartel drone threats.” FBI Director Kash Patel cited the more than 700 drones seized at this summer’s World Cup by federal agents working with state and local officers trained at the FBI’s counter-drone school. Attorney General Todd Blanche pointed to the five men arrested this summer over an alleged plan to fly explosive drones at a White House event, a case whose criminal complaints describe no finished explosive drone.

Police Buying Jammers With FEMA Money Already Coordinate With the FAA

Since July 1, a local agency taking down a drone has followed a Justice and Homeland Security interim final rule. It routes each operations plan through a federal portal for FAA airspace coordination. Air traffic control must hear within five minutes of mitigation starting.

FEMA’s second round, the other half of the $500 million in the July 2025 reconciliation law, is open to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories. FEMA’s program page describes the money as funding to “detect, identify, track, or monitor” drones. Jammers and takeover systems are allowed only for law enforcement and correctional agencies whose officers are trained, or scheduled for training, at the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center.

The first $250 million went last December to 11 states hosting or supporting World Cup matches and the National Capital Region. This time, state administrative agencies file with FEMA by 5 p.m. Eastern on November 16, with project selection expected December 2 and awards December 10. Local agencies apply through their states, and Kansas, Indiana and Mississippi closed their local windows 10 to 12 days before FEMA’s deadline, as DroneXL reported on November 2. Houston’s city council approved its bid on a 47-item consent agenda last week.

The White House Task Force on the 2028 Summer Olympics hosted Monday’s forum with DRONERESPONDERS and the Commercial Drone Alliance. The event page listed White House counterterrorism director Sebastian Gorka, JIATF 401 director Matthew Ross and FAA acting deputy administrator Liam McKenna among the keynotes. The organizers’ release on Tuesday confirmed that Hamilton spoke and said FEMA briefed attendees on the FY 2027 grant. It does not quote him, and FEMA had published no transcript of his remarks by Tuesday evening. His agency’s October 16 announcement called unlawful drones “a real and growing danger.”

Hegseth’s Safety Claim Rests on an FAA Finding That Came After Two Texas Closures

Hegseth said lasers can be “deployed rapidly and safely alongside civilian aviation,” and the FAA found on April 10 that the lasers posed no increased risk to fliers. It followed two February laser engagements in Texas that closed airspace, canceled 14 flights and destroyed a roughly $30 million CBP drone.

On February 10, CBP fired a Pentagon-owned LOCUST laser near Fort Bliss at what turned out to be party balloons, and the FAA shut down El Paso’s airspace until the White House intervened hours later. On February 26, soldiers near Fort Hancock used the same system to destroy a drone that belonged to CBP. The agencies had argued for months over whether their legal duty to coordinate with the FAA meant asking permission or giving notice, and the April clearance followed a joint test at White Sands Missile Range. The Pentagon now counts more than 300 border drone defeats this year, and only two targets have been identified in public.

DroneXL’s Take

The FAA review in this memorandum is what federal agencies should have done in February. Since July, a sheriff’s office that wants to switch on a jammer has had to route its plan through FAA airspace coordination and tell air traffic control within five minutes, under a rule anyone can read.

The departments that fired lasers over El Paso before asking the FAA now have their own version of that discipline, but it lives in a document DHS has not released. I’d accept the April safety finding Hegseth can point to. Calling the border record proof that lasers run safely alongside civilian aviation skips the two closures that forced that finding. DHS should publish the memorandum so pilots can read the federal rules as easily as the ones written for their local police.

Update, November 10, 2026: the forum organizers’ release confirmed that Hamilton spoke. An earlier version of this article said he was billed as a keynote speaker.

Sources: DHS announcement, November 9, 2026, DOJ and DHS interim final rule, 28 CFR Part 124, FEMA C-UAS Grant Program, FEMA press release, October 16, 2026, Countering the Threat forum event page, forum organizers’ release, November 10, 2026, Executive Order 14305.

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

Lewisville Police Drones Flew 1,789 Times. Public Log Shows 1,303

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:32:00 GMT

The Lewisville Police Department says its drones flew 1,789 times between Jan. 1 and Nov. 3, about six flights a day. The department’s example of what that buys came on Oct. 20, when one of its drones tracked a man who fled from officers behind a motel to an apartment balcony and guided officers to him, police said.

The North Texas department flies Skydio drones from docks around Lewisville under FAA authorization for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights, according to the department. The department has 19 drones and 15 trained operators, and the program officially launched on May 8.

The department also posts its Drone as First Responder flights on a public dashboard, and the city’s transparency page says those flights update automatically. When I went through the dashboard on Nov. 9, it listed 1,303 flights, and the last of them took off on Sept. 2.

A Lewisville Drone Reached the Motel Call in Under a Minute

The Oct. 20 call started behind a motel, where an officer found a man believed to be wanted and a second officer was sent to help. The drone the department calls DFR 2 launched and reached the scene in less than a minute, police said, the Cross Timbers Gazette reported.

When the man fled on foot, the drone followed him into a nearby apartment complex. Police said he tried to hide on a balcony and change his appearance before officers, guided by the drone, arrested him.

A drone over a foot chase is the same idea Spokane police used in July, when a Skydio X10 took over a vehicle pursuit after the patrol cars backed off.

Lewisville’s Drone Flights Peaked at 389 in July

Lewisville’s public dashboard lists 106 flights before the May 8 launch, then 188 in the rest of May, 289 in June, 389 in July and 322 in August, which works out to nearly 13 flights a day at the July peak.

That curve fits the department’s own description of flights rising through the spring and peaking in the summer. It also explains the six-a-day average: the 1,789 figure starts on Jan. 1 and takes in more than four months before the official launch, when the dashboard logs only those 106 flights.

Dashboard entries list a case number where there is one, usually a purpose such as emergency call for service, search and rescue or training, the flight’s length and whether the drone collected video or photos.

Lewisville’s Public Flight Log Stops at September 2

The 1,789 flights the department reported through Nov. 3 are 486 more than its public dashboard lists. The dashboard, linked from the city’s LPD Transparency page, showed no flight after Sept. 2 when I checked it on Nov. 9, so the Oct. 20 chase is not in it.

Lewisville's DFR dashboard on Nov. 9, filtered to Sept. 1 through Nov. 9: nine flights, all on Sept. 1 and 2, out of 1,303 in the log. Screenshot: DroneXL

According to police, flight activity remained steady through October. If the 486 are simply the flights from Sept. 3 through Nov. 3, that works out to about eight flights a day, a little below the dashboard’s August rate of about 10 a day. The city’s page says DFR flights update automatically and other drone activity monthly, while the dashboard itself says flights are updated monthly. Neither page, as I read them on Nov. 9, explains why nothing after Sept. 2 appears.

The transparency page that links the dashboard is what Police Chief Brook Rollins promised residents at the launch. He told the Gazette in May that the department was launching “a public-facing transparency portal” and publishing its policies so residents could see how the drones are used. The DFR policy is posted on the transparency page.

DroneXL’s Take

Lewisville put its DFR flights on a public map with case numbers attached, which is what I want every department to do, and the Oct. 20 arrest is a good example of what these programs are for. A flight log is only useful while it is current, though, and this one now runs two months behind the department’s own press figures. A resident can read about DFR 2’s chase in the paper and still can’t find that flight in the record the chief promised. Bellingham, Washington, runs the same Skydio dashboard, and when I checked it in October it showed flights from five days earlier. Lewisville should publish on the schedule its own transparency page describes, post its September and October flights, and confirm that they account for the 486-flight difference before it releases its next set of numbers.

Sources: Cross Timbers Gazette (November 8, 2026), Cross Timbers Gazette (May 12, 2026), City of Lewisville LPD Transparency page, Lewisville Police Department DFR flight dashboard.

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

Colombia Blames ELN for Drone Strike a Week After US Reapers Debut

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:59:00 GMT

Explosive-laden drones hit the Colombian Army’s compound in Santa Rosa del Sur, a gold-mining town in southern Bolívar department, around midday on Saturday, November 7. Three soldiers died and 16 were seriously wounded. Defense Minister Jorge Mora pointed to the National Liberation Army, the cocaine-trafficking guerrilla group known by its Spanish initials, ELN.

The attack came as the United States helps both Colombia and Venezuela go after that group. On October 30, according to The New York Times, US-supplied drones and intelligence helped Venezuela’s military bomb an ELN camp across the border. The next day, President Abelardo De La Espriella watched three MQ-9A Reapers that Washington is lending Colombia fly over the Tolemaida military base. Mora linked Saturday’s strike to an arrest made in Santa Rosa del Sur the day before.

Colombia’s Defense Minister Links the Attack to an ELN Finance Leader’s Arrest

Mora said the attack appeared to be the ELN’s response to the capture of Leivis Enrique Valero Castillo, alias Carrito, whom the government accuses of being a main figure behind the finances of the ELN’s Guamocó Resistance Front. He was arrested in Mina Nueva, in rural Santa Rosa del Sur.

De La Espriella announced the arrest, made during an operation called Ocaso, on Friday. The drones struck the next day while local officials held a security council at the mayor’s office, called after three people were killed in the municipality the day before, according to Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office. Mora’s remarks were reported by El Espectador. On Saturday, ColombiaOne reported that authorities had not confirmed a link between the arrest and the attack, and The Rio Times reported that no group had claimed it. DroneXL found no ELN claim or denial in Colombian or US coverage as of Monday, November 9.

Footage from the base showed smoke rising after three explosions and soldiers taking cover in sandbag shelters, the Associated Press reported. On Sunday the Army named the dead: professional soldier Jairo Lince Carvajal and soldiers Dilan Andrés Lozano León and Álvaro Pushaina. The latest official count, published by El Universal, lists 16 seriously wounded and 31 members of the unit affected in all. The mayor, Milton Olaya, put the number of injured at 35.

The compound is home to the Army’s 48th Jungle Battalion, which has come under drone attack in this municipality before. In August 2025, according to the military, the ELN’s Northeastern Front dropped explosives from drones on the battalion’s troops in La Pradera, a rural part of Santa Rosa del Sur, killing one soldier and wounding seven, Cambio reported. Drones carrying explosives killed another soldier in rural Santa Rosa del Sur and neighboring Arenal del Sur in May 2026, according to the Army’s First Division as cited by The Rio Times. The Ombudsman’s Office has had the town under an early warning since 2023 and says the government commission meant to act on such warnings has not been convened, despite worsening risks.

The Ombudsman’s Office also says the ELN is fighting the Clan del Golfo and FARC dissidents under alias Calarcá for territory and mining income in the Serranía de San Lucas around the town. Officials blamed Calarcá’s militia for the August 2025 drone attack that brought down a police Black Hawk near Amalfi.

The US Is Helping Target the ELN on Both Sides of the Border

In a November 3 report, The New York Times cited four US officials who said Washington supplied intelligence and the drones for the Apure strike in Venezuela, ColombiaOne summarized. Who flew them is unclear, though one source said the model is routinely flown by the US military.

Initial reports put the toll at eight ELN members. Fundaredes, a Venezuelan rights group, now counts 23 dead. Its regional coordinator, Juan Francisco García, says interviews with survivors and relatives show the dead included suppliers, pilots and relatives of fighters. According to Fundaredes and local sources cited by ColombiaOne, the camp was an ELN drug storage and distribution point.

Colombian authorities had said they could not defeat the ELN because its fighters often escaped to Venezuela, where officials let the group operate openly, the Times reported. Since US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas in January, Washington has had a cooperating government on both sides of the border. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in September the ELN should no longer operate in Venezuela “with impunity.”

The three Reapers arrived in Colombia unarmed and in containers, on loan, and were assembled at Tolemaida, Infobae reported. Assembly and testing are part of Vanguardia del Sur 2026, a joint exercise with US troops that runs until November 11, and Colombian troops will be trained to run the aircraft’s surveillance systems before operations start. Colombia’s military says the Reapers will support operations against the ELN and other armed groups by locating their camps. The US also handed over a Black Hawk helicopter at the ceremony, according to Noticias RCN.

De La Espriella answered Saturday’s attack with a promise of more air strikes. “For every attack, one bombardment,” he wrote, in the Times’ translation.

Colombia’s President Says Petro Left No Anti-Drone Shield Behind

The day after the attack, De La Espriella said Gustavo Petro’s January anti-drone shield produced nothing. Petro says he left the contract process ready. De La Espriella called that a lie and said Petro’s officials traveled abroad without results and left no studies behind, La FM reported.

The January plan committed about $1.6 billion to a National Anti-Drone Shield of sensors, electronic warfare and interceptors, with military bases among the first priorities. In February, Petro’s defense minister, Pedro Sánchez, said 74 companies from 20 countries wanted to take part and that the project was in its pre-contract phase, with the market study under way. The ministry also said it had detected about 9,000 drone attack attempts in 2025 and blocked about 96% of them, and that the 4% it missed killed several soldiers and civilians and injured more than a hundred people, Asuntos Legales reported.

Saturday’s strike was at least the second deadly drone attack on an army compound in nine weeks that authorities blamed on the ELN. On September 4, explosives dropped from drones, followed by a clash inside a military compound in Ocaña, Norte de Santander, killed three soldiers, the Associated Press reported. De La Espriella said on Sunday his government is working on both anti-drone defenses and offensive drones for the armed forces. He gave no amount, funding source or timeline and cited the country’s very difficult public finances.

DroneXL’s Take

The Reapers and the promised bombardments help Colombia hunt the people who launch these drones. In my view they won’t protect the next army compound, because stopping a drone over a base takes detection and defeat systems at the base itself.

The ministry’s February numbers say it blocked about 96% of the drone attacks it detected in 2025. The ones that get through still kill soldiers, three at Ocaña and three more at Santa Rosa del Sur. Ten months after the shield was announced, Colombia’s president and his predecessor are arguing over whether Petro left it ready to contract. Before the next round of air strikes, I’d want De La Espriella to put a number and a date on the base defense he promised on Sunday.

Sources: The New York Times, El Universal, El Espectador via Pulzo, ColombiaOne, ColombiaOne on Apure, The Rio Times, AP via Stuff, Infobae, Cambio, Asuntos Legales, La FM, AP via CTV

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

Russia's Geran-5 K5-K Runs on 52 US Parts, 23 From Texas Instruments

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:24:00 GMT

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR published a teardown on November 9 of the Geran-5 K5-K, a shorter and faster version of Russia’s jet-powered attack drone, and counted 93 foreign-made electronic parts inside it. Fifty-two came from US manufacturers, and 23 of those were made by Texas Instruments.

Russia started firing the K5-K at Ukrainian cities in early autumn, according to HUR. The agency examined one that came down almost intact in a field, and it now files the weapon as a small cruise missile rather than a drone.

HUR’s page for the original Geran-5, the version DroneXL first reported on in January, lists 16 foreign parts.

The Geran-5 K5-K Is 8 Feet Shorter and Climbs 3,300 Feet Higher

The K5-K is 13.1 feet (4 meters) long, against 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) for the original Geran-5, and its wingspan shrank from 10.5 to 9.8 feet. HUR lists a ceiling of 19,700 feet (6 km), up from 16,400 feet, and a cruise speed above 280 mph (450 km/h).

HUR’s statement on the teardown adds that the K5-K can reach 620 mph (1,000 km/h) during some maneuvers. That figure was carried by RBC-Ukraine and UNITED24 Media, but it does not appear in the specification table on HUR’s own portal. Range is unchanged at about 620 miles (1,000 km), and the warhead still weighs 198 pounds (90 kg). The airframe HUR examined carried a TBBCh-90 thermobaric warhead.

HUR lists a TRD-200 turbojet as the engine, assembled at Russia’s Alabuga plant in Tatarstan, the same site where teenagers build Shaheds, from Chinese components. The original Geran-5 flew on an imported Telefly TF-TJ2000A. HUR deputy chief Vadym Skibitsky put the price of each Chinese turbojet at $35,000 to $40,000 in August, Militarnyi reported.

Texas Instruments Made 23 of the 93 Foreign Parts in the K5-K

The parts list on HUR’s War&Sanctions portal names 52 components made by US companies. The rest are 10 Chinese, 10 Swiss, three Japanese, two British and one German, with 15 unidentified. Texas Instruments alone made 23, including voltage regulators, CAN bus transceivers and two digital signal processors.

Analog Devices follows with six, counting a Maxim Integrated transceiver, then Vishay with four and onsemi and CTS Corporation with three each. The Swiss column is seven microcontrollers and a voltage regulator from STMicroelectronics, which HUR files under Switzerland because the company is headquartered in Geneva, plus two u-blox satellite navigation modules.

HUR says Russia keeps trying to remove the markings from imported parts, and it names Texas Instruments signal processors and Murata inertial modules. Both TI processors appear on the portal as “DSP” with no part number, and the Murata module has none either. The first Geran-5 taken apart in January held six Texas Instruments chips and CTS clock oscillators built in 2024 and 2025. The three CTS oscillators in the K5-K are newer still: their markings read 2517, 2539 and 2603, which as year-and-week date codes put them between April 2025 and January 2026.

Texas Instruments told Bloomberg in December 2023 that it stopped selling into Russia in 2022, and that because its chips can last decades, some found there may have been in inventory before sanctions. TI vice president Shannon Thompson told a Senate subcommittee in September 2024 that the company works to prevent the illicit diversion of its parts into Russia. Western parts have reached Russia through resellers in third countries before, the route that put German parts in Gerans and that a GRU officer ran out of Tokyo.

A Chinese Raspberry Pi Clone Steers the K5-K by Matching Photos

The K5-K checks its route with Susanin, an optical-electronic correlation system HUR first found in the Geran-4. It compares pictures from an onboard camera with reference images stored on a microcomputer, and in this airframe that computer is a Chinese Coke Pi in a labeled plastic case.

The Susanin image-matching unit from the K5-K: a Coke Pi microcomputer in a black plastic case, labeled "Сусанин" (Susanin). Photo credit: HUR War&Sanctions

The camera is dual-band rather than a plain optical sensor, and HUR could not identify its maker. The parts list also carries a genuine Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, filed under Britain. HUR found a similar Coke Pi unit, labeled “Sosiska,” in the Gerbera-2 drone it published on November 2, where it detects and tracks interceptor drones.

The rest of the avionics match the latest Geran-4 Seeker: a flight controller, a SADRA Seeker inertial navigation system with a DISMAG magnetic compass module, a tracker, a mesh modem and a Russian copy of the 16-element Harxon GI-006 anti-jamming antenna. HUR’s breakdown of the original Geran-5 shows no image-matching unit: it navigated with a Kometa-M12 satellite receiver and a MINSOO inertial unit. Jamming satellite navigation is one of Ukraine’s standard defenses against Shaheds, and matching photos needs no satellite signal.

Russia Builds 4,000 Jet Gerans a Month as Ukraine Stops 76% in One Raid

Russia builds about 4,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month, up from about 3,000 in August and twice its output of propeller Geran-2s, HUR told NV in October, while Ukraine’s Air Force says it shot down or suppressed 59 of 77 jet drones in one October attack.

The production figure comes from Militarnyi’s report on HUR’s interview. Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said that attack lifted the jet-drone rate to 76%, from about 60% the month before, Odessa Journal reported. Interceptor drones are closing the gap. The upgraded ZIRKA brought down a Geran-5 at about 250 mph (400 km/h) and 11,500 feet (3,500 meters), Militarnyi reported on November 1, after the SBU released the first video of a jet Shahed kill in September. Ukraine’s Brave1 cluster is also paying companies to build drone-fired air-to-air missiles.

On October 29 a jet-powered drone got through and hit a platform at a railway station in Dnipro where a train to Zaporizhzhia was waiting, killing 14, according to regional officials and Ukrainian Railways, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Neither said which Geran variant it was.

DroneXL’s Take

The old-stock explanation that Texas Instruments offered in 2023, chips bought before sanctions and still sitting in Russian warehouses, gets harder to apply with every teardown. The CTS oscillators in this K5-K were made as recently as January, so at least part of the Western supply feeding Alabuga is new production.

I don’t think TI or CTS are selling to Russia, and nothing on HUR’s list says they are. My read is that export controls on commodity electronics fail at the distributor and reseller level. A voltage regulator that ships by the million passes through enough hands that the maker loses sight of it long before it reaches a Russian assembly line, which is how the German parts and the Tokyo pipeline worked too.

In September I argued that sanctions aim at the wrong end of the Geran, at the Western parts instead of the Chinese engine. The K5-K shows the Western end still leaking with new parts, and Washington should put at least as much pressure on the distributors that move these reels as on the chipmakers whose logos HUR photographs.

Sources: HUR War&Sanctions portal, UNITED24 Media, RBC-Ukraine, Militarnyi, Odessa Journal, Ukrainska Pravda, Bloomberg

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

West Valley Votes on Free Police Drone Trial With $874,985 Renewal

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 10:53:00 GMT

The West Valley City Council votes Tuesday, November 10, on a deal with Motorola Solutions that would give the Utah city’s police department three BRINC drones for a year at no cost. The package covers a docked drone dispatched directly to calls, a tactical drone officers launch from their vehicles, and a small indoor drone for SWAT work.

Police Chief Colleen Jacobs told the council on October 27, according to draft minutes, that the drones are meant for emergency response, not surveillance. Her issue paper lists the price if the program continues, $174,997 a year for five years, and says the city can cancel at any point in the first year at no cost.

Motorola’s quote totals $874,985, and the contract attached to it starts those paid years automatically unless the city cancels.

Motorola’s Contract Starts the Paid Years Unless West Valley Cancels

The $874,985 is the paid part of a six-year BRINC subscription Motorola quoted on September 15: nothing in year one, then $174,997 a year for years two through six. Under Motorola’s customer agreement, the paid years begin on their own unless the city gives notice that it is leaving.

Motorola’s paperwork states that exit two ways. The quote’s term note gives the city a “right to exercise termination for convenience at any point within the first year,” which matches Jacobs’s issue paper. The TAKEOFF Program Addendum attached to the same quote says the city “has agreed to a multi-year Subscription” and may terminate without penalty “up to 30 days prior” to the first paid year. Under either reading, ending the deal during the free year costs West Valley nothing if it gives notice in time. The council slide adds that the city “may terminate for non-appropriation,” which the customer agreement allows on 30 days’ written notice.

The aircraft stay BRINC’s property during the trial, and the city pays for any damage the support plan does not cover. Title passes to West Valley when the first paid year starts. Motorola is selling the package through a Sourcewell cooperative purchasing contract that the issue paper says Motorola won through competitive bidding. The quote expires November 14, four days after the vote.

The three aircraft on the quote are a station-based BRINC Guardian, a BRINC Responder and a Lemur 2, BRINC’s indoor drone. League City, Texas, approved a similar free-first-year structure in July, with up to $1,759,980 over six years.

The Trial Makes BRINC West Valley’s Only DFR Supplier

For the 12 free months, the addendum makes BRINC the city’s sole Drone as First Responder provider. West Valley may not deploy or buy any autonomous docked drone or DFR product from another company until the paid years begin. If it does, Motorola can end the deal immediately.

BRINC also runs the trial’s checkpoints. The quote commits it to quarterly check-in calls with the department and a mandatory review meeting with police leadership “to confirm trial results and determine next steps.” The latest date the quote allows for that meeting is the same 30-day mark as the addendum’s deadline for the city to cancel.

Motorola has a stake in the supplier it is selling. It led BRINC’s $125 million funding round in July, and the quote pitches integration with Motorola’s CommandCentral software, radios and license plate readers.

BRINC founder Blake Resnick with a Guardian drone at the IACP conference in Boston, October 2024. Photo credit: DroneXL

West Valley Has Held an FAA BVLOS Waiver Since April

The FAA’s Certificate of Waiver 91.113-2026-00385, effective April 1, 2026, through April 30, 2030, waives the 14 CFR 91.113(b) right-of-way rule and other Part 91 sections for the department’s public aircraft flights. It allows BVLOS flights without visual observers, generally at or below 200 feet (61 meters).

If West Valley flies the Guardian under this waiver, the document sets the conditions. On BVLOS flights the pilot must use a detection system that picks up aircraft broadcasting ADS-B Out. On every flight the drone needs anti-collision lighting visible for 3 statute miles in twilight and at night.

Motorola’s statement of work makes FAA approvals the city’s job, with help from Motorola’s managed services if agreed, along with Part 107 certified pilots, 30 Mbps of bandwidth at each launch site and an LTE fallback. West Valley’s waiver took effect more than five months before Motorola wrote the quote.

The department is not new to drones: the issue paper says the city “currently employs drones in law enforcement activity.” According to the draft October 27 minutes, posted with the November 10 study agenda, Councilmember Scott Harmon noted that these drones cost more than the ones in the city’s previous trial. Jacobs said earlier demonstrations had cut response times and avoided unnecessary officer dispatches, because staff could assess a call remotely first.

West Valley’s Camera Promise Is Not in the Council Packet

Jacobs told the council the dispatched drone’s camera faces upward in transit. The drone descends only at the scene. Neither that rule nor a retention period appears in the Resolution 26-141 documents posted with the November 10 agenda, which DroneXL reviewed on November 9.

Those documents are the issue paper, the draft resolution, a presentation slide, Motorola’s quote with its statement of work and addendum, and Motorola’s customer agreement. The statement of work leaves retention periods to a city project manager. Its data-handling clause says data “will not be intentionally deleted prior to termination; however, certain media (e.g., video/images >30 days) may be deleted per platform policy (adjust to your policy).” The packet does not say what West Valley’s policy is. Under the customer agreement, the city owns its data.

During a city meeting, West Valley City police said “These are not surveillance drones, but response drones,” FOX 13 reported. Jacobs’s own issue paper says the newer drones can provide “rapid response, surveillance,” and deliver AEDs and Narcan before responders arrive. St. Louis police make a similar camera promise in their drone FAQ, not in the order officers follow.

Indoor flights worry David Ferguson, executive director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who told FOX 13 he fears “a person in crisis reacts terribly to a mechanical device.” Police said indoor flights would be limited to legal entries, such as with a warrant, consent or an emergency.

DroneXL’s Take

I want West Valley to fly these drones. A Guardian that reaches a cardiac arrest with an AED before the first patrol car is the best case for public safety drones, and Jacobs told the council earlier demonstrations saved officer trips. I think the trial’s review is too thin. The only review the contract writes down is a meeting BRINC schedules to confirm trial results, and the exclusivity clause keeps the city from testing a rival dock alongside it. The council should set its own scorecard on Tuesday, starting with response times against patrol cars and calls cleared without sending an officer, and put the camera and retention rules in writing. Then it should publish the results before the cancellation deadline. If nobody cancels in time, the paid years start on their own and add up to $874,985. That decision should rest on numbers West Valley collected itself.

Sources: West Valley City Council (Resolution 26-141 packet: issue paper, presentation slide, Motorola quote 3818036 with statement of work and TAKEOFF Program Addendum, Motorola Customer Agreement; draft minutes of the October 27, 2026 study meeting), Federal Aviation Administration (Certificate of Waiver 91.113-2026-00385), FOX 13

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

NATO Counter-Drone Catalog: 2024 Startup Says It Won 6 of 16 Lots

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 10:21:00 GMT

NATO opened its counter-drone marketplace on November 5: a catalog of 16 systems from five companies that Allies can now buy without running a tender of their own. The five are Alta Ares, Axon, Northrop Grumman, OSL UK and Quantum Systems. Alta Ares, a French company founded in 2024, says it won six of the 16 lots, more than any other supplier.

The contracts themselves carry no money. The tender notice behind them says funds are committed only when a country or NATO command places an order, and the one common pot so far is €3.1 million for testing.

NCIA’s Shortlist Came From a Bidder List of 85 Companies

The NATO Communications and Information Agency’s tender notice of 19 December 2025 listed 85 companies as prospective bidders, a list NATO nations could add to, and admitted only systems already deployed with NATO nations or allied forces. Prototypes were barred. Neither NCIA nor NATO has said which companies actually bid.

Four of the five winners appear on that notice: Alta Ares, Northrop Grumman Systems, Operational Solutions Ltd (OSL UK) and Dedrone Defense, the counter-drone business Axon agreed to buy in 2024. Quantum Systems does not, and the notice let NCIA accept nominations after the deadline. Larger names on the list, among them Anduril, Thales, Saab and Fortem, the company Lockheed Martin picked in March for critical infrastructure work, are not in the catalog, and whether they bid is not public. The notice also left man-portable and wearable systems to a separate NATO Support and Procurement Agency contract and required bidders to hold NATO Restricted security clearances.

NCIA’s announcement says every selected system has already been deployed in Allied countries and in Ukraine. Bids were scored against four reference scenarios. Point protection covers a single site such as a command post. Area protection covers a zone up to 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) across, and border protection a 12-mile (20-kilometer) segment. The convoy scenario is a column up to 980 feet (300 meters) long moving at 31 mph (50 km/h).

Alta Ares Says It Holds Every Area Protection Lot

Alta Ares says its six lots cover area defense and border protection, and that it is the only supplier selected for area defense in all three mobility classes: static, transportable and on-the-move. NATO has not published the lot-by-lot split, so that count rests on the company’s word.

The Paris company announced the award the same day, saying NCIA picked five firms from close to 100 applicants. It raised €50 million in June and says its software is trained on battlefield data from Ukraine and from operations in the Gulf, with Shahed-type attack drones and loitering munitions as the target set. “A counter-drone system has to work end-to-end,” CEO and co-founder Hadrien Canter said.

Jamie O’Connor-Delbert, the company’s director of EU, NATO and Eastern Europe engagement, told Interfax-Ukraine the framework puts no cap on the quantity an Ally can buy and that NATO common funding will pay for test batches. Alta Ares and Quantum Systems, two of the five winners, announced at Eurosatory in June that they would explore counter-drone cooperation.

The Catalog Pays Out Only When an Ally Orders

Money reaches these suppliers through task orders. A nation or NATO command sets a requirement, NCIA asks the awardees in that category for quotes, and they get roughly two weeks to answer. Allies can buy, lease or lease-to-own, under the process the December notice lays out.

The detection and engagement radius in the requirements runs from 1.2 to 25 miles (2 to 40 kilometers), wide on purpose because no operational requirement existed yet. The more than $40 billion often attached to the marketplace is a separate pledge. NATO’s announcement describes it as Allies’ commitment under Drone Edge, launched at the Ankara summit’s defense industry forum in July, to spend that sum on counter-drone capabilities over five years. That money sits in national budgets. Bulgaria, for one, took delivery of its first two counter-drone systems, bought from Axon, in August.

The process also ran late. The December notice planned contract award for June 30 and a one-year framework re-competed annually. The awards were announced November 5, and the contracts run 18 months from signature, with an option to extend.

The US Army Plans a Rival Marketplace for the Same Allies

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll signed a statement of intent at Eurosatory on June 16 with NATO Allies including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy and Lithuania, to open the Army’s UAS marketplace to them. Each of those countries can also order from NCIA’s catalog.

Driscoll pitched it as a way to “get our government and other governments’ regulation out of the way,” according to the Army. At home, the Pentagon’s counter-drone marketplace run by Joint Interagency Task Force 401 went live for US bases and agencies in February.

DroneXL’s Take

I like the filter NCIA used. Barring prototypes and requiring systems already fielded with allied forces is the right test for a threat NCIA itself calls rapidly evolving. My read is that it’s why a company founded in 2024 sits in the same catalog as Northrop Grumman.

The catalog still has to prove it’s a buying channel and not a shortlist. An Ally in a hurry can already buy directly, as Bulgaria did, and the US Army is opening its own marketplace to the same countries. NCIA’s route gets used only if its two-week quote process beats both. No task order against these contracts has been announced, and the first one is what I’ll be watching for.

Sources: NCIA, NCIA notice of intent CO-42530191-CUAS, NATO, Alta Ares, Interfax-Ukraine, U.S. Army

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

St. Vrain Students Fly 300 Drones for Make-A-Wish Boy on a School Day

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 09:48:00 GMT

High school students on St. Vrain Valley Schools’ Drone Performance Team flew 300 drones over Holyoke, Colorado, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, in a show built for Nathaniel “Bubba” Brown, an 11-year-old Make-A-Wish Colorado recipient. The students designed it around his love of lights and set it to his favorite music.

Bubba was born with SCN2A, a rare neurological condition, and lives with multiple forms of epilepsy. The show was the finale of his wish, a community celebration called Bubba’s Bright Lights Block Party, and it was planned for a Sunday evening. It flew on a Wednesday, after the student pilots had spent the morning in class at their own high schools.

Weather Pushed the Show From a Sunday to a School Day

Make-A-Wish Colorado asked the team at the end of September to fly the finale of Bubba’s block party, a 6 p.m. show on Sunday, Oct. 25. Bad weather scrubbed it. The party moved indoors to the Phillips County Event Center, and the show was rebooked for Wednesday, Oct. 28.

Team coordinator Danny Hernandez wrote on LinkedIn that the students had the airspace checks and show designs done by Saturday night for the drive about three hours east of Longmont. The Haxtun-Fleming Herald had listed the 6 p.m. slot in its preview, and The Holyoke Enterprise reported the move indoors and the new date, when the show joined First Baptist Church’s annual Harvest Party.

Hernandez wrote that on Oct. 28 the students were in first period at 7:45 a.m., left the district’s Innovation Center at 11:30 a.m., set up and flew by 6:30 p.m., and got home around 11:30 p.m. Every vehicle carried a hotspot so they could do homework and study for the next day’s tests on the road, and they were due back in class at 7:45 the next morning. “Not once did anyone ask, ‘Why are we doing this?’” Hernandez wrote.

St. Vrain’s Students Run Every Show From Client Meeting to Flight

St. Vrain Valley Schools bills its Drone Performance Team, based at the district’s Innovation Center in Longmont, as the world’s first high school student-led outdoor drone show team. Students meet the clients, design the aerial animations, compose original music for each show and fly the drones.

The team was rehearsing for its first public show in May 2024 and was booked for a 300-drone Fourth of July show in Longmont in 2025. Washington’s Peninsula School District has since built the same kind of team. When DroneXL covered Peninsula’s 300-drone debut in September 2025, that program was described as only the second of its kind in the country.

Joe McBreen, St. Vrain’s assistant superintendent of innovation, credited the OtterCares Foundation with making the Holyoke show possible. OtterCares gave the Innovation Center a $25,000 grant in May so that its more than 20 student project teams put part of their work into nonprofit partners starting this school year. The grant grew out of “Drones for Dreams,” Silver Creek High School junior Braeden Macchia’s program of free drone services for local nonprofits.

A Pilot Whose Sister Got a Wish Helped Fly Bubba’s Show

Longmont High School senior Reese Wieder worked the Holyoke show as both a project manager and a pilot. Her older sister received a Make-A-Wish trip to San Diego as a child while she was undergoing cancer treatment, CBS Colorado reported on Nov. 8.

CBS gave Bubba’s age as 9. McBreen and the Holyoke Enterprise both put it at 11.

Bubba Brown watches the drone show with family and neighbors in Holyoke. Photo credit: St. Vrain Valley School District

Bubba’s mother, Alysha Brown, called the performance “mind blowing” in a statement McBreen posted. She said seeing all 300 drones take off to one of Bubba’s favorite songs had the family in tears again.

"A Drone Show for Bubba," St. Vrain Valley Schools

DroneXL’s Take

I’m more impressed by how these students handled the weather scrub than by the 300-drone animation. Flying a scrubbed show three days later and hauling 300 drones three hours east is the part of show work that professionals get paid for. These students did it on a school day, with tests the next morning. DroneXL’s Colorado drone coverage this year includes a talking-drone rescue in Summit County and a Colorado Springs police drone at a knife fight, and this story belongs on the same list of drones doing real work for people on the ground. A student team that can absorb a scrub without losing the date is already working like a professional crew.

Sources: CBS Colorado, The Holyoke Enterprise, The Haxtun-Fleming Herald, St. Vrain Valley Schools, Danny Hernandez and Joe McBreen on LinkedIn.

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

AirData Syncs Pilot Institute Training Records As Part 108 Nears

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 09:14:00 GMT

AirData UAV now pulls Pilot Institute course certificates straight into pilot profiles, with no file to upload. The flight-log company announced the integration with Pilot Institute, the Prescott, Arizona, drone school, on November 4. It works on every AirData plan, free accounts included, and it imports certificates pilots earned before the link existed.

Pilots connect under My Account > Pilot Institute in AirData and sign in with their Pilot Institute login. Each certificate lands on the pilot’s profile as a badge, with the skills from that course attached.

AirData already read Pilot Institute certificates before the integration. Its supported-credentials page lists the school among the training providers whose uploaded certificates it detects and tracks automatically.

AirData Shows Fleet Managers Pilot Institute Courses Still In Progress

Fleet administrators can now see which Pilot Institute courses a pilot has finished and which are still underway, something an uploaded certificate never showed. AirData says the attached skills help administrators judge what a pilot can do when assigning missions. Pilots and managers also get reminders before certificates expire.

AirData CEO Eran Steiner said the company has synced flight logs for years and “we see the same need with pilot certifications.” AirData’s announcement puts its record at more than 68 million flights from more than 470,000 pilots, up from the 65 million it reported on August 25. The company’s supported credentials page says it recognizes 883 certificate types.

Greg Reverdiau, Pilot Institute’s co-founder and head of training, said “This integration gives our students a direct way to maintain their training records.” Pilot Institute is a DroneXL partner, and Reverdiau writes the site’s weekly UAS news update, most recently on November 6. The school says it has trained more than 150,000 Part 107 students.

FAA’s Part 108 Proposal Asks Operators To Keep Training Certificates On File

The FAA’s August 2025 Part 108 proposal for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight would make operators record the training of every person the rule requires to be trained. Section 108.40(e) lists six items, including the completion date, the provider’s name and address, and a certificate copy.

The final rule has sat in White House review since July 10, and federal law requires it by December 7. Wing cited the rule’s upcoming release last week as the trigger for its next expansion. The November 4 announcement never mentions Part 108. AirData’s own August 25 post did, saying the rule shifts the burden of proving that personnel are qualified from the individual pilot to the operating organization.

Pilot Institute has pushed back on Part 108’s paperwork before. In its October 2025 comment on the proposal, the school said the rule’s reporting and recordkeeping duties would burden fully autonomous operations and could favor large companies over smaller ones.

DroneXL’s Take

I like this one because it is boring. The school’s own warning was that Part 108’s paperwork favors big operators, so putting automatic training records on AirData’s free tier helps a three-pilot inspection shop more than a utility with a compliance department. I’d stop short of AirData’s mission-assignment pitch, though. A synced badge proves someone finished a course, and a fleet manager who picks crews off a course outline is letting it stand in for a check ride. I’d use the badges for the paperwork and keep the check ride for deciding who flies.

Sources: AirData UAV, EIN Presswire, Federal Register (FAA Part 108 proposed rule).

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

Skydio Controller 2 Ships: Bigger Screen, More Runtime, 395 g Heavier

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 23:55:00 GMT

Skydio’s Controller 2, a new handheld controller for its X10, X10D and R10 drones, is going out to customers, CEO Adam Bry posted on LinkedIn on Sunday, November 8. Skydio had announced it on October 27 with a 7-inch screen rated at 2,000 nits sustained and more than 5 hours 45 minutes of battery life. It comes in the box with every new X10 and R10.

Skydio first showed the controller at its Ascend event in September, the same show where it unveiled the F10 Lightrunner, rated up to 100 mph. Bry’s post lists a bigger, brighter screen, better 5G performance, more I/O, and Skydio’s Command software on the controller for joint dock and controller missions. Skydio’s spec sheet also shows Controller 2 is 395 grams heavier than the X10 controller it replaces, with the same battery inside.

Controller 2 Weighs 395 Grams More and Runs 45 Minutes Longer

Controller 2 weighs 1,530 grams (3.4 pounds) against 1,135 grams (2.5 pounds) for the original X10 controller, per Skydio’s spec sheet. It runs about 45 minutes longer on the same 9,600 mAh battery and moves up to a 7-inch screen from 6.6 inches. It is rated IP55, up from IP54.

Skydio Controller 2 with the sun hood up and the C1 to C3 custom buttons on the left. Image credit: Skydio

The screen changes type as well as size. The X10 technical specs list the original controller with a 6.6-inch AMOLED panel at 2340 x 1080 pixels and 120 Hz, rated at 1,750 nits outdoor peak. Controller 2 gets a 7-inch LCD at 1920 x 1200 and 60 Hz, rated at 2,000 nits sustained. A peak rating and a sustained rating measure different things, so the two brightness numbers don’t line up directly.

The IP55 rating adds protection against water jets where IP54 covers splashing. Controller 2 also has a built-in kickstand, protected control sticks, customizable physical buttons and wireless screencasting alongside its HDMI output. As of November 8, none of Skydio’s Controller 2 pages explains where the extra weight comes from.

Controller 2 Lets Crews Choose Among Approved 5G Carriers

Controller 2 runs Skydio Flight Deck for the X10, X10D and R10 and takes a swappable 5G SIM, with the data plan bought through Skydio or brought from an agency’s own carrier. X10D crews who need Microhard radios get Controller 2 MH, a separate version with External Radio Kit support.

Skydio’s launch post says that lets teams switch carriers when coverage changes from one location to another. Skydio’s spec sheet rates the 5G link’s range as unlimited wherever there is cellular coverage, against 7.5 miles (12 km) on Skydio’s own radio link and 6.2 miles (10 km) on Microhard. The Controller 2 MH page pitches that version for ISR Command, the software Skydio launched in October to let one soldier fly two X10Ds from a single controller.

The spec sheet calls Controller 2 NDAA compliant, with an AES-256 encrypted data link and trusted boot. Skydio’s X10, R10 and Dock for X10 made the Blue UAS Cleared List in July, which put them in reach of police departments buying with federal grant money. As of November 8, Skydio’s Controller 2 pages describe the controller as NDAA compliant but not as Blue UAS listed.

Skydio staff on the Packout 2.0 line with Controller 2 units and cases. Photo credit: Skydio

Bry’s LinkedIn post says “controllers aren’t going anywhere.” Owners of aircraft already in the field can order Controller 2 separately. As of November 8, none of Skydio’s Controller 2 pages lists a price for it.

DroneXL’s Take

Bry’s point that controllers still matter is the part of this launch I agree with most. To me, Skydio’s growth story for two years has been docks, more than 1,000 of them at public safety agencies by the company’s own September count. But somebody still has to clear a building with an R10 or fly an X10D for a squad, and that person holds the controller for the whole shift. I’d take 395 extra grams for 45 more minutes and a screen Skydio rates for direct sunlight, and the carrier choice is a real fix for agencies whose coverage changes across a county. What I couldn’t find is a price. A department already flying X10s that wants Controller 2 can’t budget for it from Skydio’s public pages yet.

Sources: Skydio, Adam Bry on LinkedIn, Skydio X10 technical specifications.

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

Peter Ryseck's Propeller Pole Stood 3 Hours. The Motors Barely Ran

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 22:52:00 GMT

Peter Ryseck, an aerospace engineer with a master’s degree from the University of Maryland, built a carbon fiber pole that stands on a tip the size of a coin and keeps itself upright with four drone propellers. In a video posted September 2, the pole stood for more than three hours in a windy park on a single 2200 mAh three-cell battery, and the pack still read 11.1 volts at the three-hour mark.

The propellers are not holding the pole up. Ryseck says almost all of its weight goes straight down the shaft into the ground, and the motors run just above idle, making small sideways corrections whenever the pole starts to tip. Push it with a hand and it leans back to vertical.

Ryseck is the builder of the Mini QBiT, the winged quadcopter DroneXL cited in June as the hobbyist ancestor of Ukraine’s long-range winged FPV drones, and his site lists a flight dynamics role at Joby Aviation. His first version of the pole, built with larger motors and propellers, never balanced.

Larger Propellers Failed Because They Could Not Change Thrust Fast Enough

Ryseck started with big, slow propellers for quiet, efficient running, and the pole was unstable no matter how he tuned it. The motors had enough thrust. They could not change it quickly enough. He tried 3-inch props before settling on 5-inch ones, the FPV racing size.

When a pole begins to fall, the controller has milliseconds to react, and a large propeller’s rotational inertia means it cannot speed up or slow down in that time. In control terms, Ryseck says in the video, the big props left him without enough bandwidth. The hardware that survived is plain. Four motors on a 3D printed mount, a Pixhawk flight controller, a Hoovo 2200 mAh 3S pack, and a carbon fiber pole taken from a swimming pool cleaning net, attached with one screw.

The whole machine: four motors, a Pixhawk, a 2200 mAh 3S battery and a pool-net pole that attaches with a single screw. Photo credit: Peter Ryseck, video still

A Notch Filter Hunts Down the Pole’s 18 Hz Flex Every Time It Arms

The controller is a PD loop, tuned first in a simulation built from the pole’s measured mass and inertia. The same gains held across many pole lengths, but a short pole went unstable, and the simulation assumed a rigid shaft while the real one flexes.

The controller could not tell bending from falling. Flight logs showed the pole’s tilt rate concentrated around 18 Hz, while the balancing motion, he estimates, lives below 5 Hz. Left alone, the controller kept pumping energy into that flex. Ryseck added a low-pass filter, which he had to limit because it adds phase lag near the balancing frequencies, and a dynamic notch filter that measures the pole’s natural frequencies every time the system arms and notches each one out. In the video you can hear the motor tone change as the notches engage one by one.

Setting motor idle to zero worked but added small instabilities, so the motors keep spinning at minimum throttle. And because an IMU’s estimate of vertical is never perfect, the controller slowly shifts its attitude estimate until the motors stop pushing harder in one direction. In steady wind that same logic makes the pole learn to lean into the breeze instead of fighting it.

Ryseck with the pole on a riverside path. The pole stands on its own tip, and a push with a hand sends it leaning back to vertical. Photo credit: Peter Ryseck, video still

Ryseck wanted a controller that would survive a different pole length or a random weight on top, a phone for a selfie, say, without retuning, and the video shows it recovering from pushes. The endurance run in the park passed the three-hour mark with the pole where he left it and the pack at 3.75 volts per cell, down from a 12.6 volt full charge. One secondhand write-up reported the run as 3.75 hours. That figure in the video is the cell voltage, not the time.

The video does not give the pole’s length or total weight, the power the motors draw at idle, or how much wind the park test saw. Ryseck does not say what the pole is for, and asks viewers what they think of it.

DroneXL’s Take

Nothing I have watched this year explains better why a 5-inch quad feels locked in and a cinelifter on 10-inch props never quite does. The limit is how fast a propeller can change its thrust, and Ryseck shows that physics with no flying involved. FPV pilots run RPM and dynamic notch filters for exactly the resonance he hunts down here, and the notch filter section is worth the nine minutes on its own. Joshua Bird’s one-motor drone, which we covered in October, fought a 160 Hz vibration, and most makers solve that kind of problem by trial and error. Ryseck measured his and filtered it, which is why his pole stands for hours. My read is that this project has a useful life beyond a party trick, because a camera or antenna mast that holds itself up in wind is a product. I want his idle power draw next, because that number decides whether this runs for three hours or for days.

Source: Peter Ryseck on YouTube, peterryseck.com

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

Chinese Drone Swarm Maps Woods on Its Own, and Withholds the Code

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 22:15:00 GMT

Three lidar-equipped quadcopters from Tongji University in Shanghai explored a patch of park trees with no ground station and no pilot, according to a peer-reviewed paper that a science press-release site surfaced this week. Four of the same drones mapped a 39-by-98-foot (12-by-30-meter) exhibition hall with columns and a display board in their way. Each aircraft carried an Intel NUC computer and a Livox Mid-360 lidar, and every decision about where to fly and how to avoid a teammate was made on board.

The framework is called ESCAPE, and the paper describing it appeared in Autonomous Intelligent Systems, a Springer journal, on December 22, 2025. Its authors are at Tongji, Tianjin University and the Beijing Institute of Technology, and the work was paid for by China’s National Key Research and Development Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and two Shanghai municipal science programs.

The paper’s code availability statement says the code “is not available for public release” because of “the confidentiality requirements of the research.”

Three Drones Divided a Park Into Grid Cells and Negotiated Who Flies Where

The swarm splits its search area into uniform grid cells, and the drones trade cells among themselves in pairwise exchanges with no hub giving orders. Each drone then picks a visiting order for its own cells and flies it at 2.2 mph (1.0 m/s) while building a 3D map.

The routing step treats the cell assignment as a capacitated vehicle routing problem and hands it to the Lin-Kernighan-Helsgaun solver, which converts it to a traveling salesman problem with penalty terms. The one change to the routing step of the Racer framework it builds on is a continuity penalty: when a grid cell’s center sits inside a wall or a tree trunk, the drone pays an extra cost equal to the straight-line distance to that center. The point is to stop a drone from hovering in front of a big obstacle and shuttling back and forth, which the authors say Racer does when a single obstacle spans several cells.

Racer came out of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2023, and its code is on GitHub. ESCAPE reuses Racer’s frontier detection and its B-spline path optimizer.

In the outdoor test, three drones covered a 39-by-66-foot (12-by-20-meter) patch of trees to a height of 6.6 feet (2 meters). Indoors, four drones covered the hall to a height of 5.2 feet (1.6 meters). The lidar’s field of view was deliberately narrowed to 86 degrees horizontally and minus 10 to 60 degrees vertically to mimic a depth camera, and the Livox Mid-360 handled both positioning and mapping. Livox is the lidar maker DJI spun out, and it cut the Mid-360’s point rate in half in September to get the price down for exactly this kind of robot.

Four drones explore the 39-by-98-foot indoor hall, with columns and an exhibition board as obstacles. Image credit: Bao et al., Autonomous Intelligent Systems, CC BY 4.0

The Lower Drone Stops and Hovers While the Higher One Flies Around It

ESCAPE drones avoid each other without exchanging flight paths. Each broadcasts its position, and when two come within range each computes a risk score: how far inside a 4.9-foot (1.5-meter) safety bubble the other drone is, whether they are closing head-on, and how fast. A score above 1.5 triggers avoidance.

Distance counts double in that score, with heading and closing speed weighted once each. Two drones flying directly apart score zero on heading. Two drones on a head-on course score the maximum.

When the threshold trips, altitude decides who moves. The lower drone brakes to a hover and holds position. The higher drone treats the hovering drone’s actual coordinates as a no-fly zone and replans a route around it, with a wider margin vertically than horizontally, which the paper says is to give stronger vertical safety margins. The margin is padded by a 0.01-second allowance for network timing error and 2 inches (5 centimeters) for localization error. The authors argue this is safer than the standard approach, in which each drone optimizes against the flight paths its teammates broadcast, because a late packet means a drone is dodging a path its teammate left a moment ago.

ESCAPE Beat Racer in Seven of Nine Simulated Setups, With Perfect Radio Assumed

Across three simulated office maps with two, four and six drones, ESCAPE finished exploring faster than Racer on average in seven of nine combinations, and faster than ETH Zurich’s Role framework in all nine. Racer was quicker with two drones in the second office and with four in the first.

Each configuration ran 20 times, and the gains were largest on the map with the biggest obstacles. In the third office with two drones, ESCAPE averaged 98.9 seconds against Racer’s 140.4. With four drones there, its average path length was 53.9 meters (177 feet) against Racer’s 96.1 meters (315 feet). On the two simpler maps the differences were under 11 seconds either way.

The collision test defined a failure as any two drones coming within 16 inches (0.4 meters) of each other, and ran four- and eight-drone swarms 50 times each at 2.2 and 3.4 mph (1.0 and 1.5 m/s). The paper reports that success rates rose with the avoidance module switched on, and gives the figures only as a chart.

Both simulation studies assumed perfect localization and perfect communication between drones. The paper’s stated reason for building a new avoidance method is that real swarm radios drop packets and deliver flight paths late. The physical flights did run over an actual network. The team measured about 10.25 megabytes per second of traffic in a six-drone run it does not otherwise describe, and says the flights avoided collisions without noticeable network delays. It gives no collision counts, packet-loss figures or success rates from those flights.

The Money Is Chinese State Science Funding and the Code Is Locked

The paper lists seven funding sources, all Chinese and all public: the National Key Research and Development Program, four National Natural Science Foundation grants, two Shanghai municipal science projects, the Aeronautical Science Foundation of China, central-university research funds and a Tianjin transportation project.

The authors thank the Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems for facilities and computing. One coauthor, Gang Wang, is at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems. The institute is one of the seven universities under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that are known as the Seven Sons of National Defence. The paper’s contributions section credits Wang with manuscript review and revision, not with the method or the experiments. The paper describes only civilian uses: 3D reconstruction, environmental monitoring and search and rescue in forests. It says nothing about military applications, and the drones in the photos are small research quadcopters.

Withholding code is common in robotics papers, and the Creative Commons license Springer published the article under covers the text, not the software. The dataset is described as public domain. The code is withheld for confidentiality reasons the paper does not name, and whose requirement it is, a funder’s or the university’s, is not stated anywhere in the paper.

The PLA’s 200-drone swarm demo in January and the jamming-resistant hunting swarm claimed in June were military demonstrations with no published method, and this paper publishes its method in full, down to the weights in the risk formula, while keeping the code.

DroneXL’s Take

This is a solid, incremental engineering paper, and the press release built on it is not. “Autonomous drone swarms map complex environments” describes three drones crawling through a patch of park trees at walking pace. I’d call that a real distributed flight and a long way from a forest search, and the authors themselves never call it one.

The physical flights could have settled whether the avoidance logic survives a real radio link, and the paper gives no numbers from them. Stopping the lower drone dead whenever the risk score trips also suits a mapping job more than anything that has to keep moving, which the authors say themselves by listing moving obstacles as future work.

The withheld code bothers me more than the state funding does. Chinese university robotics is state funded by default, and the University of Minnesota’s wildfire swarm work runs on US federal grants the same way. But the paper’s headline result is that it beats Racer, and Racer’s authors put their code online for anyone to run. Until this team does the same, seven out of nine on their own simulator is a result nobody outside Tongji can check.

Source: Autonomous Intelligent Systems (Springer), via Scienmag.

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

Haiti's Drone War Claims a Gang Leader, and Two Death Stories

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 20:26:00 GMT

Mathias Saintil, the leader of the Boston gang in Cité Soleil, died Friday, November 6, a day after coordinated police operations swept five communes of Port-au-Prince with at least seven kamikaze drones. Haiti’s prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, confirmed the death on X with three words: “One less gang leader.” Saintil’s gang belongs to Viv Ansanm, the coalition the Trump administration designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in May 2025, and a human rights lawyer told CNN three weeks ago that no major gang leader had been killed in Haiti in years.

The two accounts of how he died do not match. The National Human Rights Defense Network, one of Haiti’s leading rights groups, says a kamikaze drone struck Saintil’s home and his vehicle in the Nan Nélio area between 9 and 10 p.m. Thursday and left him with abdominal wounds he died of the next afternoon. The Haiti National Police, in a statement issued after the prime minister’s post, says he was “struck by multiple gunshots” during a police operation and died later in a hospital in the capital.

Both Accounts Can Be True, and Neither Side Has Reconciled Them

The drones flown Thursday belong to a task force Prime Minister Fils-Aimé set up in March 2025, run from his office with Erik Prince’s Vectus Global in support, Human Rights Watch reports. It operates alongside Haitian police, and the US State Department licensed Vectus to export defense services to Haiti.

The night was not one drone and one target. The rights network counts at least seven kamikaze drones dropped across Tabarre, Croix-des-Missions, Santo, Cité Soleil and La Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, according to the Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles. Five of Saintil’s men died at the scene and around 15 were wounded, two of them losing a foot. Saintil was driving to a street party in Pierre-Six, another part of the slum, where a separate strike killed gang members and civilians, the network says.

Gunfire was part of the same action. A pickup truck carrying 15 fighters from the Brooklyn gang of Gabriel Jean-Pierre, known as Ti Gabriel, set out to reinforce Saintil, and task force members intercepted it, shooting five dead and wounding six. A man hit by a drone and then caught in that exchange would fit both statements. Neither the police nor the rights network has said so, and the Herald reports only that the accounts differ.

Saintil was taken to a hospital in Belécourt, then to a facility in Canaan, another gang-held district, where he died around 5:30 p.m. Friday while a third transfer to Carrefour was being arranged. DroneXL reported in August 2025 how far apart the task force and the police can sit when a task force drone that failed to detonate exploded at a police SWAT base in Kenscoff, killing two officers who were trying to disarm it after residents carried it in.

Prince Said Leadership Kills Do Not Win Wars. The Body Count Says What Does.

The campaign has flown more than 2,000 drone strikes since March 2025, CNN reported on October 17, and human rights lawyer Rosy Auguste Ducena told CNN that no major gang leader had been killed in years. Prince’s answer was that leadership kills are not how insurgencies are beaten.

“Wars are won by taking significant numbers of enemy manpower off the battlefield,” Prince told CNN, adding that the United States has an “obsession” with going after leaders.

The manpower count is on the record. Human Rights Watch tallied 141 drone operations between March 1, 2025 and January 21, 2026 that killed at least 1,243 people and injured 738. Among the dead were 17 children and at least 43 adults the group says were not gang members. Human Rights Watch wrote that some of the strikes “appear to be attempts to carry out extrajudicial killings,” and the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, told the Human Rights Council on October 2, 2025 that most of the drone strikes “are likely unlawful under international human rights law.” A CNN tally of UN reporting counts 85 civilians killed by the drones, a figure rights workers told CNN is probably incomplete because the targeted areas are hard to reach.

The drones themselves are armed quadcopters, the class of aircraft DroneXL described when it first covered the campaign in May 2025 and when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police objected in June 2025 that donated Canadian drones were being used lethally against the terms of the donation.

El Salvador’s 2,500 Troops Gave the Task Force Its Opening

The task force’s tempo rose after four Salvadoran aviation technicians serving with the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force were ambushed in Croix-des-Bouquets on October 18 and have not been seen since. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, sent 2,500 troops to Haiti to find them.

Bukele has made the hunt public. On Wednesday he posted aerial footage of Port-au-Prince on X with the caption “Looks like the gangs don’t want to fight us.”

During the search of the Cul-de-Sac plain for the missing men, the task force and Haitian police pushed into territory held by 400 Mawozo and bombed the home of its leader, Wilson Joseph, known as Lanmò San Jou. He survived. The rights network places him in Thor 65 in the commune of Carrefour, reportedly driven there by Ti Bwa gang leader Chrisla Chéry, and he has since appealed to the UN for peace talks. The Gang Suppression Force was not part of Thursday’s drone strikes either, and the Herald reports it has often had to deconflict after learning that another force’s operation was already underway.

DroneXL’s Take

Saintil’s gang terrorized Cité Soleil for years, and nobody in that slum is mourning him. The two death stories still bother me more than the death. I suspect the police version exists because a drone kill belongs to a contractor-backed unit the UN rights chief has called likely unlawful, while a shootout belongs to a police force that can stand behind it, and I can’t prove that. Both accounts may be true. A government that wanted them reconciled would have put out one statement, and it put out two.

I covered the Kenscoff SWAT base explosion last August as a protocol failure. It looks now like a symptom: two chains of command, one set of drones, and nobody willing to own the result when it goes wrong, or now, when it goes right.

Every US police department asking its council for an armed drone will have Haiti cited back at it, and after this week the citation comes with a gang leader’s name and a casualty ledger. The departments that want the capability should be the loudest voices demanding the task force publish who it kills, because the alternative is that Haiti writes the case against them.

Sources: Miami Herald via Yahoo News, CNN, Human Rights Watch, UN Geneva

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

Iran Never Sent Drones to California. The Barksdale Case Is Still Open

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 19:52:00 GMT

Eight months after the FBI warned California police that Iran had “allegedly aspired” to launch drones at the state from a ship off the coast, no Iranian drone has reached the United States. The war is still running. President Trump said on November 6 that the U.S. had struck Iranian air defenses again, and Tehran is weighing a Qatari proposal to end it.

The homeland drone incidents of those eight months have been tied to no one, Iran included. Drones flew over Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for a week in March. Fifteen spray drones left a New Jersey warehouse on forged paperwork. Northern Command’s deputy commander said in August that he could not stop a swarm launched inside the country, and an Army counter-drone laser now guards Mar-a-Lago.

The White House called the Iran story false the day after it ran. No agency has publicly said who flew the Barksdale drones.

The White House Answered the Iran Story Within a Day

The FBI’s Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center sent the bulletin to California police at the end of February. It said Iran had allegedly aspired, as of early February, to hit unspecified California targets with drones from an unidentified vessel if the U.S. struck first. It called the information unverified.

The bulletin said the FBI had nothing on timing, method, target or perpetrators. ABC News surfaced it on the night of March 11, twelve days into Operation Epic Fury, and its first version left out the word “unverified.” The FBI’s public affairs director, Ben Williamson, said so publicly. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded a retraction on March 12 and wrote that “no such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.” ABC added the full bulletin text and an editor’s note that day. Gov. Gavin Newsom said there was no imminent threat to the state.

The denial held up. I wrote on March 12 that the story would be a footnote by April 15, and it was. Iran’s drone carrier, the converted container ship Shahid Bagheri, was hit in the opening hours of the campaign, according to U.S. Central Command, and the footage CENTCOM released on March 5 shows it burning. Nicole Grajewski of the Carnegie Endowment told ABC that Iran “does not have the range to do this.” The same pattern played out in December 2024, when the Pentagon denied a congressman’s claim that an Iranian mothership was launching the New Jersey drones.

The Drone Cases That Did Happen Have No Public Attribution

Barksdale’s security forces counted multiple waves of 12 to 15 drones over the flight line between March 9 and 15, according to a March 15 briefing obtained by ABC News. It described non-commercial signals, long-range control links and resistance to jamming.

The base issued a shelter-in-place order on March 9, and the briefing said incursions like these require the flight line to be shut down. The base hosts B-52H bombers and the headquarters of Air Force Global Strike Command, and the command disputed parts of the coverage on March 31, saying operations from Barksdale “continue unabated” while a federal investigation runs. Sen. Bill Cassidy said after an unclassified briefing on March 27 that there had been “five or so at Barksdale from the 9th through the 15th,” one by a hobbyist and four of unclear origin, and that two recovered drones might not be connected to the incursions.

The only charges publicly reported since came in October, when prosecutors in Shreveport indicted Fuad Mousa Naji for flying an unregistered DJI Air 3 near the base from March 22 to 26. That period starts a week after the incursions ended, and neither local report on the indictment connects his Air 3 to the jamming-resistant aircraft in the briefing. He is due in federal court on December 2, and an indictment is an accusation: he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

In New Jersey, someone presented a forged bill of lading at CAC International in Harrison on March 24 and drove off with 15 Ceres Air C31 spray drones worth $58,000 each. Warehouse workers in Dover found them a month later. New Jersey State Police recovered all 15 on April 27 with Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection assisting, and announced no arrest. As of November 8, none has been reported in news coverage of the case.

Northcom Cannot Stop a Swarm, and a Laser Now Guards Mar-a-Lago

Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, told a Huntsville symposium on August 13 that his command could not defend the country against a drone swarm launched inside its borders, and he called detection the harder half of the problem.

His command is now trying to tie military radars into systems local police already run. “We are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that,” he said, in remarks reported by The War Zone. Gen. Gregory Guillot had told Congress in March that Northcom defeated about a quarter of the drones it detected over installations and had one deployable counter-drone fly-away kit. Those kits are now at Mar-a-Lago, alongside Avenger missile launchers and an AeroVironment LOCUST laser photographed on October 31. NORAD confirmed the deployment at the Secret Service’s request and would not describe the threat, and the Secret Service said only that it is operating in a heightened threat environment. The FAA’s restriction over the estate warns drone operators that their aircraft may be destroyed.

At the border, Joint Task Force-Southern Border says it defeated more than 300 drones this year. Since February, the targets of only two engagements have been identified in public: Mylar party balloons and a Customs and Border Protection surveillance drone.

DroneXL’s Take

The Iran bulletin got the fastest and loudest answer any homeland drone question has received this year, and it was the one question that did not need one. A single unverified tip in a contingency memo drew a retraction demand from the White House podium. The drones over a nuclear bomber base drew a shelter-in-place order, a senator’s briefing, a fact-check from the command and, eight months later, no name.

Leavitt was right on the merits. Iran had no way to put a Shahed over Los Angeles, and the drone carrier that might have tried was on fire by March 5. Barksdale is also a live federal criminal investigation, and investigators who name uncharged suspects lose cases. But the same government found a way to say, within hours, exactly what it knew about a threat that did not exist, and in eight months it has not told the people living under Barksdale’s flight paths whether the aircraft that briefing called jamming-resistant were hobbyist drones or something else. My read is that the speed of an answer tracks who is embarrassed by the question, and in March that was a television network rather than the Air Force.

The next date on the record is December 2, when Naji appears in Shreveport. Prosecutors there have not said what his Air 3 has to do with the week before his charged flights, if anything. I suspect the answer is nothing, and that the four flights Cassidy could not account for are still the whole story.

Sources: ABC News, Mediaite, CNN, Naval News, KSLA, March 27, KSLA, March 31, The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, The War Zone, Associated Press via CP24, New Jersey State Police.

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

Chimp Sanctuary Fed Kaleb by DJI Drone. Florida Agencies Can't Fly One

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 18:12:00 GMT

Save the Chimps, a 150-acre (61-hectare) chimpanzee sanctuary near Fort Pierce, Florida, used a DJI camera drone on November 4 to lower a paper bag of bananas and a bundle of blankets to Kaleb, a 38-year-old chimp whose outdoor area had been cut off by floodwater. Three days of rain over the first weekend of November had put the sanctuary’s internal roads under water, knocked out the golf carts that carry 3,000 pounds (1,361 kilograms) of food a day to more than 200 chimps, and stalled the swamp buggy brought in to replace them.

The sanctuary says every chimp stayed safe and no meal was missed. Kaleb later walked out on his own, across a rope strung over the standing water. The aircraft that reached him first, in the sanctuary’s own video, is a folding consumer drone with a line hanging from its belly, the kind Florida’s sheriffs and fire departments have been barred by state law from flying since 2023.

Three Days of Rain Put the Sanctuary’s Roads Under Water

Rain fell on the Treasure Coast from Sunday, November 1 to Tuesday, November 3. Fort Pierce recorded 8.36 inches (212 millimeters) in three days, with a one-day record of 5.39 inches (137 millimeters) on Monday, per FOX Weather, and WPTV put the sanctuary’s total at about 19 inches (483 millimeters).

The 200-plus residents live in groups on 12 islands of about 3 acres (1.2 hectares) each, with their indoor care houses on the high ground, and CEO Ana Paula Tavares said the care houses stayed secure on the high ground. It did cover the paths between the islands. The Header Canal that drains the property overflowed and kept the water from running off, CBS12 reported, and the South Florida Water Management District issued an emergency order during the week.

Nearly 15 golf carts failed, facilities director Mark Yohannan told WPTV, after sitting in 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of water. A donated high-clearance swamp buggy took over the food runs and broke down on Wednesday, and a staff member’s truck got stuck in a sinkhole on Thursday. Meals, medicine and enrichment went out by pickup, tractor and a maintenance worker’s personal vehicle, Yohannan told the Associated Press, and veterinarians stayed overnight on the property while flooding on the roads outside made it hard for the next shift to get in. “They haven’t missed a beat,” Yohannan said of the chimps. A small alligator turned up beside the kitchen on Friday.

The sanctuary's islands from the air after the November 1 to 3 rain, with the service roads between them under water. Image credit: Save the Chimps, video still

The water dropped noticeably overnight Friday, and by Saturday, November 7, about 20 percent of the roads were passable. Yohannan is scheduled to address the North St. Lucie River Water District at 10 a.m. on Monday, November 9, and the sanctuary plans to bring the drainage problem to the St. Lucie County Commission the same week. Its appeal for repair money, posted November 6, says every gift is matched by Susanne Damgaard of Denmark, the donor already matching up to $500,000 in the sanctuary’s year-end campaign. The sanctuary’s Facebook post puts the damage at resurfaced roads, roof repairs, mold remediation, golf carts, a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a walk-in cooler compressor.

The Drone in the Video Is a DJI Air 3-Series Camera Drone on a Drop Line

The sanctuary’s own video shows a gray DJI quadcopter with the stacked dual-camera gimbal of the Air 3 series lifting off a brick patio beside its open hard case, a paper bag swinging below on a line. No source names the model; the identification is DroneXL’s, from the footage.

The AP called it a delivery drone, and Yohannan told the wire service the sanctuary had bought it some time ago for exactly this kind of emergency. The Air 3 and Air 3S share the same body and gimbal, so the video does not settle which of the two it is. It cuts from the takeoff to the drone’s own downward view of the bag and a folded blanket on the grass of Kaleb’s island, and a photo the sanctuary gave CBS12 shows the same aircraft with the blankets slung underneath. The clip then follows Kaleb opening the bag, and later picking his way along the rope the staff had strung across the water, which the caption calls the land bridge.

The sanctuary's DJI Air 3-series drone lifting the paper bag off its hard case on November 4. Image credit: Save the Chimps, video still

In September, crews in Nepal flew four donated DJI FlyCart 100 cargo drones, each rated for 132 pounds (60 kilograms), to villages that had lost their roads and bridges. Save the Chimps flew a camera drone that carries a few pounds across a flooded path to one chimp. It worked because someone bought it before the rain and knew where the case was.

Florida’s Own First Responders Could Not Have Flown It

Florida has barred state and local agencies from flying Chinese-made drones since 2023, when the Department of Management Services limited public fleets to an approved list without DJI or Autel Robotics. The legislature put up $25 million for replacements, and the confiscated drones became target practice for Special Operations Command.

DroneXL put the cost of that policy at $200 million in working public safety drones in November 2025, with no published security analysis behind it. The agencies that replaced them went to American hardware: Palm Beach County Fire Rescue stood up a Skydio X10 fleet for this hurricane season because the law left it few other choices. A private nonprofit faces no such rule, and Save the Chimps flew what it owned.

Since December 22, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has blocked new equipment authorizations for every foreign-made drone through its Covered List, as DroneXL reported the day it happened. Drones already authorized, including the Air 3 and Air 3S, remain legal to buy, sell and fly. The November 3 midterms do not change that: as DroneXL reported on Friday, the exit from the Covered List runs through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, not through the new Democratic majorities.

DroneXL’s Take

A chimp sanctuary with a $1,000-class camera drone and a drop line did on Wednesday what a donated swamp buggy and 15 golf carts could not, and I keep coming back to who else in St. Lucie County was allowed to do the same. The sheriff’s office and fire rescue were not, because Florida took that aircraft out of their hands in 2023, and the FCC’s December order means no newer DJI model can be sold to anyone in the state. A paper bag of bananas for one chimp is not a public safety mission, and the sanctuary’s flight does not prove a sheriff needs a DJI. But the same storm flooded the same county, and the agencies paid to respond to it were working from a shorter equipment list than a chimp sanctuary, by law. Save the Chimps did what DroneXL has argued for since the ban: it bought a capable drone while the sky was clear and kept it in a case by the door, and I think Florida’s public fleets should have been allowed to do the same.

Sources: Associated Press, WPTV, CBS12, FOX Weather, Save the Chimps

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

Amazon's MK30 Hangs in Seattle's Museum of Flight. It Still Flies

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 17:38:00 GMT

The Museum of Flight in Seattle hung an Amazon Prime Air MK30 delivery drone from the ceiling of its T.A. Wilson Great Gallery this week, the museum said in a LinkedIn post thanking Amazon for the aircraft. The MK30 joins the museum’s Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles exhibit, alongside a German V-1, the Insitu Aerosonde and the Lockheed Martin RQ-3A DarkStar, in a hall whose own page counts 39 full-size historic aircraft. It is also the type Amazon flies to customers today in 13 US metros, by DroneXL’s count, and plans to fly in nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of the year.

The museum’s post describes a drone built to carry packages of 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) or less to Amazon customers in under 30 minutes, with obstacle detection and flight in “extreme cold and heat.” DroneXL’s Drone Delivery Tracker lists seven US incidents for the MK30 since December 2024, and none of Amazon’s public environmental filings with the Federal Aviation Administration lists a parachute.

Amazon’s MK30 Went From Rendering to Museum Ceiling in Four Years

Amazon showed the MK30 as a rendering in November 2022 and as a finished aircraft in October 2023, and says the FAA cleared it for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights in October 2024. As of November 8, neither the museum’s post nor Amazon’s newsroom says whether the Seattle airframe flew a delivery.

Amazon’s FAA filings describe a six-motor aircraft that takes off vertically, cruises on a wing, descends to 13 feet (4 meters) over a yard and drops the package through doors in its belly. It weighs 77.9 pounds (35.5 kilograms) empty and 83.2 pounds (37.8 kilograms) at takeoff with its 5-pound cargo, figures the FAA carries in its national environmental assessment for drone delivery, and none of Amazon’s public environmental filings lists a parachute or other recovery system. Amazon says the MK30 has a fully redundant system for all safety-critical features, including a separate monitoring computer. Amazon’s own 2022 reveal promised increased range, expanded temperature tolerance and flight in light rain, and its 2023 page says the MK30 flies twice as far as previous models, cuts perceived noise by almost half, and detects and avoids people, pets and property. Neither Amazon page gives a temperature range in degrees, and DroneXL found none in Amazon’s newsroom or its public FAA filings on November 8. In May 2024, Calsee Hendrickson, then a director of product and program management for Prime Air, said the Tolleson, Arizona, operation would not take orders above 104°F (40°C).

Amazon's MK30 on the Prime Air stand at Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas, September 2026. Photo credit: DroneXL

Amazon’s earlier museum drone was a different aircraft. In August 2018 the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum said it would display an Amazon Prime Air hybrid drone, a demonstration model, in its We All Fly gallery, and Amazon drove it 2,700 miles to the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The MK30 in Seattle is the aircraft Amazon has flown to customers since November 2024 and is still building its network on.

Seven MK30 Incidents Sit on DroneXL’s Record Through September 2026

The tracker’s seven US incidents run from December 2024 to September 11, 2026. They include a crash at Amazon’s Pendleton, Oregon, test range. Two drones hit a crane in Tolleson on October 1, 2025, and one made a precautionary landing in Baton Rouge on September 11.

The Tolleson crane strikes paused Prime Air for the second time in 2025 and drew investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA. Ten days after Baton Rouge, another MK30 set itself down on a Waco lawn, wheels out, and as of DroneXL’s last reports Amazon had not said what triggered either landing. Amazon has also not explained the absence of a parachute since DroneXL asked for an engineer on the record at Commercial UAV Expo in September and published its questions on September 6. Zipline’s P2, the aircraft DroneXL measures delivery drones against, weighs 55 pounds (25 kilograms) empty and 63 pounds (29 kilograms) at takeoff, carries 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms), lowers the package on a tether from 300 feet (91 meters) and carries a parachute it has deployed twice over Texas.

Amazon Added Nampa as Its 13th Metro in October and Claims a UK First Now

Amazon began MK30 deliveries in Nampa, Idaho, on October 30, and the FAA’s environmental index carried no Idaho document when DroneXL checked it on November 2. Markham has flown since October while the FAA’s Chicago environmental review remains a draft, and Tallahassee is due in mid-November.

The expansion is drawing resistance as it goes. Fifteen states sued the FAA in September over the nationwide environmental clearance Amazon’s newest hubs run on, and on November 2 Westborough’s building commissioner withdrew the zoning ruling behind Amazon’s planned pad in Massachusetts. Residents under a new 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle who want to reach Amazon can call 1-888-280-4331 or use the customer service chat, choosing “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery”; DroneXL’s guide for residents covers both and what a town can still do.

None of those circles is in Washington. Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, and neither its FAA filings nor DroneXL’s tracker shows a Prime Air hub anywhere in the state. Wing named Seattle for 2027 in its October Walmart expansion, and Zipline has proposed up to 75 sites around the city, a plan still in FAA review.

In the UK, David Carbon, Amazon’s vice president of Prime Air, said on LinkedIn on November 7 that Prime Air had received what he called the world’s first SAIL IV operating authorization and flight worthiness validation from the Civil Aviation Authority. “This is a genuine global first,” Carbon wrote. SAIL, the Specific Assurance and Integrity Level, is the risk tier a drone operation is assigned under the SORA framework that European and UK regulators use, and Carbon described level IV as one of the highest levels of operational and safety assurance in drone aviation. The CAA’s newsroom carried no matching announcement when DroneXL checked it on November 8, and Carbon’s post names no site, document or flight cap. Amazon’s only UK operation, in Darlington, has flown since May under a trial permission that expires at the end of 2026. Carbon also wrote that Prime Air would pass a run rate of 4 million deliveries a year by the end of this year.

DroneXL’s Take

I’m fine with the MK30 in a museum. It is a serious piece of engineering, and a Seattle schoolkid looking up at it under the same roof as a V-1 and a DarkStar should see what the city’s best-known company built. My quarrel is with the label, if it reads like the museum’s post, which so far repeats Amazon’s pitch. The facts that matter to anyone living under a Prime Air circle are the ones in the filings: 83 pounds at takeoff carrying 5 pounds of cargo, a 13-foot drop, and no parachute or other recovery system in any public filing. I’m for drone delivery when the cargo justifies the flight, and a shoebox from a warehouse does not justify that aircraft over a backyard in Nampa or Markham when Zipline has shown that a lighter drone with a parachute does the job. If the museum wants the exhibit to teach something about delivery drones, the weight, the payload and the missing parachute belong on the placard next to Amazon’s 30-minute promise.

Sources: The Museum of Flight, Museum of Flight exhibit page, Amazon, FAA, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, David Carbon on LinkedIn

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

Mar-a-Lago Gets the Laser Family Behind El Paso's Airspace Shutdown

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 17:04:00 GMT

An AeroVironment LOCUST counter-drone laser is now part of the air defenses around President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Getty photographer Andrew Harnik caught it on October 31, mounted on a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and parked between two palm trees behind a pair of Avenger missile launchers on a floating platform in Lake Worth Lagoon. NORAD and U.S. Northern Command have confirmed that they deployed ground-based air defense and counter-drone systems around Mar-a-Lago at the request of the U.S. Secret Service.

The vehicle and the beam director on its roof match the 20-kilowatt Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser, the system family behind the test that made the FAA shut down El Paso’s airspace in February and that destroyed a Customs and Border Protection drone near Fort Hancock two weeks later. Those shots happened over a military range and a border strip. This one sits in a residential town, three miles (4.8 kilometers) from a commercial runway.

The FAA’s flight restriction over Mar-a-Lago already warns drone operators that the Department of War may destroy unmanned aircraft deemed a credible safety or security threat. Neither NORAD nor the Secret Service has tied the laser to a specific threat.

NORAD Confirms the Deployment but Will Not Name the Weapon

“Due to operational security, we are unable to provide additional details,” NORAD and U.S. Northern Command said, and referred further questions to the Secret Service. The Secret Service said it is operating in a heightened threat environment and continuously adapts its protective operations, without naming a weapon or a threat.

The Secret Service’s late-October statement to CBS12 did name one item: NORTHCOM’s counter-small Unmanned Aircraft System Fly-Away Kits. NORTHCOM fielded those kits to rush to bases with drone incursions, and The War Zone reports the ones at Mar-a-Lago carry Ku-band radar, electronic support measures, jammers and 360-degree infrared search-and-track sensors. The LOCUST can be cued by offboard sensors like those.

The War Zone’s Joseph Trevithick reported the laser on November 2, after Jared Keller’s Laser Wars newsletter picked it out of Harnik’s frame and identified it as a 20 kW AMP-HEL. The Avengers came first: NurPhoto’s Christopher Beckett photographed them on the shoreline on October 16 and on the ramp at Donald J. Trump International Airport the day before. In August, Avengers covered Trump’s Bedminster club during the LIV Golf final, and NORAD said then that the 263rd Army Air and Missile Defense Command runs them for the Secret Service. The command would not say whether that is the case in Palm Beach.

The JLTV Points to the 20 kW LOCUST, Not the New X3

AeroVironment delivered two JLTV-mounted LOCUST lasers to the Army in December 2025 under AMP-HEL, a 20 kW-class system with a larger beam director than the Infantry Squad Vehicle version. The 30 kW LOCUST X3 won its first production contract in September, and NewsBytes labeled the Mar-a-Lago unit an X3.

Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Joint Task Force-Southern Border, work on an AMP-HEL laser near Rio Grande City, Texas, on August 31, 2026. Photo credit: Department of War / Spc. Adrianna Douglas

Neither NORAD nor AeroVironment has confirmed the variant. The JLTV in Harnik’s photo is the December hardware: AeroVironment’s own release describes it as “the same 20kW-class LOCUST LWS” as the ISV version, and the Army captions its border photos of the vehicle the same way. The $464.8 million X3 contract pays for deliveries over the coming years.

That 20 kW family has a US record. On February 10, CBP officials fired a Pentagon-owned LOCUST at what turned out to be Mylar balloons near Fort Bliss, and the FAA closed El Paso’s airspace over the test. On February 26 soldiers used the same system to destroy a CBP surveillance drone the Pentagon had not been told about. The FAA and the Pentagon then signed a safety agreement on April 10 that cleared the lasers for US airspace, and in October the Pentagon picked AeroVironment’s laser for a year-long pilot at US bases, citing an FAA safety finding that covered that one laser family.

The Mar-a-Lago TFR Already Threatens to Destroy Drones

NOTAM FDC 6/0100 was issued October 18, 2026. It closes a one-nautical-mile circle around Mar-a-Lago from the surface to 2,000 feet AGL until October 20, 2027. Drone operators are warned the Department of War, DHS or DOJ may take action resulting in the “seizure, damaging, or destruction” of their aircraft.

The NOTAM extends a restriction in place around the clock since October 20, 2025, whether or not Trump is in residence. The Secret Service asked for it in a September 16, 2025 letter from Director Sean Curran to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, citing “adverse threat intelligence” and the “persistent risks posed by unauthorized aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems.” On September 2 the FAA proposed making it permanent as a Special Flight Rules Area under Part 93, the same instrument that covers Washington, D.C. The comment period closed October 2.

Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach and the Town of Palm Beach took the restriction to the D.C. Circuit over the noise from rerouted airliners, and the county commission voted 4-3 in September to pause its case rather than drop it. In an August 11 filing in federal court, the FAA counted more than 160 planes and drones that had breached the airspace since the restriction began, a figure The War Zone attributes to the filing as first reported by the Palm Beach Daily News. NORAD F-16s intercepted a general aviation aircraft over Palm Beach as recently as October 24. The FAA’s own proposal notes that the airport’s primary runway averaged 86 airline operations a day in 2025, and that arrivals and departures have to pass through the restricted circle.

DroneXL’s Take

The Secret Service has a real problem at Mar-a-Lago. More than 160 aircraft and drones have crossed a line every Part 107 operator is supposed to know about, and a laser is the cheapest way to enforce it without raining shrapnel on Palm Beach the way a Stinger would.

But the FAA’s clearance for these lasers came out of a White Sands test, on a range, after El Paso showed what happens when a laser fires near a civilian airport without the FAA in the loop. At White Sands the laser’s automatic cutoff stopped the beam when an airliner strayed into its track, and that result is what the clearance rests on. The airliners into DJT fly through the same one-mile circle the laser is guarding, and the FAA’s own rulemaking notice says 86 of them a day use that runway. I’d want the FAA to say in public whether its April agreement covers a laser parked under an approach path, the way it said so for the border, because the people in those seats are not Secret Service protectees.

For anyone flying a drone in Palm Beach, the practical read is simpler. The restricted circle has been there since October 2025, a 20 kW laser with a radar feeding it now sits inside it, and the agencies running it will not say what it is there to shoot at.

Sources: The War Zone, Laser Wars, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Secret Service via CBS12, AeroVironment, FAA NOTAM FDC 6/0100, Federal Register (Docket FAA-2026-10827), WPTV, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

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

Pentagon Counts 300 Border Drone Defeats. Two Were Publicly Identified

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 16:31:00 GMT

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division trained with the Army’s 20-kilowatt counter-drone laser near Fort Hancock, Texas, on November 2, in photos the Department of War posted the next day. Fort Hancock is where a military laser destroyed a U.S. Customs and Border Protection drone on February 26, after CBP, by the Pentagon’s preliminary account, had not told the military it was flying. Joint Task Force-Southern Border said in September it had defeated more than 300 drones along the US-Mexico border this year, 11 of them with the AMP-HEL, the laser in the new photos.

Since February, the targets of only two engagements have been identified in public, and neither came from an on-the-record agency statement. One was a set of Mylar party balloons over El Paso. The other was the CBP drone.

The Laser Is Training At Fort Hancock Eight Months After The CBP Shootdown

Soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, operated an Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser mounted on an Infantry Squad Vehicle near Fort Hancock on November 2, according to the captions on four Department of War photos by Sgt. Michael Graf, posted to DVIDS on November 3.

The captions say the system is now in use for counter-UAS operations, and that U.S. Northern Command works with DHS and CBP “within narrowly defined authorities” to protect the border.

The AMP-HEL turret on the Infantry Squad Vehicle near Fort Hancock, Texas, November 2, 2026. The 20-kilowatt laser is the Army's vehicle-mounted version of AeroVironment's LOCUST. Photo credit: Dept. of War / Sgt. Michael Graf

The AMP-HEL is the Army’s vehicle-mounted version of AeroVironment’s LOCUST laser, the same weapon family that fired in February. Northern Command dates the AMP-HEL’s first border employment to August 24, so the February shots fall outside its 11 laser kills. Whether they sit inside the 300 calendar-year count, the release does not say. The February 10 shot came from a LOCUST the Army had lent to CBP, and the joint statement attributes the February 26 shot to the Department of War without naming a unit. The FAA’s flight restriction over Fort Hancock, imposed after the shootdown, ran through June 24, and the FAA’s TFR list on Sunday had no Fort Hancock entry. The only Texas border entries now are the three NOTAMs that ban civilian drones along the whole line.

NORTHCOM’s 300 Defeats Come With No Targets And No Baseline

U.S. Northern Command said on September 4 that Joint Task Force-Southern Border had defeated more than 300 unmanned aircraft in 2026, more than 100 of them in August, and 11 with the AMP-HEL laser. The release does not define a defeat and names no drone type or location.

The defeats came from kinetic and non-kinetic systems, and the aircraft “were assessed to be associated with illicit activity,” the release says. Gen. Gregory Guillot, who commands NORAD and Northern Command, said that “frontline troops have the right authorities.” When the task force announced its first three laser kills on August 27, it said the drones were declared hostile because of “their use in direct support of activities posing a physical threat” to troops and CBP agents, and it would not say which side of the border they fell on. On September 7, military officials told CBS News that drone flights over the Rio Grande Valley had dropped about 75% since the laser arrived, without disclosing a before or after count, and they allowed that cartels may simply have moved.

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the task force commander, gave DefenseScoop the most detailed accounting on September 29: at least 378 drones detected between August 22 and September 22, of which 75 were turned back, 15 were engaged and one was captured. He also said “we have not, to date, seen any lethal drones along the southern border.” Taylor attributed 95% to 98% of the activity to reconnaissance for human smuggling. His deputy, Air Force Brig. Gen. Brian Filler, credited an intelligence process for that characterization without explaining how a given drone gets tied to trafficking, and said the drones are “largely commercial off-the-shelf.” One target in Army photos from its Yuma counter-drone trials was a DJI Mavic 3 Classic. Five days earlier at the same range, task force officials told DefenseScoop they were not permitted to discuss drone types, ranges, routes or payloads, citing operational security.

The Two Engagements On The Public Record Hit Balloons And A Government Drone

On the night of February 10, CBP fired a Pentagon-owned LOCUST laser at objects near Fort Bliss that were Mylar balloons. The FAA shut El Paso’s airspace for eight hours. On February 26, the military destroyed a CBP drone over Fort Hancock that CBP had not told it was flying.

The El Paso closure canceled 14 flights and diverted medevacs 45 miles to Las Cruces. The balloons surfaced through officials speaking to NBC News and other outlets, and the CBP drone through congressional aides and officials speaking to Reuters, The New York Times and The War Zone. The joint statement from the Pentagon, CBP and the FAA described the February 26 target only as “a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system” in military airspace. It still has not named the aircraft. Congressional aides told Reuters the drone cost about $30 million, a figure DroneXL carried in February. The War Zone reported it was small. In my reading those two facts do not describe the same aircraft, and no public statement DroneXL has found reconciles them. Nor has any other engagement’s target been identified: DroneXL found none in NORTHCOM and JTF-SB releases, DVIDS posts or press coverage through November 8.

The response in Washington split along the question of whose permission the shooters needed. Pentagon nominee Mark Ditlevson told the Senate Armed Services Committee the day of the shootdown that the law requires DoD to coordinate with the FAA, not to get its approval. The FAA ended the standoff on April 10, when it cleared military lasers for use in US airspace after White Sands tests of the beam against aircraft materials and of its automatic cutoff when an airliner crossed the tracking angle. That clearance answers whether a laser can safely miss a passenger jet, and it is silent on how the crew decides what to hit.

Duckworth’s Inspector General Request Has Produced Nothing Public

Senator Tammy Duckworth asked the Defense, Transportation and Homeland Security inspectors general on March 13 to jointly investigate the two laser incidents and whether any federal law was broken. Nearly eight months later, DroneXL found no report or project announcement from any of the three that names those incidents.

Duckworth’s letter also asked the watchdogs to assess the risk the systems pose to civilian, commercial and medical aircraft, The Hill reported. DroneXL searched the three inspectors general’s websites and eight months of news coverage on Sunday. The closest match is a DoD inspector general evaluation announced April 20 and retitled June 8 to study gaps in the interoperability of the department’s counter-drone systems. Its announcement mentions neither the border nor the February shots. Representatives Rick Larsen, Bennie Thompson and André Carson, the top Democrats on the House Transportation, Homeland Security and aviation panels, said in February that “our heads are exploding over the news” and blamed the administration for sidestepping a bipartisan counter-drone coordination bill. Democrats won both chambers on November 3, which puts those panels under Democratic chairs when the new Congress is seated on January 3.

The one structural change that did ship landed on civilians. Three FAA NOTAMs ban every drone within one nautical mile of the border from October 20 through October 19, 2027, from the surface to 400 feet (122 meters), taking in downtown El Paso and Laredo. Permission runs through a CBP mailbox with 48 hours’ notice, the FAA’s Domestic Notice says, and each request must carry the drone’s Remote ID and serial number. There is no category for routine commercial or recreational flying. The agency that, by the Pentagon’s account, did not file its own flight notice in February now receives everyone else’s.

CBP’s aircraft are not the only government drones in that band. Texas DPS more than doubled its drone fleet under Operation Lone Star, and the El Paso County Sheriff runs a drone first responder program one county west of Fort Hancock.

DroneXL’s Take

The border drone war is being scored by the people doing the shooting, and the two times outsiders learned what a shot hit, it was party balloons and a US government aircraft. That is my problem with the 300 figure. I don’t doubt soldiers engaged 300 aircraft, and I don’t doubt most were cartel spotters. Taylor’s own detection count, 378 in a month, says the cartels fly plenty. But “assessed to be associated with illicit activity” is the shooter grading the shooter, and the two February shots that did get checked turned out to be balloons and a CBP drone, with the public learning both from leaks.

The Fort Hancock crew fired on an aircraft it could not identify, by the Pentagon’s own account, and what that crew needed was a shared air picture, not a safety clearance. April delivered the clearance. Neither the September 4 release nor the CBS and DefenseScoop interviews says whether CBP’s drones, Texas DPS’s drones and the El Paso County Sheriff’s drones now show up on the same screen as the laser crew’s tracking display, and in my judgment that is the question that mattered on February 26.

My read is that the agencies’ silence on the February incidents has done what secrecy usually does: the explaining stopped and the counts kept growing. The House Democrats who demanded answers in February will hold subpoena power in January. Until then, a Part 107 pilot in El Paso emails CBP two days ahead to fly over their own downtown, while the targets of 300 military engagements along the same border stay a secret.

Sources: U.S. Northern Command, DVIDS, Joint Task Force-Southern Border, DefenseScoop, CBS News, The Hill, The War Zone, Reuters via CNBC, FAA Domestic Notice.

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

Indiana FAA Drone Test Site Plans Kinetic Tests Under A Civil Program

Haye Kesteloo — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 15:57:00 GMT

A Purdue University-owned Windracers ULTRA flew the first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight in the Indiana Drone Corridor on October 29, covering more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) out of Terre Haute Regional Airport while Governor Mike Braun, Senator Todd Young and Representative Mark Messmer watched it drop parachute boxes from its cargo bay. The flight opened the Midwest UAS Test Site of Indiana, one of two sites the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) designated in January, bringing its test-site network to nine after nearly a decade without additions.

Windracers’ announcement says the aircraft will now be tested as a way to drop emergency supplies to Indiana communities affected by seasonal flooding. The FAA describes the program the site belongs to as support for public and civil unmanned aircraft and for the safe integration of drones into the National Airspace System.

Dale Lyles, the test site director, told WTHI that the site is partnered with the Indiana National Guard and will use the special-use airspace over Camp Atterbury for “kinetic testing as well as counter-UAS testing,” which he said will make it completely different from any other test site in the United States.

Purdue’s Flood-Relief Drone Has Flown Military Logistics For Ukraine

Windracers, the ULTRA’s British maker, has had the aircraft flying in Ukraine since 2023 and in April was named one of three primary suppliers under the United Kingdom’s £752 million drone package for Ukraine, as DroneXL reported. Purdue owns the aircraft that flew on October 29, registered N90PU.

The aircraft has an aluminum airframe, a 33-foot (10-meter) wingspan and a cargo floor that drops loads from three separate bays, according to Windracers’ announcement.

The ULTRA's three-bay cargo floor loaded with parachute boxes for the Terre Haute demonstration. Photo credit: Windracers / Applied Research Institute

The current ULTRA Mk2 carries 441 pounds (200 kilograms) over 1,242 miles (2,000 kilometers), a range Windracers announced in January. Purdue is the company’s main university partner in the United States: its AIDA3 center, the Center on AI for Digital, Autonomous and Augmented Aviation, was launched in partnership with Windracers, and Damon Lercel, a Purdue Polytechnic associate professor on the AIDA3 team, called the opening a milestone for the Midwest in Windracers’ announcement.

The Indiana flight was the ULTRA’s second BVLOS flight in the United States. The first was a flight of about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from Nenana, Alaska, on August 19, carrying anti-doping blood samples for the International Testing Agency under the University of Alaska Fairbanks test site. Windracers’ Indiana release calls that flight 670 miles, while its own Alaska post and the university put it at 1,000 kilometers. Neither Windracers nor Purdue named the FAA authorization for the Indiana flight in their announcements as of November 8.

That authorization still matters because the FAA’s Part 108 BVLOS rule has been in White House review since July 10, 121 days as of Sunday. Until it is published, a BVLOS flight needs a Part 107 waiver, a Section 44807 exemption or a certificate of authorization, and the test site has not said which it holds. In September the FAA’s Robert Reckert said the agency hopes to publish by year-end.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s release on the designation said the job is to make sure the United States leads in drones, “not China.” The aircraft that opened the corridor is British.

The Site’s Director And Its Own Website Put Kinetic Testing First

The test site’s website lists Defense and Counter-UAS first among its capability areas. It defines them as kinetic testing, electronic warfare and threat mitigation, ahead of public safety and agriculture, and promises access to Camp Atterbury, Muscatatuck and Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane. A 225-plus-mile BVLOS corridor has preliminary approval.

On October 28, the day before the ribbon-cutting, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle designated Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck as “premier, permissive sites” for commercial drone and counter-drone testing, run through Army Test and Evaluation Command with the Indiana National Guard. Camp Atterbury brings more than 34,000 acres and restricted airspace up to 40,000 feet (12,192 meters). Young told WTHI his goal is for Indiana to lead in testing, fielding and manufacturing drones at scale “for the Department of War” and for commercial customers.

None of this was hidden in the bid. Indiana’s congressional delegation pitched the state’s military infrastructure in its December letter to the FAA, and DroneXL wrote in June that Indiana won the designation largely on defense infrastructure, with the Army’s counter-UAS experimentation work at Camp Atterbury already in place.

The FAA describes the program in civil terms. Its January 8 release says the UAS Test Site program supports the testing of public and civil unmanned aircraft and advances the safe integration of drones into the National Airspace System, with a focus on BVLOS and autonomous operations. Kinetic testing does not appear in it. Andrew Kossack, president and chief executive of the Applied Research Institute (ARI), the Bloomington nonprofit that runs the site with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), framed the opening around the region’s defense expertise and the strengthening of America’s “defence and industrial base.”

The IEDC And ARI Run The Site Under A Law Signed In March

The IEDC and ARI run the site under House Bill 1268, signed March 4, which puts the test site in state law as a program the IEDC administers with an “operating partner.” Both bodies were subjects of FTI Consulting’s forensic review of the IEDC, published 98 days before the designation.

Braun promised the review in April 2025 after Indiana Legislative Insight reported allegations of self-dealing at the agency, and FTI published it on October 2 with 45 findings and observations on conflicts of interest, compliance and financial oversight across the IEDC and four affiliates. On ARI, the report says the IEDC’s award grew from $2.5 million at the end of 2022 to $17.5 million in 2023, that the agreement was “drafted in broad terms,” and that the contract and progress reports did not let FTI determine how the money was used. Of the $10.6 million paid under that award by the end of 2024, ARI had spent $4.4 million. ARI told FTI the award was a fixed-fee contract and that the balance funds its mission rather than profit.

FTI said its review of ARI was limited by the security requirements of ARI’s defense work, with read-only access to documents tied to IEDC funding, and it noted that the entities had begun reforms while the review ran. Braun said the state would “take every recommendation,” the Daily Journal reported.

DroneXL’s Take

The FAA’s own words make this a civil program: public and civil aircraft, safe integration into the national airspace. Indiana’s site director and the site’s own website describe a kinetic and counter-UAS test range, and neither is hiding it. The gap sits in the FAA’s description, not in Indiana’s conduct, and I think the agency should close it. If the test-site program now hosts weapons testing over a Guard base, its public description should say so, because nobody reading the January release would guess it.

Counter-drone systems have to be tested somewhere, and restricted airspace over Camp Atterbury is the right place for it. The ULTRA has hauled real supplies for Ukrainian units for three years, so the parachute drop over Terre Haute showed a working capability rather than a prop. My objection is the label on the federal side. The FAA designated this site under a program it describes as civil integration, and the site describes itself as a kinetic and counter-UAS range. One of those descriptions has to change, and it should be the FAA’s.

Sources: Windracers, WTHI, FAA, U.S. Army, FTI Consulting, Midwest UAS Test Site of Indiana

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

Houston Approves Counter-Drone Bid on Consent, Use Rules Unfinished

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:33:00 GMT

Houston City Council approved the city’s application for FEMA’s second $250 million counter-drone round on Wednesday, as Ordinance 2026-0982. The item sat on the 47-item consent agenda and passed in the block vote, with no council member tagging it, according to the city secretary’s agenda with notes of action taken.

KPRC 2 reported the vote on Wednesday evening as Houston getting “one step closer to putting drone technology in the hands of public safety officials,” with the money going toward aerial monitoring at large events. The vote authorizes an application, not a purchase. The filing behind the ordinance says the grant’s purpose is to “enhance law enforcement detection and mitigation capabilities.”

Houston’s Filing Describes Gear That Finds Drones, Not Drones That Watch Crowds

The request for council action behind item 36 says the money will pay for detection, identifying, monitoring, tracking and mitigation technology for every SEAR-rated special event in the Houston region. It lists the amount as unknown and projects a performance period from December 2026 to December 2029.

That matches the federal program. FEMA’s program page defines the Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Grant Program, created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as funding to “detect, identify, track, or monitor unmanned aircraft systems.” The equipment list DroneXL went through when Houston’s bid first surfaced on Monday runs to radar, radio-frequency direction finders, cameras, acoustic sensors and Remote ID receivers on the detection side, and jammers and takeover systems on the mitigation side. Neither the city’s filing nor FEMA’s program page mentions buying drones.

Larry Satterwhite, who runs the mayor’s public safety office, described the purchase to KPRC 2 as a way to see more and cover more ground, and his office told the station officers cannot watch a large event from every angle. “Houston is a big city, and we do big things here,” Satterwhite said. Much of the operational capability, he told the station, would end up with the Houston Police Department.

The Use Policy Comes After the Vote, and the Awards Land December 10

City officials are still working to establish guardrails for how the technology is used, KPRC reported on Wednesday, hours after the vote it said the guardrails waited on. The agenda shows no amendment, no tag and no pulled item on 36, so the application goes to the state as written.

The sequence repeats Houston’s first round. Council approved the World Cup application in February as Ordinance 2026-0135, the prior action the new filing cites, and in May agreed to reimburse the Harris County Sheriff’s Office up to $1,254,000 for detection and mitigation systems. Texas DPS seized eight drones around Houston’s World Cup venues in the first week of the tournament, and a church videographer who flew a DJI Mavic 3 near the downtown fan festival faces federal charges.

The rules on the mitigation side are federal. Only an accredited law enforcement or correctional agency may operate a jammer, through officers certified at the FBI’s counter-drone school, under the Safer Skies Act. Any agency that buys detection gear with this money must give DHS access to its flight tracks and Remote ID data, a condition DroneXL reported when FEMA opened the round in October. Texas has $10,508,140 to split among local agencies, less up to 20% the state may keep for its own equipment, and the governor’s Public Safety Office files one package with FEMA by November 16, and FEMA expects to issue awards on December 10.

DroneXL’s Take

Wednesday was the moment to ask what Houston is buying, and the consent agenda is built to skip that moment. The item passed in a block with a cold-case DNA grant and five landmark designations. The vote commits no money, and Satterwhite’s office says the use rules are coming, so the city can fairly call the order normal. The detection gear is easy to defend. Radar and a Remote ID receiver find the pilot, and the Houston cases from the World Cup were a videographer and a real estate pilot, so finding the pilot fast is the whole job. My problem is the framing, and I’d put it to Satterwhite directly. “Eyes in the sky” sells this as drones for officers, and the filing says sensors and jammers. The council members who let item 36 through should ask Satterwhite for the written policy before December 10, because once the award lands the city spends the money on FEMA’s terms.

Sources: City of Houston council agenda with notes of action taken, November 4, 2026, City of Houston request for council action, item 36, KPRC 2, FEMA C-UAS Grant Program.

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

Wing's $125M Texas Plant Can Build Tens of Thousands of Drones a Year

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:33:00 GMT

Wing said Friday it will invest up to $125 million over the next two years in a 15,000-square-foot drone factory in Fort Worth, Texas, with up to 100 manufacturing jobs and the capacity to build tens of thousands of aircraft a year. The Alphabet-owned company will build its next-generation delivery aircraft there for a Walmart network that is contracted to reach more than 270 stores by 2027.

The announcement comes one day after Zipline, Walmart’s other drone partner, raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion valuation and signed Walmart for 300 more sites, with its money also earmarked for US manufacturing. Both companies fly Walmart orders in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro today.

Wing’s plant covers about a quarter of a football field. Wing has not said how many aircraft fly its 70-plus sites today.

Wing’s $125 Million Is an “Up To” Figure That Also Covers California

Wing’s own post describes “up to $125M in direct manufacturing over the next two years” at the Fort Worth plant, alongside unspecified spending on research and engineering in California. It gives no split between the two, no street address, no production start date and no name for the next-generation aircraft.

The Dallas Morning News, citing a statement made on Wing’s behalf, reported that the Fort Worth operation opened early this year. Wing’s announcement calls it “our newest” facility and leaves the opening date out. The Texas governor’s office had posted no incentive announcement by Friday evening, and Wing’s post names none.

“The U.S. is our focus for growth,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said in the post.

The Plant Sits in the Metro Where Wing Flies 19 Walmart Stores

Wing has flown from Fort Worth Walmart stores since it opened its first local site at 8520 N. Beach St. in June 2024. The Fort Worth Report counts 19 local Walmart locations today, two of them in North Richland Hills, and Walmart also contracts Zipline for North Texas deliveries.

Nationally, Wing says it serves more than 70 sites, has made more than one million US home deliveries this year, and plans to reach 40 million Americans across nearly 20 metros by 2027. The seven markets named in June, San Diego, Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and the San Francisco Bay Area, are still waiting for aircraft, and Denver and Seattle were added in October for 2027.

The aircraft Wing flies today, its two Hummingbird variants, cruise at up to 60 mph (97 km/h), carry up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms) and lower the package on a tether. Heather Rivera, Wing’s chief business officer, said in the statement that “drone delivery isn’t just a novelty” and that customers use it several times a week.

Finished Wing aircraft stacked on a pallet on the factory floor. Photo credit: Wing

Part 108 as Drafted Favors US-Built Aircraft, and It Is Still Unsigned

The FAA’s Part 108 rule has sat in White House review since July 10, 119 days as of Friday, and Wing’s post cites its “upcoming release” as the trigger for expansion. The 2025 draft ties airworthiness acceptance for foreign-built aircraft to a bilateral agreement with the country of origin.

A factory in Texas sidesteps that clause entirely. Wing and Zipline both fly today under Part 135 air carrier approvals, site by site, and both have now put their 2026 spending into domestic production before the rule that would make routine BVLOS flight legal is signed.

DroneXL’s Take

Wing’s output figure matters more than its dollar figure. Wing left 30 written safety questions from DroneXL unanswered in September, and its announcements this fall have carried store counts, metro counts and delivery totals but never an aircraft count. A plant sized for tens of thousands of aircraft a year, feeding 270 stores, is the first hard figure anyone has seen on where Wing’s fleet is going. It is also far bigger than anything a city council has been shown. Northglenn, Colorado drafted an ordinance in September that would make aircraft count, altitude and flight frequency a condition of any drone hub permit, and I think every city on Wing’s June list should copy it. Wing just published a production number for Fort Worth, so it can put a fleet number in the next permit file it hands a city.

Sources: Wing, Fort Worth Report, The Dallas Morning News

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

Kilgore Drone Finds Alzheimer's Patient on an Oil Lease in 90 Minutes

Haye Kesteloo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 23:07:00 GMT

A Kilgore Fire Department thermal drone found a missing elderly woman on an oil lease site in northern Rusk County, Texas, on November 4, about three-quarters of a mile from the home she had walked away from. Kilgore Fire Marshal Terry Linder was flying it, and he spotted her roughly 90 minutes after launch. The Kilgore News Herald, which dates the search to November 4, reports she has Alzheimer’s disease.

The Elderville-Lakeport Volunteer Fire Department took the call near County Road 2126 and County Road 2126A and reached the scene at about 2 p.m. By then she had been gone for close to two hours. Deputies from the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office, the Rusk County Rescue Unit and firefighters from both departments searched on the ground while Linder flew. Christus EMS evaluated her at an ambulance staged nearby and took her for treatment.

The departments have not released her name or said how she was doing when deputies reached her.

Linder Found Her Heat Signature at an Oil Lease Three-Quarters of a Mile Out

Linder launched Kilgore’s drone to cover ground faster than deputies and firefighters could walk it. After about 90 minutes he picked up the woman at an oil lease site roughly three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) from the residence and relayed her position to deputies, who reached her on foot.

The Elderville-Lakeport department said in a statement reported by the Kilgore News Herald that the thermal camera let crews search a large area and pick out heat signatures, and that without it “the outcome of this incident could have been significantly different.” CBS19, which broke the story on the evening of November 4, puts her time missing before crews arrived at close to two hours. Add Linder’s 90 minutes in the air and she had been outside for more than three hours by the time deputies walked her out.

Kilgore Flies a DJI Mini 5 Pro Beside the Thermal Drone That Made the Find

The Kilgore Fire Department operates two multi-mission drones for fire suppression, fire investigations and searches, per the Kilgore News Herald. Its photo shows both on a department vehicle’s hood. A DJI Mini 5 Pro labeled KILG_FD_UAS1 sits in front, with a larger folding aircraft carrying a thermal payload behind it.

None of the three local reports name the second aircraft, and the department describes the one that found her only as its thermal imaging drone.

The man flying it has worked both sides of this call. The City of Kilgore announced Linder’s hiring as fire marshal on December 29, 2025 after Ryan Riley moved up to chief. He retired from the Kilgore Police Department as a lieutenant in 2022, previously served as Rusk County’s fire marshal, spent 2022 to 2025 as a deputy fire marshal in Smith County, and still volunteers part-time with Elderville-Lakeport, the department that put out the call.

DroneXL’s Take

Kilgore joins a run of missing-senior finds DroneXL has covered this year where a drone did in minutes what people on foot could not do in hours. Commerce City’s Skydio X10 found a 76-year-old in 24 minutes in February, Portage County’s thermal drone found a 91-year-old in 43 minutes in May, and St. Cloud’s found a 73-year-old in a cornfield after a State Patrol plane and a DNR helicopter had searched for hours without him. The hood of that Kilgore truck shows what a working search program looks like in a Texas city of 13,000. It is a consumer DJI and a thermal aircraft, flown by a fire marshal who knows the county roads. The FCC’s Covered List decision of December 22 bars new authorizations for foreign-made drones, and as I wrote this week, no Congress can lift it before 2029. Kilgore gets to keep flying what it owns. My read is that when UAS1 eventually goes down hard, Kilgore will want to replace it with the same kind of affordable aircraft, and Washington has just taken that aircraft off the shelf.

Sources: CBS19, Kilgore News Herald, KETK, KLTV

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