News, deep dives, and analysis — every Department of Defense story, newest first.
The FAA grounded every flight in and out of El Paso International Airport late Tuesday night, classifying the airspace as “National Defense Airspace” with deadly force authorization. The restriction was set to last 10 days. It lasted about eight hours. And the official explanations still don’t match. Here is what we know so far: The…
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) just published a solicitation for something the U.S. military has needed for years but never had: a box that can store drones, launch them in mass, recover them, recharge them, and do it all over again with almost no humans involved. The program is called the Containerized Autonomous Drone…
The SkyFoundry Act to confront this gap head on, and the proposal has now been folded into the latest National Defense Authorization Act.
The U.S. Marine Corps is rediscovering an old truth with a very modern twist. When the airwaves are hostile, unreliable, or outright weaponized, the smartest move might be to avoid them entirely. From January 27 to 29, 2026, I Marine Expeditionary Force, working with the Defense Innovation Unit, evaluated fiber optic FPV drones at Marine…
The U.S. Navy’s first operational MQ-25A Stingray has completed its first autonomous taxi test, marking a key milestone on the path toward flight operations, as Boeing Defense and Defence Blog confirmed the event on January 30. During the test, air vehicle pilots initiated movement from the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System. The aircraft then…
I spent the morning reading a story that should make every drone pilot pay attention to what is happening in Washington, not just with the FCC, but with the broader diplomatic chess game being played between the United States and China. While the FCC’s December 22 ban on foreign drones grabbed all the headlines, the…
I’ve been watching content creators slowly wake up to the reality of the FCC’s December 23 drone ban, and adventure filmmaker Jeven Dovey just delivered one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen for the YouTube community. His message is straightforward but sobering: this ruling goes far beyond DJI, and the content creator community needs to…
DJI has issued its first official response to the FCC’s decision to add foreign-made drones to the Covered List, calling the action “disappointing” and accusing the administration of protectionism rather than legitimate security enforcement. In a statement provided to DroneXL, a DJI spokesperson confirmed that existing DJI products are not affected by yesterday’s FCC action…
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