Washington and the drone industry: legislation, procurement, security reviews, and agency policy beyond the FAA.
DRONERESPONDERS and the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA) have scheduled their next Search and Rescue (SAR) Working Group virtual roundtable for May 19, 2026. The session focuses on training — specifically how to become a more efficient small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) SAR pilot — and is open to anyone who works in or cares about…
The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 390, the Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) Act, by a unanimous vote on February 24, 2026, sending the bipartisan wildfire drone bill to the Senate. Sponsored by Rep. Vince Fong (R-CA-20) and co-led by Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA-4), the legislation directs NASA to expand its existing…
Germany is funding the production of 15,000 Ukrainian-made STRILA interceptor drones for the National Guard of Ukraine, according to an announcement from the German Embassy in Ukraine on March 23. The multimillion-euro agreement — signed in Kyiv in the presence of German Chargé d’Affaires Maximilian Rasch, alongside representatives of the National Guard and Quantum Systems…
Engineers at Rutgers University have designed a solid-state ornithopter, a bird-like flying robot with no motors, no gears, and no mechanical linkages of any kind, and proven in simulation that it can fly. The catch is honest and refreshingly so: the materials needed to build it in the physical world don’t exist yet. The research…
Lockheed Martin has built and demonstrated a drone detection prototype that uses no dedicated sensors, no specialized hardware, and no new infrastructure. It uses the 5G network that already exists, the same one your phone is connected to right now, as its detection layer. You wanted Black Mirror? There you go. The system is called…
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 23, 2026, banned the import of all new foreign-made consumer wireless routers, adding them to its Covered List after a White House-convened interagency panel determined they pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure,” according to the FCC’s official…
Aurex, the Huntsville-based aerospace and defense company formerly known as Special Aerospace Services, has formally announced 65,000 square feet of secure manufacturing capacity across two facilities, one in Huntsville, Alabama and one in Denver, Colorado, built and ready now for classified programs, rapid prototyping, precision manufacturing, systems integration, and scaled production. Counter-U
The U.S. Army has placed an order exceeding $52 million with Skydio for more than 2,500 X10D drones, the company announced today. It is the largest small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) procurement from a single vendor in Army history. The contract moved from bid to award in under 72 hours, bypassing the multi-year acquisition timelines that…
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