Bruce Crumley

Hot off the news it will be supporting Walmart’s sweeping aerial expansion in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, drone delivery company Wing has unveiled another way it’s moving to enlarge its footprint in the skies: the introduction of a new UAV with a doubled payload capacity.

Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) plane manufacturer Archer has announced a deal to outfit a host of airports across the US run by aeronautical fixed-base operator Atlantic Aviation with charging equipment for electric ground transport vehicles and future air taxis.

Chinese auto maker BYD is taking to the skies with DJI drones in its continued effort to best Tesla for the title of the world’s biggest electric car manufacturer.

European aviation and aerospace giant Airbus has announced its expansion in the booming security and defense UAV sector with the acquisition of US tech company Aerovel, maker of the innovative Flexrotor intelligence and reconnaissance data collection drone.

Skyports Drone Services has announced what it called breakthrough aerial testing of remote water quality monitoring, in partnership with fellow UK tech startup Makutu and the Northumbrian Water utility.

A funny thing happened the on the way to the conclusion of an otherwise convincing editorial about the self-defeating consequences of the recently passed anti-China American Security Drone Act of 2023 (ASDA): The author associated himself with a lobby supported by same DJI targeted by the law’s federal blacklisting, thus undermining the effectiveness of what had been a very compelling argument.

Life must be pretty damned boring in the Oklahoma town of Moore. Otherwise, why would someone be placing sex toys around the wintry burgh, reportedly using a drone to drop the libidinous aids in elevated spots to increase their visibility?

Clashing priorities of personal privacy, collective security, use of unpopular surveillance applications, and respect of federal airspace regulations are inflaming tempers in one Saint Louis neighborhood, whose resident are fighting to prevent an outside crime fighting advocate from using drones as for-hire aerial watch dogs.

Canadian UAV transport specialist Drone Delivery Canada has effectively fused two different operational authorizations it had earned from regulators in past into a unified approval to fly beyond visual line of sight missions (BVLOS) while carrying medical payloads classified as dangerous cargo.

Global drone leader DJI has announced the international rollout of its much-anticipated FlyCart 30 delivery UAV – marking the company’s full-fledged entry into an activity gaining momentum across the US, and expected to scale rapidly around the world.

Walmart has announced the dramatic expansion of its drone operations in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, tapping existing UAV service partners Zipline and Wing to spread that aerial coverage to 1.8 million additional households – a likely landmark development in the scaling of aerial deliveries across the US. 

Competition appears to be heating up between electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) plane manufacturers Joby and BETA Technologies, with the two startups announcing deals to install their air taxi recharging systems in airports on opposite sides of the US.

Leading global drone manufacturer DJI is hitting the ground running in 2024 with a major update of its GEO geofencing application for users in the European Union and UK – part of its ongoing responses to changes the new year is bringing.

Japan has just announced it will be providing $37 million in aid for strengthening Ukraine’s counter-drone detection assets – tech financing Kyiv may now be considering redirecting to one of its biggest backers, Germany, to help it halt suspected spying of their joint activities.

Leading global drone manufacturer Autel Robotics is facing intense international scrutiny after images in ads for its forthcoming Titan delivery UAV included what appear to be a munitions payload – presumably for military uses the China-based company recently condemned. Autel informed DroneDJ Monday the photos are fake, and that it’s working to identify their source.

Will the portion of the National Defense Authorization Act containing a ban on drones made by China-based companies like DJI be the boon for US makers the law’s political backers claim? “A definite maybe” is what a reading of a new document detailing the measure published by longtime UAV expert and innovator Mark Bathrick offers readers.

The highly geeked out unit of the U.S. Department of Defense has issued a $10 million contract to develop its long contemplated Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay system (POWER), which will likely use drones as airborne platforms to conduct electric refueling for other vehicles – or for re-juicing their own batteries.

Exhibit 7,820,403,994,962-A of how social media dramatically lowers human intelligence. In reaction to Seattle’s magnificent New Year’s Eve fireworks and drone show, countless people were left obsessed with the notion that one of the UAV formations in it was actually a detail of intimate female anatomy. Almost impossibly, the idiocy got even worse from there.

Better late than never: That turned out to be the case for thousands of drone show fans in Busan, South Korea who made the trip back to the city’s Gwangalli Beach to see a delayed New Year’s eve performance that was cancelled 30 minutes after 2024 had already arrived.

It would appear that medical drone delivery company Spright has become a victim of owner Air Methods’ recent financial crisis, which evidently resulted in the Denver-based aviation services firm closing its fledging UAV unit under terms of its Chapter 11 rebound agreement.

Cargo drone transport specialist Silent Arrow is looking to extend the dramatic innovations behind its 2019 heavy-lift GD-2000 transport glider through its new project developing a UAV capable of carrying similarly massive payloads up to 345 miles for the US Air Force.