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BRINC raises $125M, with plans to put 911 drones everywhere

The Drone Girl — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:01:00 +0000

Seattle-based public safety drone leader BRINC today announced a massive $125 million financing round led by telecommunications and public safety giant Motorola Solutions, with participation from Index Ventures and Figma CEO Dylan Field. This blockbuster injection of capital brings BRINC’s total funding to more than a quarter-billion dollars.

And what do they plan to do with all that money? The company says its goal is to put a 911 response drone on the roof of every police and fire station in America. Is the heavy-hitting backing from Motorola a clear signal that BRINC will dominate the automated public safety drone market?

I caught up with David Benowitz, a spokesperson for BRINC, to get the exclusive, behind-the-scenes details on what this massive round actually unlocks for the company, their realistic deployment timelines and how they plan to bypass standard regulatory roadblocks.

1. Expanding the Seattle factory

BRINC’s new factory in Seattle. (Photo courtesy of BRINC)

Back in March, BRINC made waves when it made two announcements: It unveiled Guardian, its highly advanced, 24/7-operational, Starlink-connected 911 response drone, and it also announced a new Seattle drone factory that would more than double BRINC’s previous production footprint.

Now, we have more details about that factory. The new facility is double the size of BRINC’s current space and is located along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle’s Upper Queen Anne neighborhood —just a mile from their current Fremont headquarters. BRINC is currently building out the space and expects to physically move in right before the end of the year.

“This announcement of new funds will help us double down on that investment with net new manufacturing equipment, keep up our aggressive hiring pace, and make further investments across our product portfolio,” Benowitz told The Drone Girl.

2. The timeline to achieve its goals

A BRINC drone leaving its station. (Photo courtesy of BRINC)

While putting a drone on all 80,000 police and fire roofs in the U.S. makes for an incredible headline, how realistic is is really to manufacturer all that hardware? According to Benowitz, the newly expanded Seattle facility is the key to unlocking those massive manufacturing runs.

“Building stations takes up a lot of floorspace,” Benowitz said. “We should be at the level of thousands of stations next year, and we should hit tens of thousands of cumulative stations built in roughly 3 years.”

If they can hit those numbers, BRINC projects that their ultimate vision of nationwide, station-by-station coverage could actually become a reality on a 3 to 5-year time horizon.

3. BRINC’s sales and pricing

A Guardian drone takes off from Guardian Station. (Photo courtesy of BRINC)

BRINC shared that it has signed four times as many DFR contracts in 2026 compared to the same period in 2025, securing major partnerships with agencies like the Los Angeles Fire Department and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

“We have hundreds of DFR contracts and hundreds of live and operational stations out there among public safety agencies,” Benowitz said.

But what does a system like this actually cost a city? After all, enterprise “drone-in-a-box” systems are notoriously expensive—often costing local governments tens of thousands of dollars in upfront capital.

While the company doesn’t disclose specific public pricing structures, Benowitz noted that BRINC is actively trying to break down financial barriers.

“I’m proud to say that BRINC has opened up more affordable and approachable options for agencies to get started deploying its products,” he said.

4. Navigating FAA rules

A firefighter holding a drone for first response. (Photo courtesy of BRINC)

Even if an agency has the budget to buy a drone dock for their station roof, they still have to face the ultimate gatekeeper: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). To run automated DFR operations, public safety teams must secure complex Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waivers so pilots can fly the drones remotely without physically looking at them.

While the industry eagerly awaits the FAA’s formalized Part 108 rules for BVLOS flight, BRINC says they aren’t letting regulatory friction slow down their business. In fact, it seems as though they are using that regulatory bottleneck as a selling point.

“In all of our 911 response contracts, we include free FAA waiver support, where we assist them in getting a BVLOS waiver,” Benowitz said. “To-date, we have a 100% success rate in assisting agencies through this process.”

What this means for the drone industry

A RTC spots a hot spot before a fire starts. (Photo courtesy of BRINC)

This $125 million round is a huge figure on its own, and it’s interesting to see it tied to Motorola Solutions. By securing Motorola as a primary backer, BRINC could find itself with a direct integration into the “central nervous system” of American dispatch. Because Motorola’s software runs the CAD and communication systems in the vast majority of dispatch centers in the country, BRINC drones could theoretically be triggered automatically the second a dispatcher types a keyword into their system.

It may be able to then bypass the traditional, sluggish sales cycles of local governments and directly integrating with the software public safety agencies already use daily. And with that, BRINC may be positioned to scale faster than almost anyone else in the space.

What do you think of BRINC’s 80,000 station vision? Is your local police or fire department already using drones as first responders? Let’s talk about the future of DFR in the comments below!

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Inside the counter-drone boom of 2026, fueled by World Cup and some big corporate partnerships

The Drone Girl — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:11:00 +0000

As the skies have matured, a multi-billion-dollar shadow industry has quietly exploded alongside it: Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS). And a slew of recent news suggests that the counter-drone sector is massive — and growing.

That includes news of Cellebrite’s exclusive investigative integration with SkySafe, Axon’s blockbuster earnings report showing a 300% surge in its Dedrone business, and a massive airspace defense deployment protecting World Cup 2026 host cities.

It comes at a time of big data — and AI’s ability to quickly analyze it. Whereas the early days of counterdrone tech was hardware focused (yes, there were literal nets to catch drones), the counterdrone industry in 2026 has entered a deeply technical phase focused on forensic attribution and unified command-and-control (C2).

Here are three big, recent news items, suggesting just how deeply the counter-drone landscape is structurally shifting right now.

1. Cellebrite partners with SkySafe

Detecting a drone in the air and investigating it later is traditionally seen as two completely separate jobs running on completely siloed systems. Airspace data can show where the drone flew, but the actual evidence required for a court conviction (the pilot’s identity, intent, and historical flight logs) typically remains locked inside a recovered phone or remote controller.

An exclusive partnership between Cellebrite (a digital intelligence company used by over 7,000 law enforcement agencies) and SkySafe aims to erase that barrier. With their teamup, SkySafe’s real-time airspace intelligence—including drone identification, flight behavior, historical movement patterns, and exact operator locations—is being natively integrated straight into Cellebrite’s digital investigation platform.

This means investigators no longer have to manually piece scattered telemetry signals together. They can instantly correlate real-time tracking data with mobile forensic extractions and decryption. If a drone is recovered, forensics teams can trace its exact history, proving not just that a drone was there, but exactly who was holding the controller across multiple flights.

2. Axon’s earnings report suggests counterdrone tech is huge financial juggernaut

If you still think counter-drone technology is a niche market, a glance at Axon’s Q1 2026 earnings report will cure you of that notion. The public safety tech giant posted record quarterly revenue of $807 million (up 34% year-over-year).

The absolute standout rocket ship in their portfolio? Platform Solutions, which skyrocketed 95% to $111 million, driven heavily by their Dedrone business aquisition, which surged over 300% year-over-year.

Axon Founder and CEO Rick Smith noted that counter-drone systems are still in the early adoption phase of a massive global market opportunity. To capture it, Axon launched Dedrone C2, a unified command-and-control platform designed to combine disparate sensors (radar, radio frequency, and cameras) into a single map.

3. World Cup drives public-facing use case

Perhaps no bigger event has demonstrated how counterdrone tech is being deployed than the World Cup 2026.

We saw counterdrone tech being used way back during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where Dedrone managed the world’s largest airspace security deployment, covering 46 sites across 900 square kilometers. But it’s now 2026 and with games playing out across 11 U.S. host cities, the scale has expanded dramatically. Axon is using the tournament to anchor its defensive tech across all 11 U.S. stadiums and more than 50 additional critical sites, including player base camps and fan zones.

Here’s some of the tech being used at this year’s World Cup games:

The Dedrone Advanced Trailer: Making its debut at the tournament, this ruggedized, towable trailer combines long-range radar, RF decoding, and thermal electro-optical (EO/IR) cameras with onboard Starlink and 5G. A single operator can take it from a trailer hitch to fully active in under 15 minutes, instantly protecting a venue or a VIP transit corridor.
Live View Sharing: Instead of keeping airspace telemetry restricted to a closed command center, operators can now text a single, secure link to officers on foot. Ground teams can see a live-updating map displaying the drone, the drone’s pilot, and a GPS-routed path straight to the operator’s launch location.

What this means for drone pilots

What does this macro counter-drone boom mean for everyday, law-abiding commercial drone pilots? It means your digital footprint in the sky is about to become highly visible, heavily scrutinized, and permanently recorded.

Up until now, many recreational and Part 107 flyers operated under the assumption that unless an FAA inspector physically walked up to them on a flight line, their operations were mostly anonymous. But as massive digital ecosystems like Cellebrite, SkySafe, and Axon Fusus link real-time Remote ID and RF tracking directly into police department databases and forensics platforms, that anonymity is gone.

As local police departments use federal grant money to buy into these unified platforms, understanding your local airspace restrictions isn’t just an FAA compliance checkbox anymore. These days, it’s your primary defense against tripping a highly automated law enforcement dragnet.

Are you operating commercial flights near any World Cup host cities this summer? Have you noticed an increase in local law enforcement monitoring your flight lines? Let’s talk about the reality of sharing the sky with heavy C-UAS tech in the comments below!

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Is 2026 the year that U.S. drone delivery finally clears for takeoff?

The Drone Girl — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:31:00 +0000

For years, the conversation around drone delivery in the United States followed a frustratingly familiar loop of bold promises around tacocopters and many “firsts” of every food known to man being delivered. But it’s also been over a decade of strict regulatory hurdles and localized trial limitations that have kept the drone industry trapped in the “gimmick” phase for what feels like forever.

Historically, Europe has held the crown for commercial drone progress, largely thanks to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) streamlined, risk-based regulatory framework. While U.S. operators were bogged down waiting for individual Part 135 certificates and case-by-case Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waivers, European companies were already logging hundreds of thousands of routine commercial flights.

But look closely at the recent news from the drone delivery world, and you’ll see the gravity is shifting across the Atlantic.

Graphic courtesy of Drone industry Insights

According to a recent report from Drone Industry Insights, which closely tracks the worldwide drone industry largely through its annual Global Drone Survey, there’s been a structural shift in where the money is going in drones. Hardware’s share has dipped to 46% of all drone companies, while Drone Service Providers (yes, that includes drone delivery companies) have grown into the single largest sub-segment of the drone industry at 42%. DII’s report makes it clear that — as drones become commercialized — value is shifting downstream to operations, integration, and use cases like delivery.

But while yes, drone delivery overall is growing, it’s dominated by U.S. companies. Even with Europe’s regulatory head start, the United States clocks 454 drone companies in DII’s report — commanding roughly 32% of the total number of drone companies that DII tracks. By comparison, European heavyweights like Germany (100 companies) and the UK (78 companies) have a fraction of that.

Wing proves the multiplier effect in Houston

This week, Wing (the drone delivery company affiliated with Google) announced a massive expansion of its drone delivery operations across the Greater Houston area in partnership with Walmart. The company is launching eight new drone hubs (Nests), more than doubling its active Houston footprint to 13 active locations. This rollout brings automated drone delivery directly to more than one million Houstonians.

Wing has reported a long-term goal of reaching 40 million Americans across 270 locations by 2027. That follows some major expansion news last month where Wing announced seven new U.S. metro areas: Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco Bay Area and Salt Lake City.

Manna arrives in Oklahoma

Perhaps the most poetic confirmation of the U.S. market’s sudden dominance is the arrival of Manna Air Delivery.

Manna is an Irish-founded drone delivery company that has, by many metrics, been considered the golden child of European drone delivery. Having logged nearly 380,000 global deliveries across Europe, Manna has spent years mastering high-density neighborhood delivery in Ireland.

But when it came time for Manna to execute its next massive phase of commercial growth, they opted to launch in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to running deliveries in the U.S., Manna is making Tulsa its central operational and manufacturing base, promising to create more than 1,000 American jobs over the next three years.

Like Wing, Manna relies on an automated hover-and-tether system to drop essentials directly to yards and driveways.

A turning point for U.S. drone delivery?

For a decade, American drone enthusiasts looked at Europe with a bit of envy. European regulators made it easier to fly, while U.S. operators have largely felt choked by red tape.

But DII’s 2026 Market Map and this week’s news from Wing and Manna prove that the tables have turned. The U.S. may have taken longer to get its regulatory footing, but now that the infrastructure is catching up, America’s massive consumer market, venture capital density and localized tech hubs are unlocking unprecedented scale.

When a premier European operator onshores its manufacturing to the American Midwest, and a domestic giant opens up delivery to a million people in a single Texas metro, it’s clear: the U.S. drone delivery market is clearing for takeoff.

Are you living in one of Wing’s new expansion cities or near Manna’s new Oklahoma hub? Have you ordered a drone delivery yet? I want to hear about your experience! Let me know in the comments below!

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FAA Moves to Lift Ban on Overland Supersonic Flight

Aviation Today — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:56:47 +0000

Global Aviation Round-Up from Aircraft Value Intelligence (AVN)

A computer rendering of what the United Airlines supersonic aircraft will look like in the future. (Boom Supersonic)

Editor’s Note: To watch a video version of this article, click here.

For 53 years, one federal regulation has stood between Americans and the return of supersonic air travel over the continental United States. That rule, adopted during the Nixon administration, prohibits civilian aircraft from exceeding the speed of sound over land. Now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is preparing to rewrite it.

On July 2, the agency published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register that would replace the existing speed-based restriction with a performance standard centered on noise. The proposal follows an announcement by the Department of Transportation on June 30 and represents the most significant shift in U.S. supersonic policy in decades.

The change reflects a different way of thinking about the problem. Instead of asking whether an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, regulators are asking whether people on the ground are disturbed when it does.

That distinction could reshape the future of commercial aviation. For many travelers, supersonic passenger service is synonymous with the Concorde, the sleek Anglo-French jet that cut transatlantic flight times in half. Its future unraveled after the fatal Air France crash near Paris in 2000. Although Concorde briefly returned to service, passenger demand weakened, operating costs climbed, and the aircraft was retired in 2003. Since then, commercial supersonic travel has largely disappeared.

Today’s aircraft designers believe the technology has advanced enough to make another attempt. The original U.S. ban grew out of public frustration during the 1960s, when military testing produced frequent sonic booms over populated areas. Residents complained of rattling walls, cracked plaster, broken windows and sudden explosions of noise that interrupted everyday life. Thousands of complaints poured into government offices, convincing regulators that the public cost outweighed the benefit of faster travel.

The FAA responded by banning routine civilian supersonic flight over land. With few exceptions, commercial aircraft have remained below Mach 1 across the continental U.S. ever since.

Engineering, however, has changed dramatically over the past half-century. Instead of allowing powerful shock waves to merge into the classic sonic boom, engineers have learned how to shape an aircraft so those pressure waves remain dispersed. The resulting sound reaching the ground is significantly weaker than the ear-splitting boom associated with earlier generations of supersonic aircraft.

The FAA’s proposal reflects those advances. Under the draft rule, future aircraft would have to meet a strict ground-level overpressure limit of 0.11 pounds per square foot. While the measurement is technical, the practical goal is straightforward: produce a sound that resembles a soft thump rather than the explosive crack historically associated with breaking the sound barrier.

NASA’s Supersonic Experiment

The proposed rule arrives as NASA continues work on one of its most ambitious experimental aircraft. The X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) demonstrator hardly resembles a conventional jet. Its unusually long, narrow nose and carefully sculpted airframe were designed with a single objective: reducing the intensity of sonic booms before they reach people on the ground.

The aircraft recently completed another important step in its flight-test program, reaching Mach 1.4 at roughly 55,000 feet. Engineers view the milestone as another indication that the research program is progressing as expected.

The most important testing, however, won’t focus on speed alone. NASA plans to fly the X-59 over selected U.S. communities while researchers gather feedback from residents who experience its sound signature. Beyond measuring decibel levels, scientists want to understand how people actually react. Does the sound surprise them? Is it annoying? Or is it mild enough to blend into the background of everyday life?

Those public-response studies could prove pivotal. If communities consistently report that the aircraft produces little more than a brief, unobtrusive noise, regulators would have stronger evidence that quiet supersonic operations can safely coexist with populated areas. The research is expected to influence not only future FAA decisions but also international standards governing commercial supersonic aviation.

The stakes extend well beyond NASA. Several aerospace manufacturers are investing heavily in next-generation supersonic airliners designed to shorten travel times between major cities. Because of the current U.S. ban, most development plans have centered on transoceanic routes where aircraft can legally accelerate beyond Mach 1.

A new regulatory framework would dramatically broaden those possibilities. Flights that now consume most of a business day could eventually take only a few hours. A traveler leaving New York in the morning could conduct afternoon meetings in Los Angeles and return home that evening. Commercial service remains years away, but for the first time in decades, the regulatory landscape appears to be moving in the same direction as the technology.

The proposal also provides something the aerospace industry values almost as much as technical innovation: regulatory certainty.

Designing, certifying and manufacturing an entirely new generation of commercial aircraft requires billions of dollars and years of development. A clearer path through the approval process reduces investment risk, giving manufacturers and their financial backers greater confidence that quiet supersonic flight could become a viable commercial business rather than an engineering experiment.

John Persinos is the editor-in-chief of Aircraft Value Intelligence.

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Q&A: The CEO Building Aviation’s Digital Backbone

Aviation Today — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:47:27 +0000

Global Aviation Round-Up from Aircraft Value Intelligence (AVN)

Jacob Baumler, founder and CEO of CoachAir.

Editor’s Note: This week, John Persinos interviewed Jacob Baumler, founder and CEO of CoachAir, which verifies private charter compliance and protects payments through partner branded infrastructure. The company’s work spans Part 135 charter operations, public safety aviation, and advanced air mobility.

An influential voice on the intersection of aviation, technology, and regulatory compliance, Jacob advises industry stakeholders on the digital transformation of aviation operations and commerce. John’s questions are in bold.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is steadily laying the groundwork for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), but commercialization still faces regulatory hurdles. Which compliance or operational bottlenecks do you believe are most underestimated by the industry, and how can technology help overcome them?

Much of the conversation surrounding AAM has focused on aircraft certification, propulsion technology, and airspace integration. Those are all critical milestones, but I believe the industry’s greatest challenge is creating trust at operational scale.

As AAM moves from demonstration flights to thousands of daily commercial operations, every mission must be verified for legality, operational readiness, and regulatory compliance before takeoff. That level of oversight simply cannot rely on manual processes.

This realization is one of the reasons we founded CoachAir. We recognized early that AAM would require more than revolutionary aircraft—it would require aviation intelligence that strengthens public safety and operational resilience.

CoachAir helps verify the legality of the aircraft, operator, and mission before funds move, then securely manages the transaction from booking through flight completion. By automating verification and creating transparent audit trails, we help operators, regulators, airports, and passengers make decisions with greater confidence.

The future of AAM will not simply depend on certifying innovative aircraft. It will depend on building a resilient aviation ecosystem where every commercial flight is safe, legal, transparent, and operationally ready before it ever leaves the ground.

As electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) operators prepare for commercial service, digital trust will become increasingly important. How do you see automated compliance verification and transaction infrastructure evolving to support high-frequency AAM operations safely and efficiently?

As operations become more frequent, trust must become automated. High-frequency AAM cannot depend on disconnected databases, manual document reviews, or fragmented payment systems. Every commercial flight should move through a continuous digital workflow where operational readiness is verified before funds move and every transaction is supported by transparent, auditable records.

I believe the industry is moving toward intelligent systems that continuously validate operational requirements while securely managing the entire customer transaction. That includes verifying the legality of the mission, monitoring operational status throughout the flight, and providing complete financial and operational accountability from booking through completion.

Automated verification also strengthens operational resilience. By continuously validating compliance and securely managing transactions end to end, operators can adapt to changing conditions while maintaining safety, regulatory integrity, and public confidence. Ultimately, digital trust is not just about efficiency—it is about creating the foundation that allows AAM to scale safely.

Many AAM companies have focused heavily on aircraft development, but less attention has been paid to the supporting ecosystem. What pieces of infrastructure, whether regulatory, digital, or operational, need to mature before AAM can scale beyond pilot programs?

Every major advancement in aviation has required more than new aircraft. It has required an ecosystem capable of supporting safe, reliable, and scalable operations. AAM will be no different.

Beyond certification, the industry needs mature digital infrastructure that connects operators, airports, vertiports, regulators, insurers, financial institutions, and passengers through trusted operational data. Identity verification, compliance monitoring, secure payment systems, maintenance records, operational intelligence, cybersecurity, and standardized data exchange will all become essential components of commercial AAM.

CoachAir was built around that vision. Rather than creating another booking platform, we are building aviation intelligence infrastructure that connects stakeholders through trusted verification, secure transaction management, and operational intelligence. That trusted foundation creates a more resilient aviation ecosystem capable of supporting commercial AAM safely, efficiently, and at scale.

Part 135 charter operators have decades of experience navigating complex regulatory requirements. What lessons from today’s on-demand aviation industry can AAM startups apply as they transition from testing to commercial passenger service?

The Part 135 industry has spent decades proving that aviation succeeds through operational discipline. Every flight requires countless decisions involving maintenance, crew qualifications, weather, dispatch, insurance, documentation, and regulatory compliance. Those processes are not barriers to innovation—they are the reason aviation remains one of the safest forms of transportation in the world.

AAM startups have an opportunity to build upon those lessons instead of reinventing them. Technology should reduce administrative burden while reinforcing the operational standards and safety culture that aviation has refined over generations. Automation should support experienced operators, not replace their judgment.

The companies that successfully balance innovation with disciplined operations, regulatory compliance, and public safety will be the ones that earn long-term trust and lead the industry into its next chapter.

Public confidence will ultimately determine how quickly Advanced Air Mobility gains widespread acceptance. Beyond aircraft safety, what role do transparent data, compliance records, and operational intelligence play in building that trust with passengers, regulators, and investors?

Public confidence has always been built on transparency. Passengers do not simply trust an aircraft because it is technologically advanced—they trust the systems behind it that ensure every flight meets rigorous operational and regulatory standards.

Transparent compliance records, verified operational data, and continuous operational intelligence allow every stakeholder to make informed decisions with confidence. Regulators gain greater oversight. Operators strengthen accountability. Investors reduce operational risk. Passengers gain confidence that safety extends beyond the aircraft itself.

At CoachAir, we have summarized that philosophy in three words: Verify Before You Fly. We believe public safety begins long before takeoff. Our trademarked platform verifies the legality of the aircraft, operator, and mission before funds move, then securely manages the transaction from booking through flight completion.

Trust should never be assumed—it should be verified. That approach not only strengthens public confidence but also builds the resilience necessary for the next generation of aviation.

Looking five years ahead, do you expect the biggest breakthroughs in AAM to come from advances in aircraft technology, regulatory modernization, digital compliance infrastructure, or business models? Which area deserves more attention from investors and policymakers today?

Aircraft technology will continue advancing rapidly, and regulators are making meaningful progress toward commercial AAM. However, I believe the most significant breakthroughs over the next five years will come from trusted aviation intelligence that enables the entire ecosystem to operate safely, securely, and at scale.

The companies that create lasting value will not necessarily be those building the aircraft. They will be the organizations building the trusted infrastructure that allows operators, airports, regulators, insurers, financial institutions, and passengers to operate from a common foundation of verified information.

Public safety, operational resilience, secure transaction management, and continuous compliance verification will become as essential to AAM as the aircraft themselves.

That is where CoachAir is focused. We are building aviation intelligence that strengthens public safety by verifying the legality of the aircraft, operator, and mission before funds move while securely managing the transaction from booking through flight completion.

We believe the future of aviation rests on three pillars: public safety, operational resilience, and trusted intelligence. Aircraft will transform how we fly, but trust will determine how quickly the world embraces that future.

Thanks for your time.

John Persinos is the editor-in-chief of Aircraft Value Intelligence.

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Drone Challenge Program Selects 19 Vendors To Compete In Second Gauntlet

Aviation Today — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:39:33 +0000

First person view combat drone developed by Ukraine’s Grim Tech. (Photo: Grim Tech)

The Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program (DDP) on July 1 said it invited 19 companies to compete in the final stage of its second challenge round in August with a chance to win production orders worth a combined $300 million.

The companies invited to compete at Fort Carson, Colo., are Ascent Aerosystems, Auterion Government Solutions, Griffon Aerospace, Grim Tech, Hyperscale, ModalAI, a team of Mountain Horse Solutions and AG3 Labs, Neros Technologies, ORQA US LLC, Perennial Autonomy, Renegade UxS, Skycutter, Stellarion, Swarm Defense, Teal Drones, Ukrainian Defense Drones (UDD), Vector, Wilcox Cherry Defense and XTEND Reality.

Each company has about five weeks to deliver 120 drones with lethality payloads for the Gauntlett II final challenge. The drone vendors are paired with at least one of five previously selected lethality providers, which are Bravo Ordnance, Kela Defense US Inc., Kraken Kinetics, Mountain Horse LLC and Northrop Grumman [NOC] SUkrystems Corp.

The 19 finalists were whittled down from 49 companies that competed in June at a qualifier at Camp Grayling, Mich. For that event, the companies provided about 79 unique drone systems to compete in one or two mission areas, long range strike and tactical assault in close quarters.

At Fort Carson, the drones will be put through operational testing in the mission relevant scenarios that occur in contested electromagnetic environments.

A Request for Solutions for Gauntlet II in April said the top performer in each mission area will receive an order for 8,000 prototype drones, second place 7,000, third place 6,000, fourth place 5,000 and fifth place 4,000.

In March, the DDP selected 11 top performers from Gauntlet I at Fort Benning, Ga. Among those winners, Skycutter, ModalAI, Auterion, UDD, Ascent Aerosystems and Griffon Aerospace are in the hunt for Gauntlet II orders.

Neros, which finished second in Gauntlet I, has completed deliveries and acceptance of its 2,400 drones contracted by DDP, according to the DDP’s website. As of June 18, the DDP has accepted 80 of Ascent’s drones against a production order for 1,600, DDP says.

Most of the other companies selected for Gauntlet 1 prototype orders have either begun to ship their drones or are ramping production. Only Skycutter, which won Gauntlet I, and Napatree, the third place finisher, are listed as neither ramping nor shipping their drones yet, DDP says.

The aim of the DDP is help create a domestic industrial base for small, relatively inexpensive and attritable drones produced in massive numbers that the Defense Department can draw on. Some of the competitors are not based in the U.S., such as Britain’s Skycutter and Ukraine’s Grim. UDD represents Ukraine’s F-Drones and is establishing a manufacturing facility in Northwest Ohio.

A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.

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Ukraine And European Union Discussing Drone Deal, As Kamikaze Drones Hit Russian Supply Lines

Aviation Today — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:27:39 +0000

Pictured is a photo of a May 8 posting by the Ukrainian National Guard’s First Azov Corps of a Hornet kamikaze drone near the Donetsk region’s port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov above the Black Sea. Russia captured the city in May, 2022, but Ukraine is trying to retake it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pursuing drone deals with European nations, even as the U.S. has so far delayed such a deal and as Ukraine uses increasingly long range, kamikaze “one way attack” drones to strike Russian infrastructure.

“Today every country needs the modern means to at least monitor and protect its own airspace and sea borders,” Zelenskyy told the Council of the European Union in Dublin on Tuesday. “Without Ukraine, without Ukraine’s experience and security expertise–tested in modern war, it is impossible to guarantee security today, especially when it comes to air defense and maritime security.”

A bipartisan group of six House legislators have introduced the Strategic Unmanned Systems Partnership Act–a bill to improve drone collaboration between the U.S. and Ukraine.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the second ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the second ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, sponsored the legislation. Kaptur is also a co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus.

On June 9, Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced companion legislation, S. 4711, in the Senate.

Zelenskyy told Face the Nation on May 31 that Ukraine had “wanted to conclude the first drone deal with the United States.”

“The U.S. wanted to test all types of our drones,” he said. “We agreed to the way they wanted to test, train with, and use our systems in the air, on land, and at sea, but we still don’t have a bilateral drone deal–a big framework document…American companies have advanced AI technologies we don’t have. In turn, we have many things they don’t have, due to our extensive experience on the battlefield.”

“We need to negotiate, not just talk about it,” Zelenskyy said. “Take the necessary steps and do it as quickly as possible. For this, we need President Trump to say yes.”

This month, Ukraine and Latvia signed a drone deal, and Ukraine is negotiating drone deals with the EU and other EU members, including Finland, Denmark, Ireland, and Bulgaria. Beside Latvia, Ukraine has drone deals with Norway, the Netherlands, and Germany.

While the United States begins its Drone Dominance Program (DDP) to field drones with a unit cost below $10,000, U.S. drones with Pentagon-heralded battle experience outside of Ukraine have been non-disposable, higher-end ones. One Ukrainian company, Ukrainian Defense Drones, has been selected by the DDP to manufacture attritable small drones.

On May 20, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach told the House Armed Services Committee that the number of air-to-ground strikes in Iran by U.S. Air Force MQ-9A Reapers by General Atomics has far outstripped the number by any other aircraft.

“For Epic Fury, perhaps the most valuable player was unmanned–the MQ-9,” Wilsbach said. “We’ve made many, many strikes. I don’t want to say how many because the number’s classified, but no other platform’s even close to the MQ-9. We get a lot of utility out of them.”

The Pentagon said at the time that it had made more than 13,000 strikes on Iran since Feb. 28.

The Air Force has lost at least 24 MQ-9A Reapers in the Iran strikes, and the service is looking at a follow-on to the Reaper that would significantly reduce the drone’s unit cost, which ranges between $30 million and $50 million.

U.S.-Ukrainian drone co-production so far has included the $15,000 Multi-spectral Extended Range Optical Sight (MEROPS) interceptor drone by Perennial Autonomy, formerly Swift Beat LLC–an American company established by Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet Inc.‘s Google.

Another Perennial Autonomy drone that has seen use in Ukraine is the Hornet, a $5,000, Group 2 kamikaze drone able to fly silently in the terminal phase to evade electronic jamming and use SpaceX‘s Starlink communications terminals to strike Russian supply lines, including truck convoys, more than 150 miles away.

A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.

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Ireland’s Manna Air Delivery chooses Tulsa for U.S. headquarters, promising 1,000 new drone jobs

The Drone Girl — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:32:00 +0000

The luck of the Irish is officially landing in the American heartland. Ireland-based Manna Air Delivery announced this week that it is launching its first full-scale metropolitan U.S. operations — more specifically in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition, Manna is making Tulsa its central U.S. operational and manufacturing base. Even bigger news for the local economy is that Manna expects to create more than 1,000 jobs in Tulsa over the next three years.

Here is everything you need to know about Manna’s big American move — and why it chose Tulsa.

About Manna’s Tulsa expansion

Manna says it intends to create 1,000+ jobs over the next three years. That certainly means drone pilots, but the company is hiring across a massive range of roles, including:

Aviation and flight operations
Commercial operations & customer support
Drone manufacturing and maintenance
Business and administrative functions

That manufacturing piece is particularly interesting, perhaps now that U.S. lawmakers seek to ban foreign-made drones. Manna’s plan to combat this? Rather than just shipping drones over from Europe, Manna says it will build its U.S. manufacturing base right in Tulsa to power its entire future American expansion.

“America represents the world’s largest opportunity for drone delivery, and we’re excited about creating more than 1,000 American jobs over the next three years,” said Bobby Healy, Founder and CEO of Manna in a prepared statement. “This isn’t about moving from Ireland — it’s about taking Irish technology to the world.”

Related read: Liang Feng shares a day in the life as a drone delivery lead

Now Oklahoma might seem like an unexpected choice for an international tech giant. But folks who have been paying attention to the drone world lately, might see that Tulsa is actually a total no-brainer. Tulsa is a federally designated Tech Hub, and local leaders have spent years building a world-class drone innovation ecosystem. The recruitment effort was a team sport, led by Tulsa Local Ventures (a George Kaiser Family Foundation initiative) in partnership with Tulsa Innovation Labs.

A scene during a press conference announcing Manna at Agora Event Center in Tulsa, Okla., on July 8, 2026.

The SAFE-T initative

One of the biggest hurdles for drone delivery in the U.S. is navigating complex urban airspaces safely. Tulsa is solving this problem through what it’s calling the Secure Autonomy Feedback and Evaluation Testbed (SAFE-T) initiative. Managed by Tulsa Innovation Labs, SAFE-T is creating a shared digital infrastructure that tracks:

Low-altitude airspace traffic
Real-time micro-weather patterns
Safety and risk mitigation data

This advanced uncrewed traffic management (UTM) setup gives companies like Manna a ready-to-go, secure testbed to scale commercial flights in urban areas without starting from scratch.

How Manna drone delivery works

As do a few other drone delivery operators, Manna’s delivery drones don’t actually land in customer yards. Instead of landing in your driveway or dropping a package from the sky, Manna utilizes an automated, remotely monitored drone that hovers at a safe altitude and lowers your package on a tether.

Manna has already logged nearly 380,000 global deliveries across its operations in Ireland. They’re small compared to behemoths like Wing and Zipline, but they still qualify as one of the more experienced commercial drone operators on the planet.

And its entry into the U.S. market at a true metropolitan scale is a massive validation that commercial drone delivery is moving past the “gimmick” phase and into everyday logistics. It’s also proof that drone delivery doesn’t have to be dominated by the giants like Google.

Are you a drone professional based in Oklahoma? Will you be applying for one of Manna’s 1,000 new roles? I want to hear from you! Sound off in the comments below!

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What’s going on with the “Drone-in-a-Box” market in 2026?

The Drone Girl — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:10:00 +0000

For years, the commercial drone industry has chased a singular premise: a ruggedized, weatherproof shelter stationed on a roof or a utility site that automatically opens to launch an aircraft, executes a pre-planned route, lands, and recharges — all without an operator physically touching the hardware.

But making this “drone-in-a-box” concept a scalable reality has been notoriously difficult, historically bogged down by strict regulatory waivers and hardware reliability issues.

Now, midway through 2026, the data indicates we have officially cleared the trial phase. Between concrete corporate milestones from Western manufacturer Skydio and deep operational blueprints from global giants like DJI, drone docks seem to be finally transitioning into permanent, routine corporate and public safety infrastructure.

Skydio proves scalability milestone

(Image courtesy of Skydio)

A fresh report from U.S.-based drone manufacturer Skydio suggests the industry has reached a critical tipping point. Exactly one year after shipping its first production Skydio Dock for the X10, the company has deployed 1,070 units across three countries.

Combined, these autonomous docks have logged over 4 million flights. Skydio claims this marks the largest deployment of an autonomous robotic flight system doing repeatable work for commercial and government organizations in the U.S. to date.

For the broader market, hitting the 1,000-dock mark proves that remote drone operations can finally scale. Dock systems allow a pilot to step away from the field and instead sit in a centralized command center, leveraging automated routing and multi-drone fleet software to manage multiple flights simultaneously.

What’s driving interest in drones-in-a-box?

While single-company hardware milestones validate production capabilities, a new whitepaper from DJI Enterprise outlines the exact economic and operational realities driving this massive surge.

Both DJI and Skydio’s reports suggest that the industry is rapidly pivoting away from traditional, “patrol-based” drone deployments. That’s the style where a pilot manually transports a drone to a site upon receiving a call. While manual flight still holds value for dynamic, specialized tasks like SWAT overwatch, it scales poorly due to pilot scheduling bottlenecks.

Pre-positioned automation completely flips the traditional sequence. Instead of waiting for a ground unit to arrive at a scene to provide eyes, the drone goes first.

According to DJI’s operational data, transitioning from manual field deployments to automated dock infrastructure has yielded stark, quantified impacts. From the DJI whitepaper:

Drastic Travel Reductions: A remote dock can launch and arrive at a scene within 3 to 5 minutes, slashing traditional response travel times by 70% to 80%.
Multiplier Staffing Models: Rather than a strict 1:1 pilot-to-aircraft ratio, a single remote operator can supervise up to four active dock operations concurrently in mature procedures.
Minimized Human Error: Because standard missions run via automated paths, task boundaries, and geofencing, the risk of manual pilot error—which accounts for over 90% of drone crash incidents—is drastically reduced.
Overnight Labor Efficiency: Automated standby workflows can reduce multi-shift night coverage labor costs by 60% to 70%.

The top 3 verticals driving adoption

The push past localized testing into large-scale deployments is being led by three distinct sectors relying heavily on these automated workflows:

1. Public Safety & Drone as First Responder (DFR)

Police and fire agencies are positioning autonomous hives directly on precinct roofs. The moment a 911 call is dispatched, the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system triggers an automated workflow, launching the drone to give command centers live video and location context before ground units ever arrive. Municipal deployments, like the El Paso Police Department in the U.S., showcase how these systems integrate with local data controls to provide aerial confirmation within minutes.

2. Critical Infrastructure & Private Security

Energy and utility companies utilize docked fleets to run automated, condition-based inspection cycles across substations and power lines, keeping human crews away from high-voltage hazards. In private security, companies like Fidelity Security Group in South Africa use pre-positioned docks across sprawling mining areas and industrial parks to execute 24/7 automated perimeter security.

3. National Security & Facility Defense

Defense programs deploy these enclosed systems for persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) to maintain constant, un-crewed facility perimeter security without human fatigue limitations.

The next challenges for drone-in-a-box growth

What the latest enterprise data emphasizes is that proving hardware can survive rain and wind is only half the battle. The modern drone-in-a-box market is creating something of an enterprise software and IT review challenge.

A drone dock cannot exist as an isolated island. Alas, to prove ant sort of value, its data must seamlessly feed into an organization’s existing command infrastructure without requiring structural changes to the host platform. Leading fleet management platforms like DJI FlightHub 2 are approaching this by structuring drone systems as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model, exposing four standardized integration endpoints:

Data Domain	Protocol Used	Integration Target
Live Video	RTSP / RTMP / WebRTC	Video Management Systems (VMS), digital video walls
Telemetry	MQTT Stream	Geographic Information Systems (GIS), CAD maps
Mission Media	S3 Object Sync	Evidence management databases, long-term archives
Event Notifications	Webhooks / Event API	Automated business pipelines, automated dispatch systems

Furthermore, enterprise IT environments are forcing a shift in how platforms are deployed. While public cloud hosting offers immediate, rapid proof-of-concept testing, scaled production fleets with high data sovereignty or compliance needs are increasingly moving to On-Premises containerized architectures to keep sensitive aerial data completely localized.

What drone-in-a-box tech can sale

As thousands of automated hives go active globally, the final hurdle for the sector is clearing international regulatory red tape at scale.

To bypass slow, case-by-case authorization pathways, manufacturers are securing strategic international compliance beachheads. Skydio, for instance, recently announced the general availability of its X10 Dock in Japan through major telecom partnerships with KDDI Corporation and NTT Docomo. Similarly, regional deployments across Europe and South Africa are successfully proving repeatable compliance paths for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations.

While individual operators still face complex airspace permissions based on their localized terrain, it’s clear that un-crewed, automated flight has officially moved out of the trial phase and established itself as a regular, scalable corporate workflow.

The post What’s going on with the “Drone-in-a-Box” market in 2026? appeared first on The Drone Girl.

Have a great drone use case? You could win a trip to Budapest

The Drone Girl — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 20:08:00 +0000

It’s 2026, and the drone industry is well past the era of asking if a drone can take a decent photo or stitch a basic orthomosaic map together. In the years ahead, the drone has been — and continues — to enter a much more mature, highly technical phase. And if you’re someone who can prove your drone use case is particularly technical and impressive, you could win an award that includes its own trip to Budapest, Hungary.

Latvia-based SPH Engineering (the team behind the UgCS flight planning software) wants to spotlight advanced missions through their own awards program called the Global Drone Operations Awards 2026 — and applications are open now.

Unlike drone contests that seek to find the prettiest aerial photograph, this judged contest seeks to spotlight the workflows and real-world data outcomes of professional drone crews doing heavy-duty field operations.

(Photo courtesy of SPH Engineering)

Who should enter the Global Drone Operations Awards 2026

Applications that feature basic drone tasks need not apply. According to the official rules, projects based only on standard photogrammetry, LiDAR scanning, site mapping or routine progress monitoring are not eligible. If you are just flying a standard grid over a construction site or a roof, this one isn’t for you.

Instead, those baseline methods must be part of a broader, more technically complex workflow. SPH Engineering is targeting missions where drones are used as precision instruments to gather high-confidence data in remote or dangerous environments. Think less about standard visual cameras and more about heavy-hitting, specialized sensor payloads like ground-penetrating radar (GPR), magnetometers, echo sounders and specialized LiDAR integrations.

The awards are open to any commercial operator, researcher, enterprise team or utility provider worldwide—and you do not need to be a current SPH Engineering customer to apply.

Applicants can submit multiple projects across five distinct categories:

Mining: Drone-based projects supporting mineral exploration, geophysical investigation, resource evaluation and magnetic surveys in grueling terrain.
Oil & Gas Operations: Exploration, infrastructure inspection, emissions monitoring, methane detection and technical site surveying.
Construction & Site Intelligence: Subsurface and technical assessments, complex site monitoring and workflows combining multiple sensors and data sources.
Academia & Research: Scientific studies, academic field experiments and applied technical investigations pioneering new sensor techniques.
Jury Special Recognition: For outstanding projects that demonstrate exceptional technical complexity but do not fully fit into the main categories.

(Photo courtesy of SPH Engineering)

How judging will work

An expert panel of drone industry professionals, technical sensor experts and geospatial specialists will evaluate the shortlisted entries using a strict, weighted point system:

Technical Complexity & Novelty (60%): Challenging environmental conditions, specialized sensor integrations, complex flight planning and the overall reliability of the resulting data.
Business Impact (40%): Measurable operational or commercial value. You need to show quantifiable evidence of time and cost savings, safety improvements, productivity gains or better corporate decision-making.

One more criteria to apply: As part of the application process, you must publish your project as a post or article on your personal or company LinkedIn page.

Your post needs to describe the project, include relevant screenshots or field photos, tag the official SPH Engineering LinkedIn page and explicitly state that it has been submitted to the awards. You will then drop that LinkedIn link directly into your official application form.

Note on social metrics: Don’t stress if you don’t have a massive social media following. The rules explicitly state that LinkedIn likes, comments, reposts and engagement metrics will not be used by the jury to evaluate entries. It’s strictly about the quality of the work, so do not feel like you need to pay LinkedIn for artificial engagement or that you need to spam your colleagues for votes!

The prize: An all-expenses-paid (albeit short) trip to Budapest

The application window is open now through July 31, 2026. The jury will review entries through August, and the official winner announcement will drop on September 7, 2026.

One category winner will be selected for each tier. Along with the bragging rights, an official trophy and a dedicated project spotlight featured across global geospatial media channels, winners get an incredible travel package.

SPH Engineering will arrange and pay for economy airfare (or rail) and up to two nights of hotel accommodations for one designated representative per winning entry to attend the official SPH Engineering Awards Event in Budapest, Hungary, from October 11–13, 2026.

The Budapest event is designed as a high-level technical exchange, bringing the world’s most advanced operators under one roof to swap field-proven workflows, share lessons learned from complex operations and discuss best practices that can push the entire commercial drone industry forward.

If your crew has spent the last year flying complex, multi-sensor missions that proved a drone could do the “impossible” on an industrial job site, it’s time to get your data together, get your client’s permission and get credit where credit is due.

Applications are live right now. You can view the full guidelines and submit your project directly at the SPH Engineering Global Drone Operations Awards Portal.

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