Every UASFeed story on Defense Innovation Unit — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
Skydio's X10, Dock for X10 and R10 joined the Blue UAS Cleared List on 23 July 2026, making its entire lineup cleared and the Dock the first Blue UAS-cleared drone-as-first-responder system — unlocking Byrne JAG, COPS and HSGP grant money just as the list itself moves from DIU to DCMA.
Read the story →DIU's new Massed Modular Aircraft solicitation seeks a cheap, mass-producible drone that can fly 2,300 nm combat radius with a 2,800-lb payload to take over Reaper missions and absorb combat losses.
The Defense Innovation Unit is soliciting a low-cost, modular strike/ISR drone to replace the MQ-9A Reaper after nearly 30 were lost in recent Iran operations, with bids due July 23, 2026.
A memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth creates a new joint office with milestone authority over nearly all Pentagon drone programs, pulling buying power away from the individual armed services.
Redmond, Oregon approved a $410,762, five-year financed Axon contract for six Skydio drones to replace its DJI fleet — a 3.5x price jump driven by the federal NDAA ban, not operational need.
At InnovateEnergy Week in Texas, UAS leads from Southern Company and Entergy described moving off DJI onto Blue UAS-vetted American drones — and warned that the binding constraint on scaling storm-response flights is data management, not the FAA's pending Part 108 BVLOS rule.
At XPONENTIAL 2026, Hoverfly launched Elements, an NDAA-compliant drone components line — motors, ESCs and anti-jam GPS modules — built to meet the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program deadlines for purging Chinese parts from $6.6B in sUAS buys.
From command-link hijacking to GPS spoofing and supply-chain malware, every layer of a drone system is a potential entry point. Here is how the attack surface breaks down—and what serious operators are doing about it.
Russian jamming dropped FPV hit rates from 40–60% to under 30%. Ukraine's response accelerated every GPS-denied navigation technique in the book — from inertial sensors and visual odometry to quantum magnetometers and $50 autonomy modules. Here's how each layer works.
Uncrewed undersea vehicles now patrol the same cables that carry 97% of global communications. From man-portable REMUS scouts to 85-ton Orca XLUUVs, this is how the U.S. Navy classifies, builds, and struggles to field them — and why China is moving faster.
DoD's Replicator initiative launched in August 2023 with a promise to field multiple thousands of attritable autonomous systems within 18–24 months to counter China’s mass advantage. Two years on, hundreds have been delivered, the program has pivoted to counter-drone defense, and oversight gaps persist.
In three years of full-scale war, Ukraine built one of the world's most battle-tested drone industries from scratch—capable of 4 million units per year—while racing to cut a near-total dependency on Chinese components.
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