DJI
Every UASFeed story on DJI — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Commercial & Delivery
Utilities Are Ditching DJI for Storm Response — and the Real BVLOS Bottleneck Turns Out to Be Data, Not Rules
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.
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Tech & Builds
Glass-to-Glass: The Physics of FPV Video Links Driving Ukraine’s Drone War
Analog FPV, a video technology whose roots trace to the 1970s, dominates Ukraine’s frontline drone strikes over HD digital systems. The reason comes down to milliseconds, spectrum physics, and how a signal degrades under jamming.
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Defense & Combat
ISIS Drone Warfare in Iraq and Syria: How Commercial Quadcopters Became a Military Weapon
In 2016, the Islamic State turned cheap commercial quadcopters into a documented, bureaucratized weapons program — the first non-state drone campaign to kill soldiers in combat and force NATO armies to rebuild air defense doctrine from scratch.
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Defense & Combat
Venezuela's 2018 Caracas Drone Attack: First Confirmed UAS Assassination Attempt
On August 4, 2018, two commercially available DJI Matrice 600 hexacopters loaded with C-4 targeted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at a military parade in Caracas — the first confirmed drone assassination attempt against a sitting head of state, executed for roughly $10,000 in off-the-shelf hardware.
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Counter-UAS
Soft Targets in the Air Age: The Drone Threat to U.S. Critical Infrastructure
From a copper-wire-rigged DJI Mavic to a C-4-loaded platform aimed at a Nashville substation, drone attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure have moved from theoretical to documented — yet 93% of nuclear sites, 90% of oil refineries, and most major airports remain without active counter-UAS protection.
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Counter-UAS
What a Seized Drone Tells Investigators — and What It Doesn’t
From encrypted GPS logs and chip-off hardware extraction to battlefield component teardowns linking Shahed drones to U.S. suppliers, drone forensics has become a critical investigative discipline — one still building its standards as the threat accelerates.
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Counter-UAS
Geofencing and No-Fly Zones Explained: How Drone Airspace Controls Actually Work
On January 13, 2025, DJI stopped blocking its drones from flying into restricted airspace—ending a decade of hard firmware locks. Here is what replaced them: the FAA airspace stack, Remote ID enforcement, and where every layer of the system breaks down.
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Industry & Contracts
DJI Dominates the Drone Market — And Washington Wants It Out
DJI controls over 70% of the global commercial drone market and 90% of consumer sales, yet faces an effective US ban after a cascade of legislative and regulatory actions. Six independent audits have found no evidence of covert data exfiltration — but the structural debate is far from resolved.
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Industry & Contracts
Skydio Explained: The Autonomy-First Company Built to Replace DJI in American Defense
Founded by MIT researchers who trained on Google's Project Wing, Skydio built America's leading small-drone platform by betting on AI autonomy before the defense market existed. Congressional bans on Chinese hardware turned that bet into a franchise—then China struck back.
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Commercial & Delivery
How Drones Replaced Guesswork in Mining — Surface Surveys to Underground Voids
Mining accounts for 8 percent of global fatal injuries, and critical site decisions were long based on incomplete survey data. Drones have changed the calculus — from weekly kilometer-scale stockpile surveys to the first autonomous BVLOS flight 600 metres underground.
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Commercial & Delivery
Drone Photography for Real Estate: Part 107, Airspace, and the Business Case
NAR's 2025 Technology Survey found 52 percent of REALTORS® now use drone photography — and homes with aerial shots are 68 percent more likely to sell. Here is what the FAA commercial definition, Part 107 certification mechanics, and current pricing structure actually look like for operators and agents.
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Commercial & Delivery
How Drones Rewrote Aerial Cinematography: From FAA Exemptions to FPV
From the FAA's first six commercial UAS exemptions in September 2014 to FPV drones threading car chases in major studio releases, drone technology has restructured what aerial cinematography can do — and who can afford to do it.
