DJI
Every UASFeed story on DJI — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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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.
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Commercial & Delivery
Drones at Sea: Emissions Policing, Hull Inspection, and Offshore Autonomy
Merchant shipping moves more than 80 percent of world trade behind a veil of opacity — corroding hulls, sulfur-burning engines, and expensive shore logistics. UAVs are now operational across four domains, from EMSA plume-sniffing campaigns to classification-accepted hull inspections conducted on vessels in transit.
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Tech & Builds
The Full Attack Surface: How UAS Systems Get Compromised
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.
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Tech & Builds
How Drone LiDAR Works: Pulses, Point Clouds, and the Navigation Stack Behind It
Drone LiDAR fires millions of laser pulses per second and rebuilds the physical world as georeferenced 3D coordinates. Here is the physics-to-deliverable chain, from waveform digitization and boresight calibration to centimeter-accurate corridor surveys.
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Tech & Builds
Multirotor vs. Fixed-Wing vs. Hybrid VTOL: Engineering Tradeoffs for Every Mission
Every drone airframe resolves the same core tension: hover capability costs endurance, endurance costs hover. A physics-first breakdown of how multirotors, fixed-wing platforms, and hybrid VTOLs make that tradeoff — and which missions each class actually wins.
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Tech & Builds
Centimeter Accuracy from Altitude: How Drone Photogrammetry Actually Works
A drone at 100 meters can produce a map accurate to 1.5 centimeters — if the math of overlap, ground control, and software choices all align. Here is what drives that number and where it breaks down.
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Tech & Builds
How Drone Thermal Cameras Work: Microbolometers, Wavebands, and Physical Limits
Thermal imaging drones detect emitted infrared radiation rather than reflected light, making them useful in darkness, smoke, and fog. This explainer covers the physics of microbolometer sensors, LWIR vs. MWIR tradeoffs, resolution limits, radiometric accuracy, and where the technology falls short.
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Tech & Builds
What 'Autonomous Drone' Actually Means: A Field Guide to the Spectrum
The word 'autonomous' covers everything from a DJI's return-to-home button to a 103-drone swarm with no designated leader. Five competing frameworks — NIST ALFUS, LORA, SAE-adapted, DoD's loop taxonomy, and Exyn's aerial scale — each illuminate something different about a genuinely hard engineering problem.
