Posts
Catching Up on Blue sUAS and US Military Purchases of UAS
The Start of 2021 Has Revealed Winners and Challenges Behind the Shift to a US Domestic Drone Industry As we have revealed last year, 2020 saw a resurgence in US drone manufacturers, recouping lost market share by reaching similar levels as 2017. Despite this shift, the industry is still far away from both broad competition … Read more
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Drone Channel Mayhem – DJI Rewrites the Rules
DJI Moves to Sell Its Enterprise Drones Online, with Impacts to the Broader Drone Ecosystem Last Friday, DJI reversed direction and moved to sell much of its enterprise products online. DJI had previously exclusively sold its powerful, expensive and complicated enterprise products solely through distributors like RMUS, DroneNerds, Heliguy and more, with over 100 US-based … Read more
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AgEagle, EHang and the Drone Information Divide
Recent Accusations of Fraud Raise the Larger Question about Investing in the Drone Industry Last week EHang and AgEagle, two companies in the still nascent Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) space, faced fraud accusations by short sellers (EHang | AgEagle). Both stocks have soared over the past year as investors bought into the drone industry hype … Read more
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Hobbyist Interest Has Unlocked Commercial Drone Adoption
New DroneAnalyst Research Reveals Commercial Drone Adoption Has Been Spurred by Hobbyists and “Bottom-Up” Growth Many drone industry veterans have stories of a drone program starting from an employee bringing their personal drone to work. Or a utility company where budget for a small drone fleet is kept just below limits that require management approval. … Read more
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A Look at Trump’s Executive Order
Breaking Down Trump’s New Executive Order on Protecting The United States From Certain Unmanned Aircraft Systems Just three days before leaving office President Trump leaves one last impact on the drone industry with a new executive order issued this Monday night. This was one of five executive orders released late on Monday, and focuses on … Read more
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A Breakdown of New FAA Remote ID Rules
While the FAA’s original notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on Remote Identification drew significant criticisms from the drone industry, the final rules published on December 28th, 2020 have been met with general acceptance. This large shift in public sentiment comes as the FAA addresses its critics and published a more realistic version of its NPRM. … Read more
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DJI Added to the US Entity List – What’s the Impact?
The US Department of Commerce has moved to formally add China’s DJI, the leading manufacturer of drones globally, to its Entity List. The Entity List, which is already available online and will be published officially on the 22nd, documents the seventy-seven entities that are “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United … Read more
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New US Drone Hardware Ecosystem Begins to Emerge
Chinese drone players may celebrate the death of a federal procurement ban, but the US government will continue to support the birth of a new US Drone Hardware Ecosystem. As the National Defense Authorization Act nears completion, the drone industry has watched closely as the Senate overrode a clause in the House of Representatives version of the … Read more
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Four Forces That Shaped the Drone Industry in 2020
From Critical Geopolitical Forces and Increasing Maturity, 2020 Has Been a Pivotal Year for the Drone Industry In this post, I’ll illustrate some of the market trends over the past year using data from our fourth Drone Market Sector Report and describe forces that have shaped the drone industry. While the report and market has … Read more
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Breaking Down the Drone Autonomy Hype
As Talk of Automated Drones Increase, We Separate Fact From Fiction Twitter spats pitting industry-leader DJI against innovative up-start Skydio have brought the discussion of drone autonomy to the forefront. There are debates over whose technology is best, the value of autonomy in general and whether or not current remote pilots should fear for their … Read more
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