FAA
Every UASFeed story on FAA — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Commercial & Delivery
Walmart and Wing Target Maricopa: Drone Delivery's Next Frontier Hinges on Class G Airspace and the Part 108 Clock
Walmart and Alphabet's Wing plan a tethered drone-delivery hub in Maricopa, Arizona — one of seven new markets — but the real gating factor is FAA approval as the agency transitions from Part 135 waivers to the incoming Part 108 BVLOS framework.
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Tech & Builds
Dominion Energy Now Flies 50 Drones Over the U.S. Grid — a Live Test of Cellular BVLOS and Drone-in-a-Box Autonomy at Utility Scale
Dominion Energy has scaled to 50 drones — including 23 docked 'drone-in-a-box' units at substations — flown beyond visual line of sight over cellular networks from a central operations center, a concrete look at enterprise BVLOS past the pilot stage.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA Breaks Ground on V-PAR, Its First Dedicated eVTOL Test Range, to Solve the Vertiport Integration Problem
The FAA broke ground June 26, 2026 on V-PAR, an ~$8.3M Oklahoma City test range purpose-built to study how eVTOL aircraft fold into the National Airspace System — wake, downwash, RF interference and vertiport procedures.
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Commercial & Delivery
Skyways Bets on Offshore: An Austin Operator Scales Heavy-Lift Cargo Drones Ahead of Part 108
Austin's Skyways Aviation is scaling its offshore heavy-lift drone fleet — a 1,000-mile dual-fuel VTOL already serving oil majors, ANA and DSV — as it positions for the FAA's forthcoming Part 108 BVLOS rule.
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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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Policy & Regulation
FAA Cracks the Door Open: How Part 107/135 Operators Can Get Authorized to Fly Inside World Cup 'No Drone Zones'
The FAA's June 22 NOTAM update confirms certain drone operations may be permitted inside World Cup security airspace with DHS authorization — giving Part 107 and 135 operators a concrete approval path via [email protected] amid $100,000 fines and the new DETER enforcement push.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA Misses Trump’s February Deadline on BVLOS Rule as Right-of-Way Fight Stalls Part 108
The FAA has blown past a White House deadline to finalize Part 108, the rule that would replace case-by-case BVLOS waivers with a routine certification pathway — stalled chiefly by a proposed inversion of crewed-aircraft right-of-way precedent that drew more than 1,600 opposing comments.
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Counter-UAS
World Cup C-UAS Crackdown: 39 Drones Seized, Criminal Charges in First Six Days
Multi-agency federal operations across 8 U.S. host cities logged 145 drone incursions and seized 39 aircraft in the first six days of FIFA World Cup 2026, with criminal charges — including an illegal-reentry case in Atlanta — marking early serious enforcement outcomes.
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Tech & Builds
Drone Ground Control Stations Explained: MAVLink, Datalinks, and the MQ-9 Flight Deck
Ground control stations span from a $50 telemetry radio running open-source Mission Planner to hardened USAF shelters managing satellite-linked MQ-9s worldwide. Here's how MAVLink, mission-planning software, datalinks, and military GCS tiers actually work.
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Tech & Builds
Optionally Piloted Aircraft: The Platform That Bridges Crewed and Autonomous Flight
Optionally piloted aircraft hold manned airworthiness certificates while enabling fully autonomous operations—closing the regulatory gap that stalls pure UAVs. From proven Afghan cargo resupply missions to DARPA’s autonomous Black Hawk delivered to the Army in 2026, the concept reshapes military logistics and aviation.
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Defense & Combat
Langley's 17-Night Drone Siege: What Happened, What Failed, What DoD Still Doesn't Know
For 17 consecutive nights in December 2023, unidentified drone swarms penetrated restricted airspace over Joint Base Langley-Eustis, forcing the relocation of F-22 Raptors — while the military's C-UAS authorities and tools proved wholly inadequate to respond.
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Policy & Regulation
New Jersey's 2024 Drone Wave: What Federal Investigators Actually Found
In late 2024, weeks of nightly drone sightings across New Jersey and the Northeast triggered a federal investigation, thousands of public tips, and emergency airspace restrictions—before a four-agency joint statement concluded most reports were misidentified manned aircraft, with no foreign nexus and no national security threat.
