Contributor
Rachel Ito
Industry & Policy Correspondent
Rachel Ito reports on the drone industry and the rules it operates under — procurement awards, the defense-tech startups chasing them, FAA rulemaking, and the geopolitics of the supply chain. She spent five years as an aerospace market analyst covering uncrewed systems before moving to journalism, and reads the contract announcements and dockets so readers don't have to. Her beat runs from Capitol Hill to the venture term sheet.
Editorial tips and corrections: [email protected]
Articles by Rachel Ito
-
AeroVironment and Ubiqconn Target Taiwan's Controller Fragmentation Problem
Industry & Contracts · 2026-06-11
AeroVironment and Taiwan's Ubiqconn Technology have signed an MOU to build a common drone-controller ecosystem for Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, which is pursuing procurem…
-
FAA Locks Down 11 Cities for the World Cup as DETER Gets Its First Big Test
Policy & Regulation · 2026-06-11
Starting today, the FAA has activated overlapping TFRs across 11 US host cities through July 19 — an airspace lockdown without obvious precedent — with penalties reaching $100,000 …
-
FAA Part 108 and BVLOS, Explained: The Proposed Rule Reshaping Drone Operations
Policy & Regulation · 2026-06-11
The FAA's proposed Part 108 would replace a patchwork of case-by-case waivers with a framework for routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations — but as of June 2026, it re…
-
Seven Years Late, FAA Proposes Petition-Based Drone Restrictions Over 9,000 Critical Infrastructure Sites
Policy & Regulation · 2026-06-11
The FAA's long-overdue Section 2209 NPRM creates a two-tier Unmanned Aircraft Flight Restriction framework covering more than 9,000 facilities across 16 sectors. Comments close Jul…
-
PDW Acquires Vanteon to Own Its RF Stack for Contested-Spectrum Operations
Industry & Contracts · 2026-06-11
Performance Drone Works is buying Rochester-based Vanteon Corporation — 40-plus years of RF and software-defined radio engineering — to bring comms resilience in-house as GPS-denie…
