Drone News Roundup: Drone Pilot Helps Rescue Capsized Kayaker, DRL Aims to Recruit Women Drone Pilots, and More!

This week we’re covering a story about a drone pilot who helped rescue a capsized kayaker in Long Island.

We’re also covering DRL’s partnership with the Air Force to recruit women drone pilots, Wing’s rollout of drone delivery for Wendy’s via DoorDash, BRINC’s new platform for public safety work, and the Pentagon announcing a $1 billion investment in its Replicator program.

Now on to the links!

Drone Pilot Helps Rescue Capsized Kayaker

A kayaker waits to be rescued in the open ocean | Credit: Mike Busch

A drone pilot in Long Island recently helped save a kayaker who had capsized in Moriches Inlet. The pilot was drone photographer Mike Busch, who had come to the beach that day in the hopes of capturing aerial shots of seals. After he’d been there a while, a kayaker paddled up to the shore and asked Busch if he’d seen another person in a kayak. Busch put his drone in the air and soon spotted a kayaker being pulled out to sea. Acting quickly, he called 911, hovering over the kayaker to track their location until rescue personnel arrived and saved them. Check out Busch’s beautiful aerial photos of ocean wildlife and landscapes here, and follow the link below to learn more about the story.

LEARN MORE

DRL Partners with the Air Force to Recruit Women Pilots

The Drone Racing League (DRL) has partnered with the Air Force on a joint effort to elevate women in sports, technology, and aviation. Called “DRL’s Women Taking Flight,” the new program aims to highlight women who compete in tech-powered sports and are more likely to pursue STEM careers. Through the initiative, DRL plans to launch drone racing competitions, esports tournaments, and STEM curriculum to recruit the best women drone pilots to fly in DRL and the U.S. Air Force, and encourage all women to rise in traditionally male-dominated spaces. A key part of the effort will be an invitation to women drone racers to train with DRL Champion Pilots to compete in an esports tournament on the DRL SIM for a chance to receive a professional contract in the league.

LEARN MORE

Wing Rolls Out DoorDash Delivery in the U.S.

For the last year, Wing has been working with DoorDash in Australia to offer on-demand food delivery via drone. Now it’s rolling that partnership out in the U.S. To start, the service will only be offered from a single Wendy’s located in Christiansburg, Virginia, with the same promised delivery time of 30 minutes or less. Christiansburg is where Wing launched its very first drone delivery program back in 2019. Most likely, Wing will begin offering DoorDash drone delivery from other restaurants there after testing, and then begin rolling out the DoorDash partnership to other locations where it offers drone delivery as well.

LEARN MORE

BRINC Launches New Public Safety Platform

Credit: BRINC

BRINC has launched a new platform called LiveOps to support public safety work. LiveOps syncs with all of the first responder hardware BRINC makes, including its LEMUR 2 drone and BRINC Ball for two-way communication during ongoing emergencies. The LiveOps platform combines live streaming, fleet and evidence management, and the ability to place and record calls in a single solution designed for managing crisis negotiations and drone operations. As the drone ecosystem matures, we’re seeing more and more drone hardware companies begin making their own software or forming close partnerships with software companies, allowing users to get the most out of the drones they manufacture.

LEARN MORE

Pentagon Announces $1 Billion Investment in Replicator Program

A swarm of 40 drones flying at a National Training Center in Fort Irwin, CA | Credit: 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment

In a recent announcement, the Pentagon shared that it plans to invest $1 billion over the next two years in its Replicator program, which plans to make thousands of inexpensive drones. The investment will help boost the U.S. drone industry, acting as a major catalyst for domestic drone production.

The Pentagon first shared information about the Replicator program back in November, announcing that it wanted to build thousands of “small, smart, cheap” drones powered by AI. The goal is to quickly ramp U.S. defense technology so it can compete with China. At the moment, China has more than the U.S. of most everything defense-related, making for a massive stockpile of traditional weapons like missiles, ships, and crewed aircraft—as well as consumer drones. The use of consumer drones in the war in Ukraine has illustrated how important small, off-the-shelf drones are for defense, and the Replicator program aims to close the gap between the U.S. and China on this front.

LEARN MORE

Make sure to sign up for our free weekly newsletter using the button below so you can get our weekly newsletter every Saturday, with this roundup and our other featured stories from the week.