On Thursday, DJI announced the launch of its latest airframe, the DJI Matrice 5T. The company’s new compact enterprise flagship drone integrates lidar, mmWave radar, and vision sensing, alongside 1K thermal and enhanced night vision. Relay modes extend transmission range to up to 40 kilometers, and Onboard AI and Pilot 2 plugins support on-site workflows. The Matrice 5T has an IP55 rating for dust and rain and has up to 59 minutes of flight time. DJI says that all measurements were taken using a production model in a controlled environment.

In its announcement, DJI also calls out its integration of lidar, mmWave radar, and an omnidirectional vision system, a first for the company, which it says will provide reliable sensing even in dim urban areas or pitch-black wilderness. The lidar allows the Matrice 5T to detect thin obstacles such as power lines up to 32 meters away. The mmWave radar, meanwhile, senses surroundings in fog, rain, or dust, and the omnidirectional sensing system uses full-color fisheye sensors to maintain visual positioning in dark conditions. With all of the sensors combined, DJI says the Matrice 5T can fuse visual and radar data to map its surroundings in real time to enable stable flight operations even in weak GNSS environments.

Along with this new integration, the company is introducing an improved infrared camera, enhancing night vision capabilities for the drone. The thermal camera has native 1K (1280x1024) resolution, four times the pixels common on enterprise UAS. Operators can enable UHR Infrared Image to increase that resolution to 2560x2048, which DJI says ensures heat anomalies will remain clearly defined even against complex backgrounds.

Built-in AI models analyze thermal and visible feeds in parallel to detect more than 20 target types, including vehicles and vessels. The Matrice 5T can connect to DJI FlightHub 2 to use text and image prompts to search for targets in DJI Pilot 2, while also generating patrol routes. The drone can also pair with DJI Terra to deliver centimeter-level surveying accuracy without the need for ground control points.

One of the biggest questions for operators around the release will, of course, be the Matrice 5T’s availability in the U.S. DJI mentions in its release that the drone is available for sale through authorized enterprise dealers, but makes no mention of any potential availability in the U.S. In December 2025, the FCC placed all foreign-made drones and components to its Covered List, and DJI has not been exempted from that decision. For their part, the company outlines its data security policies in the announcement, saying that it “places the highest priority on data security.” It also notes that U.S.-based users can not sync their flight logs with DJI servers.