This week’s news round up includes stories on how an agriculture company has made the move toward U.S. based manufacturing due to regulatory restrictions, residents who are speaking out against drone delivery, and a drone that is capable of recharging mid-flight. 

Agriculture Company Pivots to U.S. Manufacturing

Faced with federal restrictions on Chinese-made drones and components, Missouri-based Agri Spray is abandoning its role as a distributor of foreign products and committing to become a manufacturer of fully American-sourced agricultural spray drones within five years. Founder and CEO Taylor Moreland says the pivot is a response to moves by the FCC and the Department of War, including a July proposal to restrict foreign drones deemed “military-grade,” a definition that sweeps in drones able to dispense insecticides and defoliants. Behind the crackdown, he argues, are two concerns: keeping data and software under U.S. control, and ensuring a hostile foreign power can’t sever the supply chain. The company is already building its own software and firmware in-house, while leaning on the government’s conditional approval program to keep using existing overseas supply chains in the meantime.

The hardware transition will be gradual, and Moreland is candid about why. The country simply lacks the capacity to produce motors and batteries at scale, so assembly and quality control in a converted portion of the Missouri headquarters come first, followed by simpler U.S.-made parts like molded pieces, aluminum frame tubes, and fasteners, then circuit boards, and finally motors and batteries by year four. Flight controllers and circuit board components will continue to come from allies such as Taiwan. The shift will require roughly 25 to 30 new hires for the 65-person firm and outside capital, which Moreland, the company’s sole owner, is only beginning to pursue. It is an ambitious bet that regulatory pressure will turn into durable demand for domestic agricultural drones, though its success hinges on a U.S. component industry that, by his own admission, doesn’t yet exist.

Residents Voice their Opinion on Drone Delivery

Delivery drones are quickly moving from novelty to neighborhood fixture, and the noise is becoming a real cost for the people living beneath them. Amazon Prime Air is expanding to nearly 500 U.S. towns and cities, with Walmart and smaller pizza and ice cream services joining in. Residents like Ashley Schmidt of North Garland, Texas, say the sound has driven her out of her own garden and off her bike rides to the local parks. Acoustic researcher Antonio Torija Martinez explains why the whine is so grating: drones fly low, often directly over homes, and produce a sound that stands out even when overall volume is modest. Communities with little prior exposure to aircraft noise are especially sensitive, and people who don’t benefit from the service tend to mind most. He expects complaints to multiply as the sector grows, yet the FAA, which regulates commercial drones, has pushed primary responsibility for community concerns onto operators and local leaders.

Technology may offer a way out. London startup Greenjets claims its design can cut drone noise by at least two thirds by enclosing the blades in a pod, spinning them more slowly, and using vibration-dampening materials. The quieter approach is already serving police and harbor security teams in Germany and conservationists tracking poachers in Africa, and Detroit entrepreneur Greg Sharrow’s twisted propellers pursue the same goal. But the market’s incentives are mixed. Military interest in stealthier drones remains at an experimental stage, and on the battlefields of Ukraine the prevailing logic, as one analyst puts it, is to make drones faster rather than quieter. 

Drones that Recharge Mid-Flight

Reach, a wireless power company, says it has completed a 10-hour autonomous drone flight powered by beamed energy, a step toward drones that can stay aloft without human tending. The September 22 demonstration took place at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria, Virginia facility during the Energy Sentry event and was streamed live to attendees at the Pentagon, where Assistant Secretary of War for Energy, Installations, and Environment Dale Marks also watched a live demonstration. Duration was only part of the story. Using onboard AI, the drone tracked its own battery, left the beam once fully charged, and returned to request power when it hit a set threshold, at which point Reach’s electronically steered RF beam locked back on and resumed charging.

What makes the result notable is how much the system managed on its own. The aircraft and transmitter ran the entire cycle without operator input, and the drone navigated visually, with no GPS, no external tracking sensors, no physical tether and no manual controls. If the approach scales, it could ease the battery swaps, recovery cycles and operator attention that currently limit persistent surveillance, communications relay and infrastructure monitoring missions.