Today in drone news I’m talking about some breaking stuff out of Skydio and the FAA. On March 26, Skydio put out a news item saying they’ve now got the green light to fly multiple drones at the same time from a single operator. The big headline is a streamlined FAA waiver for BVLOS operations that allows up to four drones in the air at once under one pilot—basically “drone swarms” without needing a separate pilot for each aircraft. Skydio is also making the case that they earned this waiver because their platforms have safety tech that a lot of commercial drones don’t, like AI sensing/avoidance and parachute systems for mechanical failures. This is aimed squarely at public safety, and they’re rolling it into about 12 police departments to start—New York City, San Francisco, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and more cities coming. It’s specifically tied to the Skydio X10 for these deployments. Like I said in the video, Skydio is controversial for a lot of folks because of their DC lobbying and how they operate in the regulatory space, but right now it looks like it’s working out for them. I’ll keep tracking what happens next as this expands to more agencies and as the FAA’s approach to multi-drone BVLOS evolves.