If you have been in the market for a DJI drone or camera lately, you probably know that prices have been extremely volatile. Looming tariffs have had some models selling well above market price since the beginning of the year. Right now, however, Amazon has the DJI Mini 4K for just 250, which is 50 less than its retail price and likely the lowest it will ever go in the future. This 249-gram drone weighs just under the limit that you won't have to register it with the FAA before you take it to the skies. Despite its tiny size, it offers everything you'd expect out of a much more expensive model.

Fox News contributor and Army veteran Brett Velicovich shares insight into the United States' drone capabilities and how it compares to adversaries like Russia and China. The U.S. Marine Corps established an attack drone team earlier this year to respond to the rapid development of armed first-person view (FPV) drone technology and tactics, offering a glimpse into the evolving landscape of modern warfare and how future battles could be fought. The Marine Corps Attack Drone Team (MCADT) will be based at the Weapons Training Battalion, Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia. The FPV drones used will offer squad-level lethality at a range of up to 20 kilometers, nearly 12.5 miles, for under 5,000, compared to more expensive weapons systems with less capability, according to a press release from the service. "MCADT is committed to rapidly integrating armed first-person view drones into the FMF [Fleet Marine Force], enhancing small-unit lethality and providing organic capabilities that warfighters currently lack," said Maj. Alejandro Tavizon, the headquarters company commander at Weapons Training Battalion and officer in charge of MCADT.

The Israeli military has been altering commercial drones to carry bombs and surveil people in Gaza, an investigation by Al Jazeera's Sanad verification agency has found. According to Sanad, drones manufactured by the Chinese tech giant DJI have been used to attack hospitals and civilian shelters and to surveil Palestinian prisoners being forced to act as human shields for heavily armoured Israeli soldiers. This is not the first time DJI drones have been modified and used by armies. There were similar reports about both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. At the time, DJI suspended all sales to both countries and introduced software modifications that restricted the areas where its drones could be used and how high they could fly.

When DJI revealed its tiny 200 Neo drone, I immediately saw how it could fit into my vlogger's toolkit to supplement my Mini 4 Pro and Mavic 3 Pro. Flying those sophisticated drones is a whole thing that requires planning. But the Neo can be launched spontaneously to grab quick and fun shots, thanks to features like palm takeoff and voice control. That ease of use also makes it ideal for the social media influencers. You get features from DJI's bigger drones like ActiveTrack, FPV capabilities and even support for DJI's Mic 2. And forget about the fuzzy video you may have seen on other cheap drones. The Neo can record in sharp 4K, making it suitable for content creators who need affordable aerial video.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Taipei, Taiwan – A United States government agency grounded its drone fleet over concerns China could use the unmanned aircraft for spying despite internal warnings that a ban would in fact increase security risks, documents obtained by Al Jazeera reveal. The US Department of Interior (DOI) also disregarded warnings the ban could hamper efforts to fight wildfires, months before officials reported the restrictions were making fire-fighting more difficult and dangerous, the documents show. The DOI, which manages public lands and resources in the US, ordered the temporary grounding of drones made in China or containing Chinese parts in October 2019 amid deep suspicion of Chinese technology within the administration of former US President Donald Trump. Then-Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt formalised the ban in January 2020 with an open-ended order grounding the DOI's entire 810-strong fleet of unmanned aircraft systems (UAVs) – whose uses include responding to natural disasters, geological surveys and wildlife population monitoring – until "cybersecurity, technology and domestic production concerns are adequately addressed". The order, which followed years of warnings that drones made by firms such as Shenzhen-based DJI could be secretly sending data to Beijing, included exceptions for emergency uses, such as fighting wildfires and search-and-rescue missions.

Ukrainian member of parliament Rustem Umerov reacts to President Biden announcing on Wednesday another $1.2 billion in security and humanitarian assistance on'Fox News @ Night.' An individual's location is typically known to someone or thing at any given time whether using a smartphone or device – such as a drone. This issue has become one of tremendous strategic importance for Ukrainians in their battle against Russian aggression. Allegations have arisen that Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), a Chinese company that is the world's largest civilian drone manufacturer, has been providing the Russian military with software to track Ukrainians piloting DJI drones used to conduct operations. The matter raises grave new concerns about the behavior of another Beijing technology behemoth and its impact on Ukrainian self-defense efforts. Ukraine's minister of digital transformation sent an open letter to DJI founder Frank Wang in March accusing Russia of using "an extended version of DJI AeroScope" to navigate missiles that are killing Ukrainian civilians.

For years now, DJI has dominated the consumer drone space. A quick glance at our drone buying guide reveals that half of our picks, including the top three, are all DJI drones. DJI makes excellent products, but there has been a lack of competitors. Until this year, there just haven't been a lot of compelling drones available. Late in 2021, Autel released four drones designed to compete with the entire DJI line.

Those requirements could have played a part in the selection process for the Army's SRR program, as the service has previously had to halt the use of foreign-made drones. In 2017, the U.S. Army banned the use of all drones made by Chinese drone manufacturer DaJiang Innovations, or DJI, which supplies over half of all drones sold in the U.S. The company eventually created a U.S. government model in an attempt to allay these concerns. Still, in January 2021, the White House signed an Executive Order that instructed executive branch departments and agencies to examine all of their current drone technologies for potential threats and banned drones and drone subsystems from adversary countries defined as Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. The Associated Press later reported in June 2021 that Pentagon had cleared some Chinese-made DJI drones for government use, but that report was quickly deemed inaccurate by the Department of Defense (DOD). "This report was inaccurate and uncoordinated, and its unauthorized release is currently under review by the department," the DOD said in a statement in response to the AP report.

Depth estimation-based obstacle avoidance has been widely adopted by autonomous systems (drones and vehicles) for safety purpose. It normally relies on a stereo camera to automatically detect obstacles and make flying/driving decisions, e.g., stopping several meters ahead of the obstacle in the path or moving away from the detected obstacle. In this paper, we explore new security risks associated with the stereo vision-based depth estimation algorithms used for obstacle avoidance. By exploiting the weaknesses of the stereo matching in depth estimation algorithms and the lens flare effect in optical imaging, we propose DoubleStar, a long-range attack that injects fake obstacle depth by projecting pure light from two complementary light sources. DoubleStar includes two distinctive attack formats: beams attack and orbs attack, which leverage projected light beams and lens flare orbs respectively to cause false depth perception. We successfully attack two commercial stereo cameras designed for autonomous systems (ZED and Intel RealSense). The visualization of fake depth perceived by the stereo cameras illustrates the false stereo matching induced by DoubleStar. We further use Ardupilot to simulate the attack and demonstrate its impact on drones. To validate the attack on real systems, we perform a real-world attack towards a commercial drone equipped with state-of-the-art obstacle avoidance algorithms. Our attack can continuously bring a flying drone to a sudden stop or drift it away across a long distance under various lighting conditions, even bypassing sensor fusion mechanisms. Specifically, our experimental results show that DoubleStar creates fake depth up to 15 meters in distance at night and up to 8 meters during the daytime. To mitigate this newly discovered threat, we provide discussions on potential countermeasures to defend against DoubleStar.

Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy has the latest on the president's speech at the U.S. on'Special Report' Federal law enforcement agencies in the Biden administration are reportedly purchasing surveillance drones from China that have previously been labeled a potential national security threat by the Pentagon. The U.S. Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have recently acquired surveillance drones from the Shenzhen-based company DJI, around the same time the Defense Department deemed products from the Chinese company to be a potential national security threat, according to an Axios report. DOBRIANSKY AND RUNDE: CHINA'S POWER INSIDE THE UN IS GROWING RAPIDLY AND US MUST UP ITS GAME Procurement records show that the Secret Service bought eight DJI drones on July 26 just three days after the Defense Department issued a statement warning about possible threats posed by the company's products. Around the same time, records show that the FBI bought 19 drones from DJI. DJI is one of the most popular drone manufacturers in the industry, and the company requires those who purchase their products to download proprietary software and provide to users their own mapping databases that have the potential to be monitored remotely. Concerns about the company's products being used to advance China's interests have been longstanding and include a 2017 statement from the Department of Homeland Security that claimed with "moderate confidence" that DJI was "providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government."