Drone News: Senate Bill Release, 55 Drones Lost, Freefly Astro Prime, & Watts Innovations Shuts Down

First up is an update to the Chinese drone ban discussion. The Senate version of the 2025 NDAA was released this week, without the Countering CCP Drones Act language in the bill. This is a great win, but we can’t let up. The NDAA is an act that must pass every year and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that Congress plans to put together a China-focused bill later this year. Please continue to educate and talk to your Senators and Representatives. Let them know that this and other legislation that would ban Chinese drones is not okay. To see how you can get involved, visit the DAA’s website! Next up, a drone show in Washington State lost 55 drones due to a malfunction. Starlight Drone Shows was scheduled to perform a drone show over Angle Lake, WA on the 4th of July. Despite initial GPS locks, 55 drones out of 200 lost GPS and landed in the lake. None of the drones flew away or went into the Geofence, showing that programming worked as expected. The remainder of the show was cancelled and 145 other drones were successfully recovered. Starlight was in charge of the Sun N Fun show that we attended in April in Lakeland Florida with over 500 drones, which went flawlessly for 2 nights during the show. We’ll keep you updated if we see more about what caused the GPS loss. Third up, Freefly has released Astro Prime! The new Astro Prime has a 28-minute flight time with a Sony LR1, a new battery system guaranteed to 500 cycles, and a pro controller. Payloads include a Sony LR1 as a main camera with additional payloads including Wiris cameras, Sony Alpha 7R-IV, Green Valley Lidar, Sentra Multispectral cameras, Internal labs LiDAR, Hovermap LiDAR, Rock Robotic LiDAR, Micasense multispectral cameras, and more. The Astro Prime is also NDAA Compliant and Blue UAS, made in Woodinville, WA. Pricing for the Astro Prime is $27,000 for the aircraft only while a kit including batteries, controller, and aircraft is $32,250. Pretty cool aircraft from Freefly! Last up, Watts's Innovations appears to have shut down and is "Shifting to new horizons". It's unclear what the new horizons are, but we wish the folks over at Watt's Innovations the very best! Have a great week, and we’ll see you on Monday for the Live! https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/press-releases/sasc-completes-markup-of-national-defense-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2025 https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy25_ndaa_bill_text.pdf https://droneadvocacyalliance.com/ https://www.flyingmag.com/drones/questions-remain-after-july-fourth-drone-show-falls-apart/ https://dronexl.co/2024/07/08/freefly-astro-prime-drone/ https://store.freeflysystems.com/collections/astro https://wattsinnovations.com/