“The agency issued more waivers between April 2025 and February 2026 than it had in the previous seven years combined.”
Over a thousand agencies now hold FAA waivers to fly drones beyond visual line of sight, and most of that happened in ten months. The pitch is faster emergency response. The build is a permanent camera network overhead, run by AI so one operator can fly several at once. Nobody held a vote on this, and by the time anyone asks, the launchpads are already bolted to the roof of city hall.