The FAA has authorized Skyways to fly its autonomous V2 vertical takeoff and landing drone beyond the operator’s visual line of sight from Shell’s facility in Gibson, Louisiana, to a Shell platform in the Gulf of America. The agency said on November 9, 2026, that it is the first authorization of its kind for a drone flying beyond visual line of sight from the U.S. coastline over the Gulf.

The flight will include a pipeline right-of-way inspection and a simulated delivery of equipment to the offshore platform. The FAA said the flight would show how drones could support critical infrastructure and offshore operations, and that the authorization enables long-range commercial drone operations over the high seas.

A waiver, not a rule change

The FAA issued the authorization under Section 927 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. According to the agency, that section lets it approve certain drone operations through a waiver instead of through rulemaking or an exemption, which gives innovative operations a pathway to approval.

Michael Kratsios, assistant to the President for science and technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said: “The Trump Administration envisions a future where advanced drone operations are routine.” He called the authorization an important step toward that vision and toward a regulatory framework for these capabilities.

Acting FAA Deputy Administrator Liam McKenna said: “The FAA is focused on safely unlocking the full potential of American drone technology.” He said the agency is working with industry to move beyond traditional operating limitations.

The wider BVLOS rulemaking

The Skyways approval sits alongside the FAA’s broader effort to make beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights routine. Executive Order 14307 on drone dominance, titled “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” and signed on June 6, 2025, directed the FAA to issue a proposed rule enabling routine BVLOS operations for commercial and public safety drones within 30 days, and said a final rule shall be published within 240 days of the order. It also gave the FAA 120 days to begin deploying artificial intelligence tools to help review waiver applications under 14 CFR part 107.

The FAA and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published the proposed Part 108 rule, titled “Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations,” in the Federal Register on August 7, 2025. The proposal would set performance-based regulations for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operating at low altitudes beyond visual line of sight, and for third-party services such as UAS Traffic Management (UTM) that support them. It lists package delivery, agriculture, aerial surveying, civic interest, operations training, demonstration, recreation and flight testing among the uses it would cover.

Under the proposal, operations would be conducted primarily below 400 feet above ground level unless the Administrator authorizes higher, and unmanned aircraft weighing no more than 1,320 pounds would fall under an airworthiness acceptance process. The comment period closed on October 6, 2025. The proposal cites the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, the same law that contains the Section 927 waiver authority used for the Skyways approval.

Who Skyways is

Skyways, formally Skyways Air Transportation Inc., designs, builds and operates long-range hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and the software that flies them. The company says it has flown missions with customers since 2017 and is flying with customers on three continents. Its website pictures a V2 aircraft at Kumejima Island, Japan, in 2026, and cites completed base-to-base, offshore and island deliveries as well as shipboard launch-and-recovery testing, without dates.

The company’s website lists a V3 platform with a range of more than 1,300 miles, a flight time of more than 18 hours and a useful load listed as “Up to 100+ lb.” Skyways lists commercial and defense logistics, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, disaster response and asset inspection among its mission areas.

The FAA did not give a date for the Gulf flight or details of the V2’s specifications in its announcement.

Ondas Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of Stemme GmbH, the German manufacturer of the airframe used in its ULTRA long-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, in an all-cash deal. Ondas announced the agreement on November 5, 2026, together with a plan to expand ULTRA production, including in the United States, to 10 aircraft per month by 2028.

The deal covers the airframe of a programme Ondas acquired in July 2026 with DZYNE Technologies. According to the press release, Stemme currently runs at approximately 25% of production capacity across its facilities in Strausberg and Pasewalk, Germany, and Ondas plans to raise that utilization while adding 345,000 square feet of planned airframe production space in the United States. The purchase price was not disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals.

What Ondas is buying

Stemme is a German original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of motor gliders, special-mission platforms and uncrewed aerial vehicle aerostructures. ULTRA is built on Stemme’s type-certified S12 composite airframe. Stemme holds airworthiness approvals from EASA, Germany’s Federal Aviation Office (LBA) and the FAA, and operates an FAA Part 145 repair station, according to Ondas.

Its two German sites span approximately 135,571 square feet of design, production and maintenance space. Ondas said bringing Stemme in-house would strengthen manufacturing capacity and the supply chain for U.S. and allied demand, and reduce reliance on an external supplier.

“Acquiring Stemme would give us greater control over airframe capacity, cost and schedule,” said Eric Brock, Chairman and CEO of Ondas, adding that this supports the target of 10 ULTRA aircraft per month by 2028 and brings significant production capacity to the United States. “Our objective is to align aircraft production with the scale of customer requirements,” Brock said.

Koenraad Geurts and Benjamin de Broqueville, Co-CEOs of Stemme, said: “We are incredibly excited about our future with Ondas.”

The ULTRA aircraft

Ondas says ULTRA is operationally deployed by the U.S. Air Force and “is capable of more than 70 hours of flight time with over 400 pounds of payload capacity.” Its payload architecture supports electro-optical and infrared sensing, radio-frequency collection and communications relay. Ondas lists dual-use applications including border and maritime surveillance, disaster response, environmental monitoring and commercial infrastructure inspection.

The release argues that demand for persistent ISR exceeds available capacity, citing the U.S. Department of War’s mixed-fleet approach, which includes lower-cost, attritable aircraft that can be fielded at scale.

“Our focus now is building more aircraft, faster,” said Ryan Hartman, President and CEO of Ondas Sentinel. “Bringing Stemme into Ondas Sentinel would put the airframe, the engineering and the production line under one roof,” he said, so the company can respond faster to customer requirements and iterate the ULTRA design for future U.S. Air Force requirements.

How ULTRA came to Ondas

ULTRA joined the Ondas portfolio through the DZYNE acquisition, which Ondas announced on July 6, 2026. That deal was valued at $875.8 million, made up of $200 million in cash and about 85 million Ondas shares valued at about $675 million. Ondas described ULTRA at the time as a long-endurance autonomous aircraft that provides multi-day ISR over large areas, with tens of thousands of operational flight hours.

With DZYNE, Ondas created Ondas Sentinel, a division unifying its U.S. defense portfolio, led by World View CEO Ryan Hartman, with DZYNE co-founder Matt McCue as Chief Technology Officer. DZYNE’s portfolio also includes LEAP, IonStrike, Dronebuster, Blitz and the Grasshopper cargo system, which Ondas lists as carrying up to 500 pounds of cargo.

In its second-quarter results, released on August 13, 2026, Ondas reported record quarterly revenue of $83.8 million and an $18.8 million ULTRA order captured in July for an unnamed customer’s current operational need. The company put its pro forma backlog, including DZYNE and Cyberhawk, at approximately $757 million.

The Stemme agreement follows Ondas’ earlier purchase of UK-based Rotron Aerospace, completed on March 16, 2026, which added vertical take-off and landing platforms, long-range unmanned aircraft and aero-engines. Ondas said Rotron will serve as its UK-based go-to-market platform.

What comes next

Before closing, the Stemme deal needs customary conditions and regulatory approvals to be met. Ondas has not said where in the United States the planned 345,000 square feet of airframe production space will be located, or when it will open.

Galaxy 1 Communications and Viasat have signed a production agreement that takes Velaris, Viasat’s satellite communications service for uncrewed aircraft, out of proof-of-concept work and into commercial delivery. Galaxy 1 will run the partner enablement platform around the service, from onboarding and billing to remote terminal management.

The companies announced the step in a press release dated November 2, 2026, from Carlsbad, California. It follows two years of joint development, integration, testing and proof-of-concept work, after which the companies say they have validated the capabilities needed for production service delivery. They described the transition as a foundation for commercial growth beyond connectivity.

What Galaxy 1 takes on in production

Velaris is Viasat’s satellite communications services platform for autonomous and uncrewed aviation, combining connectivity, operational services and a partner ecosystem. According to the release, Viasat is scaling it with its L-band satellite capabilities for autonomous delivery aircraft carrying logistics and medicine, flying taxis, and inspection aircraft used in emergencies and remote industrial work. Partners include aircraft manufacturers, operators, service providers and technology partners.

Under the agreement, Galaxy 1 provides the partner enablement platform across three areas:

• Operational support and commercial enablement: onboarding, provisioning, billing and reporting.
• Infrastructure and service management: network infrastructure, remote terminal management through Galaxy 1’s Remote Terminal Manager (RTM) platform, and tools to activate, monitor, configure and manage uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) services, including incident management and service restoration.
• Integration, automation and visibility: application programming interface (API) integration with third-party UAV applications and partner platforms, operational visibility, terminal lifecycle management and increasingly automated service delivery.

Martyn Durrant, Chief Commercial Officer of Galaxy 1 Communications, said that “Moving into production is an important milestone and a strong validation of the platform” the companies developed over two years. He said the goal was to build operational and commercial infrastructure for a scalable UAV and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) ecosystem, not only to provide connectivity.

Sandeep Moorthy, Senior Vice President and GM, Advanced NTN Solutions, New Ventures at Viasat, said Viasat is “at the center of a growing ecosystem” for uncrewed connectivity. He said partners need scalable frameworks to deploy, manage and scale, and that the collaboration strengthens the partner network and speeds up services worldwide.

How the Velaris partner model was built

Galaxy 1’s role dates to a collaboration it announced with Viasat on March 3, 2026, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In that release, Galaxy 1 described its Distribution Partner-as-a-Service (DPaaS) model as a managed operational layer that handles provisioning, billing, compliance oversight and integration, rather than a traditional distributor. Its stated purpose was to help UAV and AAM companies move from proof-of-concept to commercially scaled, regulated deployment, with a multi-API integration layer linking flight planning, tracking and safety tools, and monitoring through its IBIS and RTM platforms.

On May 5, 2026, Viasat said L2 Aviation had joined the Velaris ecosystem through Galaxy 1, the arrangement AirPro News covered when L2 Aviation joined the Velaris ecosystem. L2, an avionics design, engineering, certification, manufacturing and installation specialist with nearly three decades of experience in aircraft modifications, is to support the integration and certification of satellite communications for uncrewed aircraft systems and AAM platforms as they move from demonstration to deployment.

Velaris predates Galaxy 1’s involvement. In August 2024, Viasat said it had integrated its Velaris L-band satellite terminal into a multi-link communications system with Avionics Networks, a developer of communication systems for UAVs. Use cases named at the time included drones delivering medical supplies and organs, uncrewed search and rescue aircraft, agriculture, safety scanning on oil rigs and aircraft fighting wildfires.

The service and the network behind it

Viasat’s Velaris product page describes a dedicated satellite communications service for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations. It lists voice, command and control (C2), health monitoring, uncrewed traffic management (UTM) integration and video surveillance through a single connection, along with support for one controller operating multiple aircraft from a central location.

Viasat calls its hybrid satellite and cellular terminal its “smallest and lightest terminal,” with a listed height of 83mm, and says partners offer miniaturized terminals weighing “as little as 300g.” The page says the service runs on Viasat’s global fleet of L-band satellites and that further I-8 satellites will launch in the coming years. Partners shown on the page include Avionics Networks, Bellwether, Dimetor and Honeywell, whose satcom antenna work for BVLOS drones AirPro News has also covered.

The page says Velaris was created by the team behind Iris and SwiftBroadband-Safety (SB-S), which Viasat describes as the only safety-certified IP-connectivity service for crewed aviation. It names no specific certification for Velaris itself.

Viasat describes itself as a global communications company with offices in 24 countries; it completed its acquisition of Inmarsat in May 2023. Galaxy 1 Communications provides managed satellite connectivity and secure Internet of Things (IoT) enablement and cites more than 20 years of expertise. The November release does not disclose financial terms, customer numbers or which operators will use the production service.