Drones After Dark: A Raw Conversation with Kyle Nordfors

Buckle up for a no-holds-barred dive into the wild world of drones with hosts Bobby Ouyang (Skyebrowse) and Luis Figueiredo, joined by search-and-rescue ace Kyle Nordfors, in the latest episode of their fifth season. This trio doesn’t mince words as they unpack the sizzling drama rocking the drone industry—from Skydio’s sock-wielding bravado, the infamous Spydio Mailer and predatory lobbying to Brinc‘s smoke-and-mirrors demos with hidden repeaters. They’re spilling the tea on corporate hypocrisy, calling out the “anti-American” antics of U.S.-based companies, and exposing how public safety’s being sold down the river for profit. If you thought drones were just about flying, think again—this is a fiery showdown you won’t want to miss.

Drones After Dark with Kyle Nordfors

Bobby Ouyang: So, season five, we’re back again. We’re back because Louis was texting me about all the drama, and he couldn’t just keep it to ourselves. It has to be shared—all the drama that’s going on. We also have our special guest, Kyle Nordfors is here, friend of the pod. He’s been going to quite a few conferences and also joining in on the drama still.

Luis Figueiredo: I know. Where do we start? Yeah, Greg, Kyle, you got anything new?

Kyle Nordfors: Um, well, yeah, I guess we could start right off with the Drone Responders Conference that just happened over the last couple days. I got home this morning, in fact, so it ended yesterday. I had to wake up at 3:00 AM East Coast time to drive the three hours up to Washington, DC, to catch the 7:30 AM flight to Salt Lake City—which would’ve been 1:00 AM our time out here, Mountain Time. So it’s been a long day for me, but all in all, the Drone Responders Conference was actually very good.

I understand some of the original speakers had to back out, so DJ Smith had to pull one for the team. He was on a few more panels than he originally planned, and he just absolutely crushed it. That man is a wealth of information and an amazing advocate for the industry—particularly for the SLTT community. He’s out there advocating as hard as he can and doing an absolute great job.

Of course, the big topic was DFR [Drone First Responder], and all the different vendors had a DFR program or platform of some sort—some more functional and operational than others. You had all the main players there. One player in particular showed up with their DFR product in the bed of a truck, which they claim it’s designed to do. It had a ratchet strap around the enclosure as they drove around. Wow, kind of kills the purpose of the whole DFR—or security strap, I don’t know. It was hilarious when we saw that picture. But by and large, it was a smooth, good conference where a lot of people exchanged a lot of ideas.

The dinners were great. I was able to go to dinner with the Flock team and hang out with Brett Conda, John McBride, Fritz Reber, and they had Elk Grove out there with them—their first big agency that’s running their system. Huge agency.

[00:04:00]

Bobby Ouyang: Nate Lang. Shout out to Lieutenant Lang.

Kyle Nordfors: Yeah, yep. It was just a good time. The evening after-party, the social event, was great. So there really wasn’t any drama, any real situation at this particular conference. Drones did not crash like at previous conferences.

Luis Figueiredo: Yeah.

Kyle Nordfors: We’ll get to that. But it was good, real good. I had a real good conversation with a gentleman named Dave—I don’t want to give away too much ‘cause I think we need to keep it on the down low with the project I’ll tell you guys about later. We got a really good game plan to try—it’s gonna be a disruptive thing in search and rescue, at least, the things we were talking about. Pretty exciting stuff, all in all. As far as new equipment, not really. It was just more DFR talk and progressing with DFR.

The presentation I had, I talked about heavy-lift drones and how to implement them in public safety. I had a bunch of videos of us using the FlyCart 30. We’ve been flying that around with search and rescue, mostly delivering litter medical kits and the like—pulling, let’s say, a mountain biker who crashes, has a femur sticking out of their skin, and the bike is just totaled. Instead of leaving that on the mountain or having one of our ground crews try to carry it off, we can lift that mountain bike off with the FlyCart, which just saves time and energy and ensures our ground teams can get home quicker and safer. Just all good stuff, really, from the Drone Responders Conference.

[00:06:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Are you excited about the rumored Matrice 400 coming out?

Kyle Nordfors: Yes, I don’t know much about it, but the 350 was a good incremental step from the 300, and the H30T is such a powerhouse of a payload. I don’t know if with the 400 they’re gonna have an updated version of the H30T, but quite simply, nothing compares to it in the industry. The H30T is absolutely amazing as far as the total package goes, and for the price point. Do you have any more details on it? Have you heard, have you seen?

Luis Figueiredo: The only thing I’ve heard so far is it’s gonna be able to carry a heavier payload. I think the max weight is 20 pounds or over 20 pounds, something like that. So it’s gonna be a good medium between what the M350 carries now and what the FlyCart carries. It’s gonna have a smaller footprint than the FlyCart but slightly bigger than the M350—probably somewhere in between. I’m sure it’s not gonna be crappy, right? Like any other DJI product. We’re gonna get it, and we’re gonna be like, yep, it’s exactly what we expected.

Kyle Nordfors: And it’s gonna work.

Luis Figueiredo: Yep. But back to the conference—is there a reason why some of those people pulled out, like the speakers?

Kyle Nordfors: No, I just overheard a conversation with DJ, and he was telling us that’s why he was getting up on stage so much. I do know of one particular gentleman who had to back out—his wife just had a child, so he needed to stay behind with his wife.

Luis Figueiredo: Valid excuse.

Kyle Nordfors: Yeah. It was items like that—not any drama or anything else, just family issues. So DJ took one for the team and got up on stage a lot more than he was planning on. He did great.

[00:08:00]

Bobby Ouyang: Kyle’s right—DJ’s a powerhouse. So that was a drama-less conference, Louis. Do you wanna say something?

Luis Figueiredo: No, I was gonna say, Kyle mentioned Flock—they had a big announcement today, right? They raised, what, like 200-something million? I saw they were all posting about it. I guess they’re gonna build their own facility or something—an R&D facility?

Kyle Nordfors: In Georgia, right? Yeah, they have a facility. I was talking to Raul a couple weeks ago, and that guy has big plans and big goals for Flock in the direction they’re going. They’re even building their own drones. My understanding is they’re not quite ready for prime time yet, but maybe I shouldn’t have said that—I don’t know. They have really big plans, and they have a powerhouse team too. Their lineup at that company is—Raul is really stacking the deck in his favor with who he has employed right now. It’s gonna be fun to see how far they go, and truthfully, I’m cheering for them.

Bobby Ouyang: Yeah, Flock has a powerhouse team as a whole. I was watching a few interviews with Garrett Langley, and he was talking about how every single time he got on a plane, you could almost guarantee $40,000 in annual recurring revenue just from meeting with agencies. He said that based on how many cameras they install and how many crimes they solve, they can predict how much more sales they’d be getting as a result of it. The way the entire organization runs is really fascinating because he has his Chief Revenue Officer whose entire job is just to hire salespeople—that’s it. Building this incredible sales organization, hundreds and hundreds of people in sales getting hired every single year. It’s very well-run, and they hire some really fantastic people.

[00:10:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Listen, they have a good product, right? Especially when it comes to the LPR [License Plate Recognition] system. As a user of both Flock and Motorola’s Vigilant, I think Motorola’s done what they do with a lot of companies they buy—don’t invest too much into them, and the technology stays the same. Flock came in and identified areas where Motorola wasn’t doing well. Their cameras can go up everywhere—I was just at Home Depot last week in my town, and there are Flock cameras all over the parking lot. So I guess now they’re doing private too, not just public safety agencies and cities—they’re doing commercial accounts. Their interface could be a little better, but it’s an easy-to-use product. They simplified the installation of cameras—the solar panel ones can be put up anywhere. The only advantage Motorola has at the moment is they have the contract with repo companies and those companies driving around all the time, getting license plate hits, while Flock is more stationary cameras. But it’s a great product—I’m not gonna sit here and talk crap about Flock because of Axiom. It’s a good product.

Bobby Ouyang: Well, you’re talking about DFR with the repo companies. One really interesting drone-in-the-box solution I was talking about with the CEO of a parking ticket company—instead of using fixed stationary cameras to detect if a vehicle’s parked in a spot too long, like at a baseball field where you can only park 15 minutes or something—they’re looking at putting drones in boxes and doing patrols of the area. It’ll detect whether a vehicle’s there, and if another drone comes over 15 minutes later and it’s still there, it’ll take a picture of the license plate.

[00:12:00]

Kyle Nordfors: That’s a great system. Before I say something, I wanna say hi to Tom. I just saw that he stayed up late—he’s a hero. Hey, Tom, I’m actually excited to hang out with you in Manchester. We’ve got the UK Robotics Conference coming up next month in Manchester, England, and Tom’s gonna be coming over to help teach all of us low folk how to fly FPV for real. I’m excited to get to know Tom a little better and learn from the master.

But I think one way Flock has an advantage over other companies is because they sell to private companies like Lowe’s, Home Depot, or Costco with their cameras. You can envision that being at construction sites with their DFR program—technically, that’d be a drone-in-the-box system, but they could easily convert that into something a commercial company would want. Substations, railroads, a whole bunch of different programs where it’s a bigger system that Axon probably wouldn’t do.

Bobby Ouyang: Yeah, it’s also their interesting go-to-market strategy. Typically, as a startup, suppose we’re fixing to hit $10 million in annual recurring revenue this year—halfway through the year, we’d talk to some investors, raise $20 million to scale up and grow even faster. What Flock did in the early days is they’d only raise a couple million dollars, even though they were doing a lot more in revenue, just to test something out for two or three months. They knew they had a good product, they knew they were gonna dominate the market—it was just a matter of how and what’s the fastest way to do it. They tried multiple go-to-market motions, multiple product motions, and a lot of them failed. But because they didn’t raise that huge amount of money, their failures didn’t hurt as much—it didn’t shut down the company as a whole. It’s really fascinating.

[00:14:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Yeah, but enough of Flock—Rahul’s living his Miami Vice days right now. I heard he got a white Ferrari and he’s wearing Hawaiian shirts—I don’t know. Let him enjoy it.

Kyle Nordfors: Rahul, you need to send us that picture.

Luis Figueiredo: I’m sure AI can generate it if he doesn’t wanna share. So you didn’t get any Air Force Ones or any kind of new socks at the conference?

Kyle Nordfors: No, but I was close, and I think I still might get some of those socks. Skydio does have some employees who are still ethical and good people and haven’t sold their soul yet. I was able to spend time with one of their employees—I don’t wanna rat this person out. I requested those socks because I don’t want that particular employee to get lectured for talking to me or letting me buy them a drink.

Luis Figueiredo: Or they’ll block you.

Kyle Nordfors: That’s the Skydio way, right? They block you as soon as you have any intellectual conversation or debate their premise—they cower and block you because every single one of their stances can be countered. It’s childish. But hopefully I’ll get a pair of those socks—it’ll be as comical as them posting it from their actual Skydio account. Their Chief Marketing Officer attacked me personally, never even met me, and tried to come after me. I thought it was beautiful.

[00:16:00]

Luis Figueiredo: My days of getting socks from Skydio are done—I don’t think they’re gonna give me socks again after what I put their last socks through. The sneakers are pretty cool, though. What’s the story about—

Kyle Nordfors: They wanted to participate and have more items made in China. They wanted more than just their batteries made in China.

Luis Figueiredo: The way I perceived the message on those socks initially—I started, maybe I read too much into it, but I don’t think I did—was “Don’t fuck with Skydio.” They’re not a consumer company anymore—you can’t walk into a Best Buy and buy a Skydio drone. They’re making drones for public safety. I took that message personally, like, is that a shot at public safety, at law enforcement? Are they telling us, “Don’t fuck with us because no matter what you do, we’re still gonna shovel a shitty product down your throat”? That’s how I saw it. DroneXL’s Hyatt made a really good article explaining his thoughts behind it. I can see now that maybe that could’ve been the message, but I still took it extremely personally. I think it’s a direct shot at everybody—like us—who speak up against them. We do it all the time, call them out, to the point where they block us. Their employees still troll my posts, but Adam Bry and a few others have blocked me. I saw that and thought, this is a direct shot at public safety.

[00:18:00]

Bobby Ouyang: Right now, they’re probably not gonna go out of business. I think all the legislation worked out for them. In previous seasons, we talked about how Skydio wasn’t gonna be around anymore, but it seems like they found their product motion—ban DJI and scale it out.

Luis Figueiredo: I think they’re still around now because after they lost that $100 million Army contract, it seemed like almost simultaneously Axon was like, “Hey, Skydio, here’s a lifeline.” That’s what it seems like—it happened at the same time. If it wasn’t for Rick Smith—the guy who wanted to put a taser on a drone, and I think they did a sick 360 on one too—I don’t know if Skydio would be around for another year or two. Their burn rate’s way too high, especially when they’re spending money on fancy socks and sneakers. By the way, we have to do something about the “Skydio” name—those first three letters, “Sky.” Can we rename it “Eyebrows” or something? Get rid of the “Sky.”

Bobby Ouyang: That sounds like an old porno website. Oh my gosh.

Kyle Nordfors: It’s really too bad we have a US-based company—I shudder even calling them an American company because they don’t act like Americans—that sources Chinese parts for their drones. Everybody’s aware of that. It’s the misconception: “Oh, it’s an American-made drone,” but a lot of the components are Chinese—even the batteries. They’re shipping out X10s with one battery because they couldn’t source any more.

[00:20:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Kyle Nordfors: No, you’re fine—it’s a valid point. What’s sad to me is this was probably our best opportunity to have a solid product, and they come out claiming they’re here to help public safety, but all their actions fall short. Rather than innovating to make a good product, they’re spending money on foolish items, lobbying efforts, and cutting our legs out from underneath us instead of being there for public safety. If they just took the higher road and said, “Hey, we’re a US-based company trying to do the right thing—please give our product a try, we’re here to support you, we’ll do whatever we can to make sure you’re successful,” and ignored DJI or Teal, just did their thing and provided the best product with open hands and a solid heart, law enforcement and public safety across the country would support them 100%. They’d say, “Absolutely, we’ll help you develop your product, we’ll buy your products when we have the money, we’ll talk to our city council or county commissioners to justify paying a little extra to support the American company.” But instead, our cries and needs are falling on the deaf ears of their executive staff, and all they seem to care about, from our perspective, is making money. The people who are going to suffer are those we’re trying to serve.

I’ll still stand by this—it’s factual: when I have an X10 side-by-side with my Matrice 30, Dragonfish, or any Teal products, the Skydio product falls short. It does not make it up the mountain, cannot get there.

[00:22:00]

Luis Figueiredo: It’s not even a fair comparison. Put it up against an M30? You’d have to compare it to a Mavic 2 Enterprise or a Mavic 3—that’d be more fair. I don’t think the X10, even years from now, will compare to what an M30 is now.

Kyle Nordfors: Oh yeah, let’s not even try to compare it to the Matrice 4—the Matrice 4TD with its IP rating knocks it out of the water. Look at a company like ACSL from Japan—they’re trucking along, doing their best, reaching out, bringing public safety and other professionals over to Tokyo, saying, “Tell us what you want, what you need, be brutally honest.” Their engineers are right there taking notes, configuring, so the next drone they come out with is exactly what we need and want. They’re trying to meet our demand, rather than multiple US-based companies trying to tell us what we need—and telling the warfighter what they need. I’ve trained with SF groups, NSW groups, been with them in training scenarios, and what the two biggest US-based companies have is not what the warfighters want or need. Regardless of what the generals or big guys negotiating contracts say, the men and women on the frontline don’t want that product because it’s useless to them. It’s not reliable—we know it’s not reliable, we know they crash. NIST has all the data comparing it with actual numbers and proof that it’s an inferior product. It’s just too bad.

[00:24:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Even on the federal level, federal agencies can only buy Skydio, Parrot, Teal—I don’t hear much about BRINC. Those are the three brands they can buy. Their academies have drone training programs—they send agents to fly drones out of their offices. Do you know what they’re training these guys on? DJI Minis, Mavics, Mavic 2s, Mavic 3s. They’re training federal agents on DJI products, then sending them back to their field offices to use Skydio, Teal, Parrot—some are getting set up with Skydio X10s. But the way they’re setting up these accounts, the field offices can’t log in. It’s crazy—they sell the equipment, then it’s like, “Hey, you’re on your own, figure it out.” Not only are they shoving equipment down their throats, there’s no support—they’re left on their own.

Bobby Ouyang: It’s incredibly predatory upsells too. One of our earlier customers from 2021 was forced to buy Skydio—they got sold Skydio 3D Scan, which just allows the camera to point upwards, fly, and take pictures. It doesn’t make the 3D scan itself. They were sold that because their chiefs saw the presentation, were wowed by it—no live demo, just a slide deck. Their chiefs didn’t know they were already in a multi-year contract with us, so they threw away almost $5,000 in the first year doing nothing, and Skydio did nothing to help them.

[00:26:00]

Luis Figueiredo: We know why they don’t do live demos—their success rate is extremely low. But even with their sales approach now, what’s scary is they have Axon support—huge in public safety. For departments putting up resistance, they’re like, “We’ll give you free equipment, trade up on your new Axon contract when you renew.” Some departments are being bypassed—they go to city officials: “We can save you money if you trade up your equipment.” By the time the department hears about it, city council or the mayor is telling them, “This is what you have to do.” At that point, it’s either no drone program or go with what they’re told. It’s scary—they’ve got Axon’s muscle now. By the way, Kyle, the next person I’m trying to get on my block list is Axon’s CEO, Rick Smith. At some point, he’s gonna be fed up with me tagging him on everything.

Kyle Nordfors: It’ll be interesting to see if he’s fed up with you tagging him or with customer complaints because the aircraft simply isn’t working. When we get into these conversations online—Facebook, LinkedIn, other forums—people with a different perspective strawman my argument to slap it down easier. The cognitive dissonance they operate in is fascinating. At the end of the day, I sincerely don’t care about the name on the aircraft I’m flying—Boeing, Airbus, Skydio, BRINC, DJI, Teal—I don’t care. What I care about is the ability to save lives. As a search and rescue volunteer, I show up when the call comes and want to deploy the aircraft to save lives. That’s it.

[00:30:00]

When people take backhanded, backdoor deals, lobbying to force me into using an inferior product that impedes my ability to save lives, it becomes personal. Some people are still alive because of this technology, because of the drones I used—they’ve become family friends. When you’re lobbying for something that takes away first responders’ ability to save lives, that’s unethical, immoral. If you’re placing sales and return on investment for your investors over that, you should go to jail—it’s criminal, you’ll have blood on your hands. In states like Florida and Tennessee, where Skydio’s lobbying efforts have been successful, I wish we could document how many lives have been placed in danger because of that. It’s impossible to quantify, but I wish we could. It’s so incredibly frustrating—lives are on the line. That’s the only basis for my argument: I want to save lives, and the current products from American manufacturers—I can’t call them American because their actions are anti-American—don’t do that.

Luis Figueiredo: I agree. The same people troll my posts all the time—one guy who looks like he’s wearing transition lenses always says, “Well, DJI lobbies too.” I’m like, dude, one is lobbying to get rid of a competitor, the other’s lobbying to stay in business—they’re not lobbying to get rid of Skydio, just to sell their equipment. People swear I get paid by DJI—I think you’ve been accused of that too, right? Being on the take or something. It’s not like that. I could complain about DJI—tons of stuff I don’t agree with. It might be a cultural thing or whatever. They give us drones like the M200 and up with hot-swap batteries—Bobby, don’t worry, I’m not going where you think with Autel. The 200 series, 300, 350, M30—they got us used to hot-swapping, then with the Matrice 4TD, they took that feature away. Their response is, “You can power cycle and put a new battery in in 20 or 25 seconds.” I’m like, yeah, but I don’t want to do that—I want to pop the battery out, drone stays on, and it’s up in five seconds. I’ve gotten used to that. Hot-swapping’s the best feature ever for a drone—when you’re searching or on an op, you want to land and have it back up in five seconds.

[00:34:00]

But one of my favorite DJI stories is how they empowered BRINC’s existence. Years ago, when the Mavic Mini came out, I told DJI engineers, “Why don’t you make an enterprise Mini? Everybody’s asking for it.” If Tom’s still awake watching this, what he’s doing now is what DJI should’ve done years ago. Imagine BRINC trying to raise money for their Lemur drone, and investors ask, “Is there any competitor doing this?” BRINC says no, because there wasn’t—they had the first interior drone, the Lemur. If DJI had made an enterprise Mini with a small thermal sensor, lights, something like that, BRINC wouldn’t be as powerful now—they wouldn’t keep raising money because DJI would’ve given public safety what they needed. I have a lot of complaints about DJI—every chance I get, I give them shit, just like everyone else. They’re too big a company, too many layers—they put out a good product and think, “This is what public safety needs,” but they don’t hear our opinions much because they’re disconnected from boots on the ground.

Bobby Ouyang: What’d you call them, Louis? Chinese 25-year-olds?

Luis Figueiredo: Dude, I think the issue with DJI is their average employee age is mid-20s. They can be great engineers, but—

Bobby Ouyang: Wait, Louis, I used to be a Chinese 25-year-old. I think we met when I was a Chinese 25-year-old, right?

Luis Figueiredo: Not to mention NASA—remember how bad that was?

Kyle Nordfors: NASA in the ‘60s, launching rockets—all kids 25 to 28 years old.

Luis Figueiredo: Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying—now I’m gonna piss off a bunch of 25-year-olds. What I’m trying to say is they don’t have the experience. They’re disconnected from boots on the ground. Kyle, do you think a 25-year-old engineer in China building DJI drones knows what you need for search and rescue?

[00:38:00]

Kyle Nordfors: No, but I don’t think they’re the ones making the decisions either. They send people over here—Freda comes over, she’s amazing, she listens to us. We talk about how big DJI is, but they’re not as big as we think—as far as—

Luis Figueiredo: You have one guy making all the decisions.

Kyle Nordfors: Yeah, it’s kind of a pyramid—everything goes to the top, the top makes the decision. Vic just logged in, and we’d be remiss—we’re focused on public safety and how terrible this lobbying is for public safety, but what about him? The hundreds of thousands of small businesses out there—photographers, roof inspectors, real estate photographers, agriculture pilots—it’d be catastrophic not only to the drone industry but to our economy at large. Imagine if farmers can’t do pinpoint accuracy drone use with sprays—herbicides, pesticides—they use multispectral drones first, then spray drones. If they can’t do that, food prices will increase significantly. All this lobbying is shortsighted, poorly thought out, only there to make money for certain investors in US-based Drone Companies—every other argument falls short or is pointless.

[00:40:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Another thing that pisses me off—Florida’s a lost cause—but what bothers me is when I see comments and pictures of guys like, “Got my Skydio drone, can’t wait to fly,” and I see where they’re located. We’re our own biggest enemy because of stupid decisions. If you’re in a state like Florida or parts of Tennessee—or where legislation’s being proposed—and there’s no law saying you have to buy non-Chinese drones, why the hell are you supporting companies like Skydio that are lobbying? All that does is hurt everybody else. Your cool picture holding that Skydio drone—“I got it for free on my Axon renewal”—you’re hurting every other cop, firefighter depending on the drones they use. You probably have no knowledge about the technology—if you did, you’d say, “No, I’m not buying this.” We can blame the fearmongering—Skydio’s second part of their campaign. I get calls all the time from departments in my state: “We heard we can’t buy Chinese drones.” I’m like, “What? Who told you that?” “Axon was here, renewing our contract—they said pretty soon all our DJI drones are gonna get grounded, we need American-made drones.” I’m like, “That’s bullshit, don’t fall for that.” I feel like I’m doing more damage control weekly with calls like that. These guys should know better—we’re not doing a good job educating.

Kyle Nordfors: There’s an additional part—certain former lieutenants and captains retired from public safety jobs now work for these US-based companies. They’ve sold their souls, selling out law enforcement and public safety across the country. Some of these guys posting are lobbying Skydio for their post-retirement job—positioning themselves as fanboys. To get a job at Skydio, you have to drink the Kool-Aid, wear the socks, act like an infant—you can’t question the narrative.

[00:44:00]

Luis Figueiredo: To me, those dudes have zero credibility—I don’t care who you work for now or that you sold your soul. You got your department to buy Skydio in states with no ban, then retired and started working for them—some have moved to other companies. Good dudes, except one who confronted me at the Police Chiefs Conference a few months ago. No credibility—you can talk about drones, say whatever, be on panels—to me, you’re a lost cause. You’re doing it to people in your own profession. It’s like telling cops, “You can’t buy Glocks or SIGs anymore, you have to buy Hi-Point”—some crappy gun manufacturer—then going to work for them, pimping that shitty gun to your colleagues. That says something about a person’s character.

Bobby Ouyang: Let’s look at the ramifications of the DJI ban in certain states. Florida’s banned DJI for a couple years now—in the early days, we heard of sheriff’s offices still flying DJI drones because sheriffs there are like kings of the county. But last week, I was listening to a webinar or podcast in the morning, and they were talking about how some of these sheriff’s offices are now forced to switch because the state’s cracking down. They’re not gonna win against their competitors with the way things are going.

Luis Figueiredo: I think they’re so cocky right now that shit like this—the mailer, the socks—they think they’re untouchable. Is the company being poorly run? I don’t get it. They’re wasting too much money on non-drone innovation, and it seems like nobody cares about it.

[00:53:00]

Kyle Nordfors: They’ve pivoted how they’re advertising and selling their equipment. Originally, they tried marketing to us—operators, program managers—and we quickly learned how awful it is, how it compares. If we had the X10 seven years ago, we’d have loved it. But compared to current technology, it’s just not that awesome. So they’ve pivoted away from us, teaming up with Axon, going after chiefs, city council members, county commissioners, police chiefs, saying, “You already have an Axon budget—depending on your agency, a few million dollars—what’s an additional $200,000 to your $4 million budget? It’s nothing. Let’s package it, toss it all in.” The chiefs are woefully unaware of how terrible the subscriptions are, everything they have to get to make this device work—if it decides to work, as long as it doesn’t crash.

Bobby Ouyang: I’ll say it again this season: it’s cheaper for Skydio to spend money on marketing and lobbying than on engineering to build a good product. That’s why they’re doing this—it’s working for them.

Luis Figueiredo: Speaking of crashes, wasn’t there an incident in Burnet, Texas, a few weeks ago with a Skydio drone?

Bobby Ouyang: I don’t know, man.

Kyle Nordfors: I don’t go to that conference. Their pilots were flying without strobes on first and had to be told—they weren’t flying with beacons, and someone asked if they had a waiver to fly without them. They stumbled and turned their beacons on, but yeah, one crashed. I wasn’t there, didn’t witness it personally, but there’s video of it happening. We’re just pointing out their hypocrisy. If they weren’t so hypocritical, if they just had a humble heart and were trying to do the right thing—not coming out with stupid socks—they get in their own way. If they sincerely tried their best and asked us for help, we’d do it. I was a beta and alpha tester for Skydio back in the day, worked with some guys still there. They couldn’t take the hard truths—like with the S2 during COVID, they’d send me updates to convert it to an interior drone system. I’d fly it around, give them the hard truths, and if they didn’t like it, they’d dump you rather than listen. They’re taking the easy road.

[00:56:00]

Luis Figueiredo: I felt for a second like during the summer there was a cry for help. You got the same cry, right? Then it went away. There was an outreach we both received—like maybe they’re trying to get our feedback on what they’re doing wrong, squash a few things. Then it disappeared—no follow-up, at least on my end. What about yours?

Kyle Nordfors: No, it was dropped as soon as you provided anything. They ignored you—especially if it was, “You need improvement here.” All they wanted to hear was, “This is awesome, you’re the best, we love you.” If you said, “It’s weak in low-light scenarios,” they didn’t want to hear it.

Bobby Ouyang: Skydio doesn’t hire dumb people—you don’t become a unicorn by hiring dumb people. They’re doing something similar to what Flock did—try a bunch of experiments, see what works. In this case, lobbying away public safety’s ability to use DJI or Autel drones is working for them.

Luis Figueiredo: Dude, it’s still lobbying. It seems like we’re picking on Skydio too much and not giving BRINC enough attention. It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors—I say that all the time. Lobbying, marketing, tactics—but BRINC’s doing the same shit. It’s worse for them—they’re hiding repeaters inside houses at demos. They bring agencies in, “We’re gonna fly the Lemur through the house,” and everyone’s like, “Holy shit, BRINC’s improved, it can fly through and not disconnect.” Little do they know they’re hiding repeaters for these demos—that’s the smoke and mirrors. I tell everyone, do your due diligence—if they really want you to buy it, they should have no problem giving it to you to test first. But they’ll never do that. Have you heard about the repeater story, Kyle?

[00:59:00]

Kyle Nordfors: Yes, I’m very aware of the situation where it happened—I know the individual who hid the repeaters. It comes back to honesty—if they’d just be honest, shoot us straight, say, “Yeah, our product’s not perfect, it might need improvement, can you help us?” and put it through its paces with us, we as Americans could grow and learn together. Instead, they’re forcing us to use an inferior product. What gets me is the guys pushing this—former law enforcement—know it’s inferior. They’re hiding repeaters, crashing drones during demos, but still pushing it because they want to make money for themselves, everybody else be damned. It’s shockingly bad. But there are American companies doing the right thing—couple from the Bay Area. Ascent Aero Systems just announced a new drone at the TIC conference in Texas—purchased by Robinson Helicopter. I’ve flown Robinsons—they have an amazing product, stood the test of time. They’re not lobbying, not doing shenanigans—they’re NDA-compliant, quietly doing their thing. Their prices are higher than public safety can afford right now, but they just came out with a new product I’m excited for. I hope to get my hands on one—fantastic quick-deploy, flies in all weather, great ISR vehicle. No zoom or thermal, but great for accident reconstruction, small, compact, sub-250 grams, coaxial design, flies a long time. Price is higher, but expected with an American company. They’re trying to do the right thing—those companies need to be promoted and celebrated.

[01:02:00]

Luis Figueiredo: I agree—the biggest issue with those companies is the price point. They’re out of our reach. Hopefully someday they’ll be more affordable, but at the moment, they’re priced out of our league.

Kyle Nordfors: With participation, it’ll take one or two agencies or private companies to purchase the first stock, prove the use case, start manufacturing in mass to bring the price down. If they showed up with a humble heart, the American community would help. If it’s an inspection-style drone that’s NDA-compliant, hundreds of private companies would rather use Ascent Aero Systems over Skydio or BRINC for all the reasons you wouldn’t want their products. An honest company trying could make their way easily, especially with a giant like Robinson backing them.

Luis Figueiredo: What’s Uniform Sierra? That’s Duncan’s company, right? Flock just bought it. Duncan came to see me a few years ago—he had this interior drone, a competitor to the Lemur. A college kid—just graduated or still in college—with classmates, brought me this drone. We flew it, and I’m like, “Dude, your drone’s better than the Lemur, and you did this in a dorm room with school funding.” I’m glad Flock saw the potential and bought them—imagine what they’ll come out with now. Going back to BRINC—some department on social media was promoting, “We just signed on with BRINC for DFR, leading technology, we’re gonna be the first beach doing it—”

Bobby Ouyang: Long Beach Police Department.

Luis Figueiredo: Could’ve been. I commented, “Congrats on spending money on a private something”—forget what I said. They were bragging about it. I’m thinking, you bought a product that’s not even tested yet. I don’t think anyone’s actively using their responder platform—they have that great marketing video with Vegas PD, but people are gonna have to wait a year for it. Imagine the issues when it’s delivered, and they’re bragging on social media. At what point does someone say, “Think about what you just posted—you bought an untested, innovative DFR system”? There’s nothing innovative about BRINC’s system—or Skydio’s. NYPD has Skydio docks—they’re not even working yet. In controlled environments, demo flights, sure—but it pisses me off when trolls on my posts give opinions, and you click their profile—they’re not in public safety, don’t fly drones. We depend on this equipment daily—hit the power button, adrenaline’s going, we’re on a call, we need it to go up and perform. We’re credible—we use it, know what we’re talking about. They’re like, “Data’s being sent to China”—Skydio drones haven’t been tested to the extent we use DJI or Autel. If you’re using Skydio and can prove me wrong, reach out—but you’re not doing hundreds of thousands of flights like us. Last year, we did over 6,500 DFR flights—no way an X10 could do that. Half would be down—they don’t perform in wind, rain. I’ve seen videos of a garden hose on an X10—it freaks out, can’t handle normal water pressure. NYPD can market it because they’re the biggest agency in the world, but it’s not gonna work for them.

[01:08:00]

Kyle Nordfors: One thing I think’s gonna happen with Axon—their customer support lines will be flooded: “How do I make this thing work with the Samsung Galaxy tablet in the controller? How do I get it to take off?” I’m pledging this now—if Skydio, BRINC, any lobbying company stopped today and said, “We won’t lobby anymore, we just want to help public safety, will you help us?”—yes, absolutely. I’d be first in line to help, promote, develop their product. My only thing is we need the best equipment to save lives—we can’t be forced to use an inferior product risking American lives. That’s what’s stopping me from being their biggest fangirl.

Bobby Ouyang: Kyle, since you’re on the show, will you help make Skydio better for search and rescue?

Kyle Nordfors: Absolutely—I’ve been begging to get our agency on it. With the Olympics in 2034 here in Utah, there’s a lot of 3D mapping needed for downhill slopes, the Utah Olympic Winter Sports Park—bobsled, all that. We’re using the FlyCart to establish a use case for the Olympics. Skydio would be awesome to help with that. At the latest conference, Vic Moss had a brilliant idea—sit down with reps from CSI, fire rescue, search and rescue, law enforcement, without naming names or being political—just, “What’s your current fleet? Chinese or US-manufactured?” Every time, it was Chinese-based—randomly pulled people. We asked, “Why’d you choose that fleet? What’d happen if you were forced to switch to US offerings?” Every one said their program would fold—no way to justify spending $200,000 a year on a drone program with US drones. These were medium-sized fleets—not Texas DPS or Elizabeth City with hundreds of drones—just four or five. Vic’s gonna put that together eloquently to show local politicians the damage to public safety. He’ll add small business owners—inspectors, surveyors, photographers—what would they do? Only the biggest companies could afford functional US offerings.

[01:14:00]

Vic and I had an interesting conversation with a big nationwide rental company’s UAS head—they’re looking at docks. Draganfly was there with a trailer—imagine a Dock 3 on that, rentable to construction companies, surveyors, plug-and-play. He said, “Yeah, but we’re storm chasers, operate with FEMA, so we have to use American.” We said, “The federal government uses DJI—I’ve worked with DOD, they use DJI, despite what people say.” That’s the direction he’s heading—the money they’ll drop to accommodate basic emergency services, then hope it works and doesn’t crash like Skydio did during Helene in North Carolina and Texas.

Luis Figueiredo: If I was Skydio, I’d be nervous. Selling X10s standalone—it might work, might crash, whatever. But pivoting to DFR, selling to cities as an emergency response tool—“Hit a button, it goes to shots fired, fire calls”—you’re selling this force multiplier to agencies with hiring issues, small departments, high response times. Now it’s not gonna happen—we know it’s not. It’s gonna be bad—they can’t hide under Axon’s coverage. Someone’s gotta answer for this. Adam’s under pressure—at some point, they’ll ask him to step down. You’re selling this idea to cities, and it’s not delivering—not initially, because it’s nightmares.

Kyle Nordfors: It all comes back to money—it makes me sick, sad.

Luis Figueiredo: You set up a DFR program—one launch location, $125,000 to $150,000 a year—that’s what agencies are paying. It’s not cheap. That’s why the shift happened in DFR. A year and a half ago, we’d be talking Motorola Cape, Paladin, DroneSense getting their feet wet—not Skydio, Flock, BRINC. They didn’t exist in DFR conversations. Why’d they shift so quick? Money. Sell one launch location for $125,000-$150,000 a year with one dock—less X10s to sell standalone. Get one contract, convince the next department.

[01:18:00]

Bobby Ouyang: It’s not hard convincing departments with massive understaffing—additional budget goes to officers, not docks.

Luis Figueiredo: But you sell them on that idea—they’re buying into it, like that department bragging about BRINC’s DFR solution: “We can’t wait to supplement patrol functions.” Then they’ll get it—“Holy shit, this isn’t working half the time.” Horror stories about Axiom, everyone’s had problems—it’s tech, glitches happen—but the extent of issues from Skydio systems, selling this idea—it’s like, come on, you’re responsible for this.

Kyle Nordfors: The DFR model has a capacity—it won’t be as widespread as manufacturers think. Many agencies’ territories aren’t set up for it to be effective—counties, sheriff’s offices. We’ll reach DFR 2.0 capacity quick with agencies that can afford it. The next big money’s gonna be drone docks in police cruisers—off a canine switch, launch during a traffic stop. If a chase ensues, you’ve got eyes on—officer hits a button, signals the station, another officer flies it, crew resource management. More agencies could accommodate that—smaller drones in cruisers, once funding comes down.

[01:21:00]

Luis Figueiredo: Absolutely. Going back to departments ecstatic about equipment—today, legislation in Texas proposed banning DJI drones. Same day—Skydio lobbying—Texas DPS posts pictures with X10s, bragging about American-made drones. Sounds planned—day it’s proposed, pictures pop up. Texas, Connecticut—two weeks ago, Connecticut had an anti-China drone ban on the governor’s desk. Issues in Georgia too—am I missing any?

Kyle Nordfors: Vic would know the skinny on that. There’s Origin, north of you, Lewis—makes boots, jiujitsu gear, bringing manufacturing back to the US. They’re an example of how US-based companies should behave—be better, perform better than the competition. Sadly, in the drone industry, we’ve got intellectual dishonesty, manipulating, spying, hiding repeaters—a swarm of dishonesty, lying to politicians, unproven narratives. On LinkedIn, this clown said the reason we don’t have evidence of DJI spying is it’s suppressed by an AUVSI board member.

Luis Figueiredo: That’s some deep drone-state shit. Wouldn’t AUVSI put it out if they had it?

Bobby Ouyang: No, DJI’s lobbying AUVSI too—they’re taking from both sides.

Luis Figueiredo: Nah, not Michael Robbins—we know his thoughts on the drone industry.

Kyle Nordfors: The sad thing with him—his op-eds are verifiably untrue, and he’s telling politicians that. Does he even fly drones? Never seen him fly, never spoken knowledgeably on operations—just politics.

[01:25:00]

Bobby Ouyang: He has a lobbying firm, Intrepid—co-founder—while doing AUVSI. Skydio, BRINC basically.

Luis Figueiredo: Has Skydio or BRINC hired his consulting firm? Follow the money—there’s a paper trail.

Kyle Nordfors: BRINC and Skydio are big AUVSI donors. Robbins worked for the Airline Pilots Association—my union—before AUVSI. He’s been a politician in this industry the whole time. If we were worried about Chinese spying, we’d ditch our Chinese-made computers, laptops, cell phones, Alexas, Googles—but it’s just drones. TikTok.

READ MORE: The Truth Uncovered: AUVSI’s Real Stance on DJI Drone Ban

Luis Figueiredo: Even drone detection—DJI stopped selling Aeroscope in the US years ago, but current radio-based, remote ID detection systems are based on the Aeroscope framework. Sensors from Aerial Armor—now DDX, part of Axon—majority of that infrastructure’s DJI Aeroscope stuff. Years ago, they claimed data was going to China—mitigated by AWS servers in the US, and the fearmongering went away. These systems are at airports, critical infrastructure—oil and gas, refineries—anything with remote ID detection. They forgot about it—until Skydio or BRINC goes into drone detection, then it’ll be, “Current systems have dormant DJI spy stuff, they’ll hit the switch.”

[01:28:00]

Kyle Nordfors: That highlights the intellectual dishonesty—with counter-UAS at critical infrastructure and airports, SLTT isn’t empowered to act, no airspace restrictions above it. Manipulating politicians into thinking banning drones from a country solves it is complete BS—it solves nothing. In aviation, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel—Congress needs to define critical infrastructure, set restricted areas, make it illegal to fly over it. Right now, any Joe Schmo can legally fly any drone, take pictures of critical infrastructure, and send it to whoever.

Luis Figueiredo: DJI got shit for geofencing—“Why’s DJI controlling the NAS?” They got rid of it—“They did it before the inauguration, Super Bowl—what’re they up to?” Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. I had a two-day counter-UAS class two weeks ago—point was, you can’t rely on the FAA to enforce critical infrastructure. They’re good at making public safety jump through hoops for drone programs, but enforcement? Nothing. Municipalities can’t enforce airspace, but they can enforce flying within critical infrastructure—schools, police departments, jails. Create city ordinances—not deterring bad actors, but the guy flying near an Airport for cool plane pics. If it crashes into a plane, show up—“City ordinance, here’s your ticket.” In New Jersey, at the Meadowlands—Giant Stadium, FIFA World Cup final—state police had issues with tailgaters flying drones. They’d say, “You can’t fly,”—that’s it. They got the municipality to pass an ordinance—now they can ticket, “You can’t fly here,” second or third time, tag the drone for safekeeping.

[01:32:00]

Kyle Nordfors: It’s not your jurisdiction—even safe flying isn’t. Same problem national parks have—you can launch outside and fly in. A regulation’s a good start, then take it to the FAA—“We’ve done this, still have an issue, need airspace help”—negotiate restrictions for more penalties.

Bobby Ouyang: As an airline pilot, FAA regs are written in blood—until something goes down, nothing changes. Not proactive, unfortunately.

Kyle Nordfors: That’s how regs come about. At Drone Responders, LETA conferences, we talk aviation safety culture—bridge the gap between drone pilots and manned aviation for safer skies. Shocking how little the average drone pilot—107 or not—knows about the National Airspace System. In North Carolina, operating with manned aircraft, we need to speak the same language. Drone pilots must tell helicopter pilots altitude in MSL—not AGL, not ASL—or it’s meaningless. Educate ourselves, others, to operate safely with reliable equipment.

[01:36:00]

Bobby Ouyang: Well said, Kyle. On that note, we’ll wrap it up for this episode with pilot and search-and-rescue extraordinaire, Kyle Nordfors. Thanks for joining, everyone.

Kyle Nordfors: Thanks, guys. Good seeing you.

Bobby Ouyang: Thanks, Kyle. And we are no longer live.