By: Dawn Zoldi
2025 may go down as the year the drone industry stopped “promising” and started proving it could deliver real value at scale. Public safety agencies matured drone-first-responder (DFR) operations, small and midsized operators pushed into ever more complex missions and policymakers began stitching together a viable blueprint for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and advanced air mobility (AAM). In this year’s first industry roundtable on the Dawn of Autonomy podcast,, three of the sector’s most influential voices—Charles Werner of DRONERESPONDERS, Kenji Sugahara of the Drone Service Providers Alliance (DSPA), and Liz Forro of the Commercial Drone Alliance (CDA)—explained why 2025 might just have been the industry’s best year ever…and what that might mean for 2026.
The People, the Organizations and Their Origin Stories
Charles Werner built DRONERESPONDERS out of the urgent realization that public safety agencies seemed to be adopting drones faster than they were building shared standards, training and playbooks. As a former fire chief who saw drones transform situational awareness and responder safety, he turned DRONERESPONDERS into the largest nonprofit alliance dedicated to advancing public safety uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), counter-UAS, AAM and UAS traffic management (UTM) in a way that ensured departments didn’t have to reinvent the wheel one agency at a time. In his view, the more agencies can learn from each other, the faster they can safely put drones to work protecting communities. DRONERESPONDERS fulfills that promise daily, for its more than 13,000 (and growing) members, worldwide.
Kenji Sugahara’s path to DSPA began with the day-to-day frustrations of small operators who knew the rules better than most regulators, but had little time or leverage to influence them. A lawyer, pilot and operator, he saw that tens of thousands of small and medium-sized drone businesses carried the industry on their backs, while having almost no unified voice. He and co-founder Vic Moss created DSPA to fill that gap. DSPA now represents over 35,000 service providers and turns their combined field experience into credible, data-driven advocacy on everything from Remote ID to BVLOS approvals.
Liz Forro’s foray into drone and AAM policy began during her service, for more than a decade, at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Now, as the Policy Director at the Commercial Drone Alliance, she leads a diverse coalition of manufacturers, operators, and technology companies determined to ensure the United States sets, not follows, the rules of the game for commercial drones and AAM. The CDA’s work focuses on building a coherent national vision for UAS integration that balances safety, security and growth. Its mission is to align innovation, security, and U.S. leadership in drones and AAM.
Drones: From Experiments to Everyday Tools
For Werner, 2025 marked the tipping point where DFR programs stopped being pilot programs and started becoming part of standard operating procedure for public safety. Agencies now routinely launch drones on 911 calls to arrive ahead of ground units, clear scenes faster and lower risk to officers and firefighters. The shift involved a move from agencies having to prove drones actually work for their missions to advanced tactics, solid metrics and codified policies that now allow these programs to endure leadership transitions, budget cycles and community scrutiny. As one example, public safety BVLOS waivers went from rare approvals for a handful of early adopters to a growing pipeline of standardized DFR and shielded-operation waivers that hundreds of agencies can now access and replicate nationwide.
On the DSP side, 2025 showed how deeply drones have become woven into the fabric of local economies. DSPA’s members executed inspections, mapping, media and specialized missions that most people never see, but that keep infrastructure, agriculture and construction projects on track. Sugahara emphasized that these operators are the real stress test for regulations and technology: if rules and systems work for them, they will work for the broader ecosystem.
For Forro, this visible maturity in both the public safety and DSP communities gave legislators and policymakers the tangible evidence that drones have become a core part of how modern economies function. It also strengthened the case for a clear, performance-based BVLOS rule that will move the industry beyond case-by-case waivers to predictable, scalable operations nationwide.
Counter-Drone: Securing a Crowded Sky
The rise in legitimate drone operations has made counter-drone discussions more urgent and more nuanced. Werner sees this first-hand in public safety. Agencies must be able to detect and respond to unauthorized or malicious drones near incidents, critical infrastructure, or large events, without interfering with their own aircraft or those of trusted partners. That requires clear authorities, common operating pictures and policies that define when to monitor, when to mitigate, and who makes the call.
For Sugahara, counter-drone policy is a double-edged sword. Poorly designed C-UAS frameworks can unintentionally criminalize or disrupt legitimate small-business operations, especially when local entities deploy aggressive detection or mitigation tools without understanding the broader airspace picture.
Forro underscored that C-UAS and security policy must evolve hand-in-hand with commercial integration. Security agencies need effective tools, but commercial operators need predictable, rights-respecting environments where their aircraft are not misidentified as a threat. She linked that balance directly to the new Congressional direction for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to develop a C‑UAS rule that creates rules of the road for C-UAS use at the state and local level while preserving space for compliant commercial and public safety operations.
Infrastructure and UTM: Building the Invisible Layer
Beneath the visible drones in the sky, 2025 pushed forward the invisible digital infrastructure that will enable routine BVLOS and, eventually, AAM. Concepts like strategic deconfliction and automated data service providers began shifting from white papers to implementation. The goal is a federated UTM ecosystem with multiple interoperable services, governed by common performance standards, rather than a single centrally managed system.
Forro, as one of the most respected voices in this space, pressed for performance-based, flexible frameworks that can adapt as technology and business models evolve. The challenge remains to support a spectrum of operations: from a small operator flying linear infrastructure inspections, to a city running a dense network of DFR flights, to future electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) services that link urban and regional nodes.
Werner and Sugahara both highlighted that without practical, affordable access to these UTM services, small public safety agencies and local operators will be left behind, which would undermine the very benefits UTM is meant to deliver.
Education and Training: Fixing the Human Bottleneck
All three leaders agreed that technology continues to advance faster than training. Werner launched the DRONERESPONDERS’ UNITE initiative specifically to address this. It creates national-level guidance and curricula for remote pilots, program managers and command staff. The goal is to move beyond ad hoc, YouTube-driven learning and into structured development paths that align with evolving regulations and risk frameworks.
Sugahara discussed a similar gap in the commercial DSP world. Most small operators do not have compliance teams or training departments. They need digestible, actionable guidance to turn complex policy into daily checklists, templates and procedures that can be implemented in a small shop.
Forro extended the training lens outward. She argued that officials, legislators and the public also need education to understand what safe operations look like, why certain waivers or authorities are needed and how drones and AAM can deliver tangible societal benefits when responsibly integrated. To that end, she highlighted the several CDA-hosted summits in 2025 that brought together industry, government and end users for focused discussions on BVLOS, UTM and C‑UAS. CDA and stakeholders used those gatherings as practical classrooms where policymakers could engage directly with real-world use cases and safety data.
What’s Next: 2026 and Beyond
Looking ahead, Werner expects 2026 to be the year public safety UAS and DFR fully normalize. He predicts more agencies will institutionalize drone programs with defined staffing, budget lines and metrics that show impact on response times, safety outcomes and community trust. Expect to see counter-drone move from episodic discussions to integrated planning, with agencies designing operations, policies and training that assume a mixed environment of friendly, unknown and hostile drones.
For her part, Forro sees 2026 as critical for turning high-level policy intent into real-world implementation. Early pieces of federated UTM, calibrated C-UAS authorities and a clear national strategy for drone and AAM competitiveness, she believes, are on the horizon.
Sugahara anticipates a decisive year for small and mid-sized operators. Clearer BVLOS pathways, more standardized waivers and better-aligned state and local rules will either unlock new service models—or, if mishandled, push businesses to more predictable jurisdictions.
2025 was the year the industry proved it could deliver. 2026 will test whether it can scale that success in a way that is sustainable, secure and widely trusted.
Watch The Dawn of Autonomy 2025, Episode #101, Industry Panel.