As I monitor the ongoing war in Ukraine, it will be hard not to notice the involvement of drones for various purposes: journalistic reporting, search and rescue, reconnaissance, artillery spotting, and being actual attack drones. While you may think that both sides are depending on military-grade drone to do these tasks, you may be surprised that for the Ukrainian side, anything that can fly, they will use. This includes home-made drones as well as the drones from the commercially successful drone company, DJI.

Commercial and hobbyists drones are mainy fair weather drones, meaning they are usually operated when the weather is calmer. But with drones being used for responding to emergencies and military operations, even the smaller ones that can be bought off the shelf are now being expected to be tougher as well as being able to fly in any weather condition.

DJI takes lead for this requirement with the release of its enterprise Matrice 30 (M30) drone. The company says it has IP55 protection, allowing the drone to easily handle adverse weather, temperatures ranging from -20° C～50° C as well as heavy rains, high winds, and high altitude (a flight ceiling of  22,965ft above sea level). Even its The 7-inch widescreen DJI RC Plus control has IP54 Protection which means it is water and dustproof.

In the press release, DJI also states that the DJI M30 also offers an improved first-person view pilot camera for low light conditions, built-in redundancies and backup systems, three-propeller emergency landing, a Health Management System, and six-way obstacle avoidance sensors enabling the pilot to focus on the mission. DJI M30 adopts a foldable integrated lightweight design (3.7 kg take-off weight) that is easy to unfold, store and carry anywhere. Its new self-heating TB30 battery design can support at least 400 charge cycles and allows a 41-minute flight time. Its smart BS30 charging case allows quick battery charging from 20% to 90% in 30 minutes. The M30 also has a new self-locking system and can be folded by just pressing a button. This makes it the fastest, easiest high-performance DJI Enterprise drone to set up.

With the M30T version, it has thermal imaging capabilities. What’s more? It can fly autonomously with a fly dock that which allows it to go fly by following a pre-programmed route and the landing on the dock to charge automatically.

Before you go out and order the M30, the pricing will set you back by US$9,999 with the basic M30 that comes with the remote, two batteries, the charging case and a storage case. The M30T with a thermal camera will cost even more starting at US$13,999.

That’s too much for us mere mortals I guess. For enterprise customers that see the DJI M30 meets their requirements, it is an affordable drone. Now for countries in conflict such as Ukraine which has a small military budget and is outnumbered in terms of equipment, the M30, especially the M30 has capabilities that can help them in the battlefield. If a US$14K drone can help take out a US$3 million Russian T80 tank, then it is money well spent.

If I can’t run in the field anymore and keep up with the younger guys in the airsoft or in tactical training, I will seriously take up the drone hobby. I can still contribute in the frontlines even without taking up a rifle with this skill.