The real story isn't geopolitical—it's technical velocity. PX4 v1.17.0, Betaflight's dual releases, and iNav 9.0.1 dropping simultaneously suggests the open-source autopilot ecosystem is consolidating around stability and real-world performance, not feature bloat. Meanwhile, AeroVironment's CEO correctly IDing "historic inflection point" in warfare is basically confirming what the firmware commit logs already show: commercial drone autonomy is outpacing military doctrine faster than policy can adapt. Watch the software releases, not the headlines—they're the actual inflection point.