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Shannon Nash, CFO of Alphabet\u2019s drone delivery company Wing, called 2024 \u201cthe year of the drone<\/a>,\u201d as retailers like Walmart<\/a> and Amazon<\/a> trial the grocery-carrying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Not everyone agrees.<\/p>\n Florida resident Dennis Winn admitted to shooting down a Walmart drone with a 9 millimeter handgun last week near his home, according to the Lake County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a>. A bullet hole was found in the drone\u2019s cargo. Winn was charged with shooting at an aircraft, criminal mischief damage over $1,000, and discharging a firearm in public or residential property, the sheriff\u2019s department said.<\/p>\n According to the arrest affidavit<\/a>, the drone belonged to DroneUp, a UAV company that works with Walmart to deliver online orders. Crew members from the company were in the cul-de-sac outside Winn\u2019s house to receive the drone, which was making a mock delivery to generate attention as part of a marketing effort. One of the crew members told the deputy he was allowed to operate the UAV because the company has the Federal Aviation Administration\u2019s approval<\/a>.<\/p>\n Winn had seen other drones fly over his property before and believed they were surveilling him, according to the affidavit. He shot the DroneUp UAV while it hovered about 75 feet in the air, and the company\u2019s crew found a bullet hole in it after it returned to a nearby Walmart. The crew estimated damages to the technology to be worth $2,500.<\/p>\n \u201cI then told him that he had struck a Walmart drone,\u201d a detective said in the affidavit. \u201cThe defendant looked in disbelief and questioned, \u2018Really?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Winn was aware of Walmart\u2019s drone technology, the affidavit said, and had previously complained about drones to his homeowners\u2019 association, but not to law enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Winn\u2019s attorney, Scott Herman, told Fortune<\/em> he disagrees with the description of the events in the affidavit. Herman said the drone was hovering directly above his client\u2019s property for an extended period of time at a low altitude with no markings that suggested it belonged to Walmart. He believes additional evidence will show his client was acting \u201clegally and lawfully on his property.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time an armed person has shot down a drone in the U.S., with similar stories reported in North Carolina<\/a>, California<\/a>, and Kentucky<\/a>, albeit not with retail delivery drones. Still, when Amazon began to expand its drone deliveries to rural California in 2022, some locals responded with threats of archery \u201ctarget practice<\/a>\u201d with the technology. As Walmart touts its \u201csky-high ambitions<\/a>\u201d to expand its UAV delivery capabilities, it creates potential for more incidents<\/a> like this to happen.<\/p>\n Walmart and DroneUp did not immediately respond to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Walmart has started to rely more heavily on drone deliveries as it expands its e-commerce capabilities<\/a> to compete with Amazon\u2019s similar services<\/a>, announcing in 2022 its partnership expansion<\/a> with DroneUp\u2014which it partially owns\u2014to 34 sites across six states. The expansion gave Walmart the potential to deliver orders via drone to 4 million customers, with the goal of 1 million deliveries in a year. The retailer has used Alphabet-owned Wing\u2019s drone services since August 2023<\/a>, first operating 11 hubs in the Dallas area.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just big-box stores taking advantage of UAVs to expedite deliveries. Chick-fil-a and 7\/11 also use DroneUp technology, and DoorDash<\/a> uses Wing\u2019s technology. UAV deliveries are expensive\u2014$38 a trip<\/a>, according to DroneUp CEO Tom Walker\u2014but that cost is likely to decrease as more tech companies join the fray. It helps the UAV delivery cause that the FAA has authorized more companies to operate drones beyond the visual line of sight<\/a>, which allows the drone to operate in areas where its unmanned crew can\u2019t see it, expanding delivery perimeters.<\/p>\n Despite snafus like the incident in Florida, retail drones are perfectly safe, Walker argued.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve made hundreds of thousands of deliveries to date, around 6,000-7,000 a month in the United States alone, and have not had one single accident or injury,\u201d he told USA Today<\/em><\/a> in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n Already becoming more commonplace, the drones have gained loyalty among a sliver of customers. Wing CEO Nash, confident about the future of the industry, said the top 25% of customers have been using drone delivery three times a week, and a report from the company found 74% of customers had favorable views of drone delivery.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are building a safe, reliable, efficient drone delivery system that is capable of getting to those millions,\u201d Nash told Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> last year. \u201cAnd so this is the journey that we\u2019re taking.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nRetail drones are ready for take-off<\/strong><\/h2>\n