RocketDNA, the drone-based data service and technology provider that operates primarily in Australia and Africa, announced that its autonomous drone partnership with BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) has become one of the largest of its kind operating in Australia.
Since February 2026, RocketDNA has completed approximately 4,400 missions across BMA’s Peak Downs, Goonyella, Saraji and Caval Ridge coking coal operations in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, logging more than 2,000 hours of autonomous flight time. The company averages approximately 1,500 flights per month across four active sites, leading to improved safety and productivity all around.
The operational model is intentionally frictionless. BMA personnel request a drone mission through RocketDNA’s Skylink platform – selecting mission type, site and parameters via a purpose-built interface – and receive processed aerial data within 15 minutes of dispatch. No drone pilot is required on site.
Missions span survey, inspection, panoramic capture, and live video applications across all four operations. The practical result is that site personnel who previously had to physically travel into hazardous areas to conduct assessments can now request and receive equivalent aerial intelligence from a desk, eliminating exposure risk.
“The deployment validates that industries, like mining, which operate in high-consequence, rapidly changing environments, can no longer afford the lag between a ground condition changing and a decision-maker knowing about it. Autonomous aerial infrastructure closes that gap in a way no previous technology has done at this scale,” said Christopher Clark, managing director and CEO, RocketDNA.
The scale of the deployment is made possible by a broad-area Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), first granted to RocketDNA in late 2025, allowing the company to deploy drones on demand, across Australia, without the site-by-site regulatory constraints that have historically confined autonomous drone operations to controlled trial environments.
Source: www.coalage.com
