During a Q&A with analysts following prepared remarks on Motorola Solutions’ recent second-quarter earnings call, company executives provided additional insight into several technology and market trends extending beyond the financial results, including artificial intelligence in emergency response, competitive gains in video and the company’s expanding counter-drone strategy.

The discussion also shed more light on Motorola Solutions’s efforts to connect communications, video and software within a broader technology ecosystem.

AI moves from feature to embedded capability

One of the more revealing exchanges came when an analyst asked how the public safety market is responding to AI and whether adoption is meeting expectations.

Chairman and CEO Greg Brown said the company is embedding AI throughout its portfolio rather than treating it as a separate offering, pointing to applications for law enforcement officers, dispatchers and personnel working in real-time crime centers.

“I think it’s performing well,” Brown said. “We talk about AI in the context of embedding it in pretty much everything we do.”

CTO Mahesh Saptharishi went further, describing AI as “no longer a nice to have, it’s a need to have within each of our applications.”

Saptharishi said 100% of Motorola Solutions’s VESTA emergency call handling solutions sold during the second quarter were at the Assist tier, which includes the company’s AI capabilities. He said the same is true across computer-aided dispatch and records applications, with those capabilities contributing to higher average selling prices.

The company is also addressing AI transparency and governance. Saptharishi said the company has introduced “AI labels” that provide customers with information about data ownership, the models being used, whether capabilities operate on-premises or in the cloud and what data is used to generate results.

Video wins reinforce ecosystem strategy

The analyst discussion also provided more detail about Motorola Solutions’s video business and several recent competitive wins.

COO John Molloy said the company now has 150 customers operational with its cloud-based Smart Public Safety Experience (SPX) ecosystem. He pointed to Florida Highway Patrol and Kansas City, Missouri, as new RFPs that Motorola Solutions won against competitors, while St. Joseph County, Indiana, moved from a competing provider to Motorola. Brown characterized the successes as “competitive flips.”

Molloy tied the wins to the company’s broader ecosystem, noting that SPX deployments are being paired with customers using APX NEXT mission-critical radios.

“When we talk about an SPX win, that’s paired with customers that are using APX NEXT,” Molloy said. “So it’s yet another combination that’s powerful for both parts of the portfolio.”

Motorola Solutions’s overall video business grew 12% during the quarter, Molloy said, with video software growing at a double-digit rate. The company expects double-digit software growth to continue during the second half of the year.

Counter-drone strategy comes into sharper focus

Executives also provided more detail about the company’s planned acquisition of D-Fend Solutions and its potential role in public safety and critical infrastructure security.

Brown emphasized D-Fend’s ability to mitigate unauthorized drones without relying on kinetic countermeasures.

“It’s one thing to detect them. A lot of people can do that,” Brown said.

D-Fend, he said, can detect, track and identify a drone and then use what Brown described as “surgical cyber takeover” to take over its communications link and neutralize the threat without residual damage.

Brown also pointed to D-Fend’s deployment at FIFA venues, saying its technology was used in “virtually all” of the stadiums and played a role in drone detection and mitigation. He cited a report that more than 700 drones were detected across multiple sites during the event.

Molloy separately pointed to a recently announced $1.5 billion Department of Homeland Security unmanned aircraft contract. He said multiple vendors were selected for systems, with D-Fend the only selected vendor providing a cyber-mitigation system.

Brown said Motorola Solutions believes it can apply many of the same advantages it brought to Silvus Technologies, including its customer base, sales reach and operating scale, to D-Fend following regulatory approval.

“I think we can do more with D-Fend than anyone else can or they could do on their own,” Brown said.

Public safety software spending remains strong

Executives also offered a positive assessment of state and local government spending.

Molloy said 2026 budgets “continue to be very good.” Looking ahead to 2027, he said public safety budgets are growing faster than overall state and local government budgets, while funding specifically allocated to public safety software is growing even faster than overall public safety spending.

“We think all in for ’27, generally conducive to our business,” Molloy said.