Walmart looks like it might beat Amazon to the skies over the Seattle area as the retail giant announced this week that it plans to bring automated drone delivery to the region in 2027.

The move is part of a broader nationwide push by Walmart and drone operator Wing — a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet — to scale across nearly 20 U.S. metropolitan areas. By adding Seattle and Denver in its latest expansion push, the partnership aims to eventually offer 30-minute aerial delivery from more than 270 Walmart stores coast-to-coast, reaching over 40 million potential customers.

Details on which Seattle-area stores will offer the service have not yet been announced. There are no Walmart stores within Seattle city limits, but The Seattle Times reported that permit filings point to initial groundwork underway at store locations in Federal Way and Tacoma.

Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell said his community south of Seattle is looking forward to bringing the region “an incredible new convenience” with the advanced delivery solutions.

“The future has arrived and its being delivered by Walmart by drone!” Ferrell said in a news release.

Wing’s electric aircraft fly at speeds up to 60 mph, serving homes within a six-mile radius of participating stores. The drones carry payloads up to five pounds to drop household essentials from groceries to small electronics. Once operational, eligible local shoppers using either the Walmart or Wing app will automatically see airborne drops as a checkout option.

KIRO 7 captured a demonstration of Wing’s delivery system in Bellevue this week, showcasing how the aircraft take off and raise and lower orders.

While Seattle-based Amazon has pushed aggressively to expand its Prime Air drone fleet to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns, the tech giant has yet to launch commercial drone deliveries in its hometown. Instead, Prime Air operations remain concentrated in markets like Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

Amazon isn’t ignoring the Pacific Northwest entirely, however. The Portland Business Journal reported last month that Amazon filed permit applications to build a Prime Air hub at a North Portland facility, targeting an early 2027 launch that has already drawn early pushback from nearby residents concerned about noise and safety.

Those noise concerns mirror a broader backlash taking shape in established test markets. The New York Times and others reported last month on residents living beneath Amazon’s drone flight paths in Richardson, Texas, who have taken exception to the constant low-altitude buzz of delivery aircraft disrupting their suburban way of life.

Wing has sought to head off potential noise backlash by re-engineering its aircraft acoustic profile. According to the company, its latest drones feature custom propellers designed to reduce high-pitched whines, keeping sound levels at roughly 43 to 50 decibels at cruising altitude and around 62 decibels during hovering drops — a level Wing claims is quieter than a standard delivery truck.

But Walmart and Wing have still encountered friction at the local level. In metro Atlanta, county leaders shut down a proposed Walmart drone hub after more than 1,000 nearby residents signed a petition citing noise, safety, and privacy concerns.

While Amazon touts its autonomous drone fleet as the ultimate convenience for rapid doorstep drop-offs, residents of one Texas neighborhood report a very different reality on the ground — complaining of lost privacy, non-stop outdoor disruption, and an incessant overhead hum that disrupts peaceful surroundings from morning until night.

New reports this week from The New York Times and NBC’s TODAY show detail how residents in Richardson, Texas, — a Dallas suburb near a major Amazon fulfillment facility — are bearing the brunt of Prime Air’s ambitious expansion.

“It’s constant — it’s like a beehive up there right over our house,” Richardson resident Scott Bratcher told NBC, describing his backyard as a virtual highway for drones.

The disruption has led others to tally the flyovers, including resident Stephanie Puri, who tracked 52 drone passes over her home on what she described to the Times as a “slow day,” adding that the noise penetrates her home even with the television turned on.

Under its Prime Air initiative, Amazon uses autonomous hexacopter drones — including its newer MK30 model designed to carry items up to five pounds — to fly directly from fulfillment sites to residential drop zones in 30 minutes or less.

Operating out of designated hubs, such as its Richardson facility, the e-commerce giant is rapidly scaling up its operations, with ambitious plans to expand drone deliveries to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026. (More details about who can order what via drone are available here.)

The tech giant defends the program as a resounding success, emphasizing that customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. An Amazon spokesperson told the Times and NBC that fewer than 1% of inquiries regarding Prime Air this year have related to noise, with the company maintaining that the sound on the ground is minimal, short-lived, and comparable to a low window fan or a passing car.

But for residents living directly beneath the designated flight paths, those low percentages offer little comfort.

Richardson homeowner Nikki Anderson told the Times that the frequent low-altitude flyovers have ruined an outdoor space her family once considered a peaceful sanctuary, forcing them indoors to escape the constant buzzing.

“Some people might think, wow, this is really, really cool, and the technology is really cool,” Anderson told the Times. “But people around here, we’re thinking, ‘Ugh, is there anything we can do to stop this?’ We can’t live like this.”

Other neighbors have echoed concerns over privacy and lingering safety questions, pointing to a crash earlier this year where a Prime Air drone collided with an apartment building in the area — an incident Amazon attributed to a GPS glitch before briefly pausing high-rise deliveries.

The clash in Richardson highlights a broader push across North Texas, which has rapidly become ground zero for commercial drone delivery in the U.S. Driven by favorable weather, sprawl, and state business incentives, Amazon is locked in an escalating “drone arms race” with rivals like Walmart, Alphabet’s Wing, and DoorDash, all of which are actively testing and scaling suburban drop-offs across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

Compounding the frustration for residents is the reality that municipal governments have virtually no authority to regulate the skies above their own neighborhoods. Because the Federal Aviation Administration holds sole jurisdiction over national airspace, local officials are powerless to restrict flight paths, set noise limits, or mandate higher altitudes.

A group of affected neighbors calling themselves the “drone warriors” has begun mobilizing to push back against the technology.

Using flight-tracking mobile apps, the residents closely monitor the overhead traffic while urging municipal leaders to enforce local rules, demand higher flight altitudes, and serve as a warning to other communities before the skies above their neighborhoods are similarly opened up.

“They need to do a lot more research, they need to hold Amazon accountable, we need to have rules,” Bratcher, the Richardson resident, said on TODAY. “And if they don’t follow the rules, take away their toys, turn them off.”