For those of you who are reading this, you may already know that there have been some major changes to drone rules and regulations in the United States within the past couple of months.
On December 22, 2025, the grace period established under the NDAA 2023 American Drone Security Act expired, now completely prohibiting the purchase or use of drones made in China for virtually all federal funded projects. This includes all uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) from DJI and Autel.
However, the bad news for drone professionals and enthusiasts doesn’t stop there. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) simultaneously declared that drones, and “critical components” for drones (e.g. motors, GPS, batteries, cameras etc.) that are produced in foreign countries “pose unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons”, and have been added to the FCC's “Covered List” of restricted devices - banning the FCC from authorizing the import, sale or use of any new foreign-made drone model or foreign-made drone component that is not authorized by the Department of Defense .
Some important updates/clarifications to these restrictions include:
- All existing FCC authorizations remain valid - any drone already marketed for sale within the US may continue to be sold and used in the US, including DJI models. No new DJI or foreign drone models will be authorized after December 21, 2025.
- The Department of Defense has given a 1-year authorization for all drones or drone components on their Blue List, and any domestic made drone that meets the "Buy American Standard" which deems a product as domestic if the cost of its US-made components exceeds 60% of the total cost of all components
- Individual electronics or hobby components such as batteries, motors and frames can still come from China, as long as they are exempt from FCC authorization requirements, or are not marketed as a “drone component”
- Non-critical drone components, such as Go Pro are exempt from the FCC restrictions; however, the NDAA restrictions are still in place for components made in China like GoPros, still prohibiting their use on federally funded projects
- Non-aerial drones, electronics, tablets, computers, and toys are ok
Here are some links that you may additionally find valuable:
- Defense Contracts Management Agency (who is now managing the Blue List): https://bluelist.appsplatformportals.us/Cleared-List/
- A table of US authorized drones, where the Blue List drones are separated out and labeled with types of use (tactical, mapping etc): Link
- Provided by Dr. Brandon Stark’s team at the UC Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft System Safety: https://www.ucop.edu/safety-and-loss-prevention/environmental/program-resources/unmanned-aircraft-systems-safety.html or https://ucdrones.github.io/pickdrone.html
- FCC Press Release and Fact Sheet here: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-covered-list-add-certain-uas-and-uas-components-0.
- The updated FCC Covered List can be found here: https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist
- A good video from the Pilot Institute sharing summarized results of their voluntary drone user survey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJv2pvNKTxY
In closing, we recognize that this is a tough time for professional drone operators, given current uncertainty into availability of future drone components, and even more so in academia, where federal funds support a significant amount of research and educational efforts. Non-Chinese equivalents to platforms from DJI and Autel can cost 5 to 10 times more, with not really any added functionality, and may be subject long backorder waits due to supply and demand. However, one can hope that once non-Chinese supply chains for critical components, such as GPS, flight computers, inertia measurement units (IMU), cameras, controllers, etc. are better established, perhaps the economy of scale for these non-Chinese components will help to both bring down prices as well as encourage start-up companies to bring us more UAS platform options.
If you have any existing DJI equipment that you would like to continue to use for non-federally funded projects, we recommend buying batteries, propellers and spare parts for your platforms soon as they are likely to get scarce over the next year or so.
Sincerely,
Dr. Sean Hogan and Dr. Brandon Stark