Advanced Notice NPRM, More Drone Show Troubles, and More DJI Flip Leaks.

Welcome to your Weekly UAS News Update. We have three stories for you: first up, the Department of Commerce has released an advanced notice NPRM, more drone show troubles, and more DJI Flip leaks.

Department of Commerce Advanced Notice NPRM

First up, the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security has released an advanced notice NPRM requesting information about drones in general. Now before we get into this, an NPRM or Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is a document that comes before an entity like the FAA or the Department of Commerce in this example publishes a final rule. In this case, the advanced NPRM doesn’t have rules associated with it and is instead seeking industry feedback.

The interest in this NPRM is primarily information about communications technology on drones that are specifically manufactured, supplied, owned, or controlled by foreign adversaries like DJI, Autel. As we’re recording this, the NPRM hasn’t been released yet, so it may change slightly before you actually see this. It’s the second today, the third tomorrow is when the NPRM will be released.

As written, the NPRM requests information on several topics from manufacturers, large and small-scale operators, critical infrastructure inspections, and data management. This means nearly all operators could help to answer some of these questions. Now we’re not going to list all 50 questions here. If you’re interested, we’re going to leave a link down below.

Craft out a response to as many questions as pertain to you. Don’t discuss things that are not pertinent to the NPRM’s questions – if you do, this is going to result in your comment being discarded. They’re not even going to read it. Do explain your operation, your position, what you do, and answer the questions.

There’s at least one question that most operators here are going to be able to voice an opinion on, and that is: “What are the potential trade-offs of a rule prohibiting the resale or rental in the United States of UAS or UAS components that are designed, developed, manufactured, supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary?” It’s a lot of words to say how are you going to be affected if they ban or, you know, talk about potentially banning parts or aircraft that are made in China or Russia or other Countries like that. For the full text on the Federal Register, again, link down below.

Drone Show Incident at Folly Beach

Next up, another drone show had trouble this week, this time at Folly Beach, South Carolina. The drone show was produced by Lightyear Drones, and during the third show of the night, several drones fell out of the sky, with at least one striking a male bystander who suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The bystander was treated by Folly Beach Fire Rescue and released at the scene. A number of details are unclear here, including how many drones actually fell out of the sky and what caused the failure. We’ll keep you updated if we see more about this or any other drone show issues.

DJI Flip Drone Leaks

Last up, more images have leaked of the rumored DJI Flip. The Flip appears to have forward-facing LiDAR sensor similar to what we’ve seen on the Air 3S, batteries that clip in from the back, and potentially even built-in QuickShots like the Neo had. Some rumored specs include a 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor (so same as the Mini 3/Mini 4 Series), 4K 60 frames per second, and about 30 minutes of flight time. Release rumors state mid-January, possibly coinciding with CES, so we’ll have to wait and see.

That’s all we’ve got. Happy New Year! Greg should be back on Monday for the live, and we’ll see you then.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​