Florida Turns Banned Chinese Drones Into Military Target Practice for Counter-Drone Training

More than 500 Chinese-made drones confiscated under Florida’s controversial 2023 ban are getting a second (short) life as target practice for US Special Operations Command, according to Bloomberg News. The quadcopters, originally headed for the incinerator, will instead be shot down with shotguns during a three-day military training exercise next month.

The initiative marks an unexpected twist in Florida’s hard-line stance against Chinese drone technology.

SOCOM to Test Shotguns as Last-Ditch Counter-Drone Defense

The confiscated drones will be transferred to US Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa for the “Military Drone Crucible” event scheduled for December 4-6, 2025 at Camp Blanding, Florida. Elite troops including Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marines will use the drones to practice counter-drone tactics, with shotguns featured as a last-resort kinetic defense option.

“It will be the largest counter-drone destruction event ever held in the United States,” said Nate Ecelbarger, a Marine reservist who founded the United States National Drone Association late last year. The nonprofit organization is coordinating the training exercises with SOCOM.

The previous largest counter-drone event occurred in September 2025 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, where 49 drones were downed using electromagnetic weapons.

From $200 Million Waste to Training Asset

Florida’s April 2023 ban on Chinese-made drones for government agencies left state and local departments scrambling to replace perfectly functional equipment. The controversial policy grounded an estimated $200 million worth of taxpayer-funded drones, forcing agencies to purchase significantly more expensive American-made alternatives.

The confiscated quadcopters were slated for destruction until the USNDA initiative intervened.

“Converting confiscated drones into training tools would give the U.S. a realistic opportunity to study and counter the systems that adversaries rely on,” said Florida Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, a former Army Green Beret, in a statement provided by USNDA.

Florida Positioning Itself as Military Drone Hub

The state is leveraging its 21 military installations and three US combatant commands to develop itself as a center for drone manufacturing and testing. Florida officials are easing regulations for outdoor experimentation and offering state lands for military drone testing.

FloridaCommerce awarded a $250,000 grant to USNDA in October 2025 to support military drone competitions and collaborations. Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly, who also serves as a USNDA strategic adviser, has described Florida as “the most military-friendly state in the nation.”

Before the December shooting competition, USNDA will host a two-day conference to debate offensive and defensive counter-drone tactics. Ecelbarger said he hopes the events encourage robust discussion. “I want it to be Jerry Springer,” he said, referring to the late talk show host known for confrontational debates.

Pentagon Racing to Close Drone Gap

The training initiative comes as the Pentagon scrambles to catch up with adversaries who produce drones by the millions. Ukraine is producing and consuming more than 4,000 drones daily, according to May 2025 congressional testimony from Douglas Beck, then-director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. The US Department of Defense was planning to purchase that many for the entire year.

The competition will test various counter-drone scenarios including clearing rooms with opposing forces present, attacking enemy convoys, and conducting long-range strikes. A larger USNDA training event planned for next year will expand the use of confiscated Chinese drones for additional counter-drone testing.

US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said in a statement that “every element of the US government needs to work together to find effective ways to combat enemy drones.”

Not all military leaders embrace shooting drones from the sky with shotguns, but the approach represents one option in what defense officials describe as a necessary layered defense strategy against the rapidly evolving drone threat.

DroneXL’s Take

The irony is almost poetic. Florida banned Chinese drones in April 2023 citing national security concerns, grounding first responder programs and wasting $200 million in taxpayer money. Now those same “dangerous” drones are being handed to America’s most elite warriors for training purposes.

This development represents the natural evolution of Florida’s misguided drone policy. When Governor DeSantis signed the ban into law, we warned that Floridians would die because search and rescue teams lost their most capable tools. Law enforcement agencies were forced to replace proven DJI systems with expensive Skydio drones that cost significantly more while often delivering less capability.

The state’s solution? Turn the confiscated equipment into shooting gallery targets.

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: SOCOM is testing shotguns, which cost upward of $2,000 each, as a counter-drone solution against threats that cost a few hundred dollars. This encapsulates everything wrong with America’s approach to the drone revolution. While Ukraine deploys 9,000 drones daily and has built a domestic production capacity of 200,000 units monthly, the US military is organizing competitions to shoot down 500 confiscated quadcopters.

The Pentagon’s cost-imbalance problem isn’t getting solved by adding more expensive kinetic solutions. When Ukrainian forces destroy $24 million Russian air defense systems with $500 FPV drones, the lesson isn’t “buy better shotguns.” The lesson is that traditional defense economics are broken.

USNDA’s initiative does serve a useful purpose. Counter-drone training remains critically underdeveloped across US forces, and any realistic training opportunity has value. The September 2025 Camp Atterbury exercise using electromagnetic weapons to down 49 drones represented genuine progress. Testing multiple approaches including jamming, directed energy, and yes, even shotguns, builds the layered defense capability military planners recognize as necessary.

But let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. The same Florida officials who claimed Chinese drones posed such dire security threats that first responders couldn’t use them now believe those drones are safe enough to fly at military training facilities. The same state that forced agencies to spend millions replacing functional equipment is now celebrating the “innovative” repurposing of confiscated hardware.

Florida’s $250,000 grant to USNDA and its positioning as a “military drone hub” suggest the state is trying to have it both ways. Ban Chinese commercial drones to create market space for American manufacturers, then use the confiscated equipment to attract military training dollars. It’s economic protectionism dressed up as national security policy.

The real work happening in drone warfare isn’t in Florida shooting galleries. It’s in Ukrainian basement workshops producing fiber-optic drones immune to jamming. It’s in the Pentagon’s struggling effort to procure one million drones over the next three years. It’s in the fundamental transformation of procurement away from exquisite systems toward mass production of attritable platforms.

SOCOM’s December training exercise will generate useful data. Shotguns might prove effective in specific scenarios where other options fail. But turning Florida’s drone ban disaster into a military training opportunity doesn’t erase the policy’s fundamental flaws or the lives it endangered.

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