FCC Bans All Foreign And DJI Drones: America Just Made Itself Weaker, Not Safer

We’ve been tracking the December 23 deadline for months, expecting DJI to land on the FCC’s Covered List through bureaucratic default. What the FCC actually did today goes far beyond anything we predicted. They didn’t just ban DJI. They banned all foreign-made drones and critical components. Every single one. And they did it in the weakest possible way: by failing to do any actual security work.

Here’s what just happened:

• What: FCC added all UAS and UAS critical components produced in foreign countries to the Covered List
• When: December 22, 2025, effective immediately
• Who’s affected: DJI, Autel, and every other foreign drone manufacturer
• What’s banned: New FCC authorizations for foreign drones, flight controllers, batteries, motors, navigation systems, and ground control stations
• What’s NOT banned: Your existing drones, previously authorized models still in inventory

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr framed the action as supporting Trump administration priorities.

“President Donald Trump has been clear that his Administration will act to secure our airspace and unleash American drone dominance,” Carr wrote in a social media post. “We do so through an action today that does not disrupt the ongoing use or purchase of previously authorized drones and with appropriate avenues for excluding drones that do not pose a risk.”

According to Bloomberg, banning DJI has been a yearslong priority for Carr, who pushed for the move back in 2021. Congress passed the law last year requiring DJI be added to the FCC’s Covered List by December 23, 2025, barring intervention from national security officials. No intervention came.

What the FCC Actually Said

The FCC’s official fact sheet makes clear this action was driven by a National Security Determination the agency received on December 21, 2025, from an Executive Branch interagency body convened by the White House. Chairman Carr’s official statement reads:

“I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List. Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will work closely with U.S. drone makers to unleash American drone dominance.”

Critically, the FCC emphasized that retailers can continue selling existing inventory:

“Today’s decision does not prevent retailers from continuing to sell, import, or market device models approved earlier this year or previously through the FCC’s equipment authorization process.”

The agency also noted it had no choice in the matter:

“Under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, the Commission can update the Covered List only at the direction of national security authorities. In other words, the Commission cannot update this list on its own and is required to implement determinations that are made by our national security agency experts.”

The National Security Determination defines “UAS critical components” to include:

• Data transmission devices
• Communications systems
• Flight controllers
• Ground control stations and UAS controllers
• Navigation systems
• Sensors and cameras
• Batteries and battery management systems
• Motors

Foreign-made drones now join Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua, and Kaspersky on the FCC’s Covered List. The exemption pathway is clear: DoD or DHS can grant specific determinations that a given UAS, class of UAS, or UAS critical component does not pose unacceptable risks. Without such an exemption, no new foreign drone or component can receive FCC authorization.

The Due Process Failure That Makes America Look Weak

Here’s what bothers me most about today’s announcement: if DJI actually poses a national security threat, why couldn’t any federal agency prove it?

Section 1709 of the FY25 NDAA gave the government a full year to conduct a security audit. DJI begged for that audit. They sent letters in March, June, and December 2025 asking agencies to examine their products. The response? Silence. No agency started the review. No evidence was gathered. No findings were made.

Instead, DJI got banned by default. Not because anyone proved they’re dangerous. Not because security researchers found backdoors. Not because intelligence agencies documented data exfiltration. They got banned because a bureaucratic clock ran out.

This is the opposite of strength. A confident superpower would have conducted the audit, found the evidence (if it exists), and banned DJI with documentation so thorough that no one could question the decision. Instead, the U.S. government essentially admitted it couldn’t or wouldn’t do the work. The message to the world: America bans Chinese companies not because we can prove they’re threats, but because we can’t be bothered to check.

As we reported in our analysis of DJI’s Adam Welsh interview, Congress deliberately designed Section 1709 with two “trap doors.” First, they didn’t designate which agency should conduct the audit. Second, they made the ban automatic if no audit occurred. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a feature. The outcome was predetermined; the process was theater.

People Will Die Because of This Decision

That’s not hyperbole. That’s math.

DJI has documented over 1,000 lives saved by drones globally. More than 87% of public safety drones in the United States are DJI. Over 80% of state and local public safety agencies, including fire departments, sheriff’s offices, search-and-rescue teams, and local police, rely on DJI drones for everything from wildfire response to missing person searches to flood rescues.

Just two weeks ago, we published a comprehensive list of documented American rescues using DJI drones. On December 7, a man trapped in quicksand in Utah’s Arches National Park at 21 degrees Fahrenheit was located within minutes by a drone. In North Carolina, deputies used a DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced with thermal camera to find a missing child who wandered from home after dark. In Texas, first responders used DJI Matrice drones to locate flood victims. In Michigan, a sheriff’s department found an elderly woman missing during a winter snowstorm using thermal imaging.

These aren’t future possibilities. These are things that happened. And the drones that made them possible will become increasingly difficult to replace, maintain, and support.

Arizona Fire Chief Luis Martinez warned Congress: “Lives are going to be lost because this air capability is going to be taken away.” When batteries die, when motors fail, when drones crash, what replaces them? The Blue UAS alternatives cost three to five times more and deliver a fraction of the capability. Most departments can’t afford them. Many departments will simply stop having drone programs.

The Hobby Dies Next

First responders aren’t the only casualties. The recreational drone community just lost its primary supplier. DJI’s consumer drones brought millions of Americans into aviation. The Mavic Mini made aerial photography accessible. The FPV series created a new generation of pilots. The Neo made drones approachable for complete beginners.

Where do those future pilots come from now? Domestic alternatives at the consumer price point don’t exist. The innovation pipeline that fed American interest in aerospace and robotics just got severed. Today’s recreational drone pilot is tomorrow’s aerospace engineer, military drone operator, or commercial pilot. Kill the on-ramp, and you kill the talent pipeline.

The administration says it wants to “unleash American drone dominance.” But you don’t build dominance by eliminating the products that get people interested in drones in the first place. You build dominance by competing. By innovating. By making something better. Banning the competition is what countries do when they can’t compete.

The Component Ban Changes Everything

The scope of today’s action goes beyond what most coverage has reported. The National Security Determination defines “UAS critical components” to include data transmission devices, communications systems, flight controllers, ground control stations, controllers, navigation systems, sensors and cameras, batteries and battery management systems, and motors.

Think about what that means. How many American-branded drones use foreign motors? Foreign batteries? Foreign flight controllers? The answer is virtually all of them. Even companies on the Pentagon’s Blue UAS approved list source components globally. Unless DoD or DHS grants specific exemptions, the entire supply chain just got disrupted.

The FCC document includes a critical escape clause: “unless the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security makes a specific determination to the FCC that a given UAS or class of UAS does not pose such risks.”

For Part 107 operators, this means the Blue UAS list and DoD exemptions become the only path to new equipment purchases. If your preferred manufacturer doesn’t get an exemption, you’re stuck with existing inventory until it runs out.

What This Means for Your Current Drones

If you already own a DJI, Autel, or any other foreign-made drone, the FCC was explicit:

“The rules will only apply to future drone imports and sales, not those that have already been sold or are in use.”

Your Mavic 3 still works. Your Mini 4 Pro still works. Your Autel EVO II still works. Nothing changes for equipment you already own or for models already authorized and in inventory.

But here’s the catch we’ve been warning about since October: the FCC granted itself retroactive revocation authority. While they haven’t exercised it yet, the power exists. Carr’s statement that the action “does not disrupt the ongoing use or purchase of previously authorized drones” is reassuring for now, but the legal framework for more aggressive action is already in place.

Status	What Happens
Drones you already own	Legal to fly, no immediate changes
Previously authorized models in inventory	Legal to sell and buy while stock lasts
New DJI models (Mavic 4, etc.)	Blocked from U.S. market indefinitely
New foreign drone models	Blocked unless DoD/DHS exemption granted
Foreign components in U.S. drones	Blocked unless DoD/DHS exemption granted
Firmware updates	Uncertain, likely to continue for now
Warranty service	Uncertain, replacement parts could be affected

World Cup and Olympics: The Real Justification

The National Security Determination behind this ban reveals the actual motivation: event security for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The document states: “The United States is preparing to host several major mass-gathering events to include the FIFA World Cup, America250 celebrations, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games. These events will involve unprecedented numbers of spectators, critical-infrastructure nodes, and other high-value targets in dense urban areas.”

This framing matters. The justification isn’t that DJI is sending your photos to Beijing. It’s that any foreign-made drone could theoretically be weaponized or disabled remotely during a major event. That’s a much broader threat model, and it explains why the ban extends to all foreign manufacturers, not just Chinese ones.

But here’s the irony: banning foreign drones doesn’t make stadiums safer. The drones that might threaten a World Cup venue aren’t going to be stopped by FCC equipment authorization rules. Criminals and terrorists don’t apply for FCC approval. This ban affects the law-abiding operators while doing nothing about the threat it claims to address.

DroneXL’s Take

Here’s what I expect: The next 90 days will be chaos as the industry figures out which manufacturers can get DoD or DHS exemptions. Blue UAS companies will lobby hard for component exemptions. Prices for remaining U.S. inventory of DJI drones will spike as supply freezes. And the first rescue that fails because a department couldn’t replace their crashed DJI drone will become national news.

The administration framed this as protecting America from drone threats. But the actual effect is making America weaker. Our first responders lose their best tools. Our hobbyists lose access to the technology that sparked their interest in aviation. Our supply chains get disrupted. And our credibility suffers because we banned a company we couldn’t be bothered to actually investigate.

If DJI is genuinely a security threat, prove it. Conduct the audit. Find the evidence. Make the case. That’s what a confident superpower does. What we did instead, banning by bureaucratic default, tells the world we’re either too lazy or too afraid to look at the facts.

We’ve been tracking this story since the FCC first announced the October 28 vote. We documented the questions nobody was asking. We analyzed the products racing to beat the deadline. Now the deadline has passed, and the outcome is worse than the worst-case scenario we modeled.

DJI and the FCC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Bloomberg. When they do, we’ll update this story.

Are you a first responder whose department just lost its equipment supplier? A Part 107 operator wondering how to serve clients without access to new equipment? A recreational pilot who got into aviation through DJI? Tell us how this affects you in the comments.

Quick Reference

The Bottom Line for Part 107 Pilots:

• Your current fleet remains legal to operate
• New equipment purchases limited to remaining U.S. inventory or DoD/DHS-exempted manufacturers
• Watch for Blue UAS exemption announcements over next 30-90 days
• Document your equipment and consider insurance implications

The Bottom Line for Recreational Pilots:

• Your drones still work, nothing changes immediately
• If you were planning a DJI purchase, do it now while inventory exists
• New DJI models will not be available in the U.S. for the foreseeable future
• Firmware updates are likely to continue but not guaranteed

The Bottom Line for First Responders:

• Your current DJI fleet remains legal and operational
• Replacement equipment and parts will become increasingly difficult to source
• Contact your representatives now to advocate for practical exemptions
• Document your fleet’s value in rescues and operations for future policy discussions