The Oregon Department of Aviation (ODAV) just did something no federal agency has bothered to do: it counted the damage. A new white paper compiled by ODAV through the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO) surveyed 25 state transportation departments and produced the first comprehensive, multi-state accounting of what the federal DJI ban is actually costing American taxpayers. ODAV Director Kenji Sugahara shared the document directly with DroneXL. The numbers are worse than the anecdotal reports suggested.

Here is what the white paper found:

The damage: At least 467 directly counted drone airframes are grounded or restricted across 23 states that provided explicit numbers. The total national exposure, including state agencies, local agencies, and contractors, ranges from approximately $50 million to $2 billion depending on fleet size and mission complexity.
The cause: OMB Memorandum M-26-02, issued November 21, 2025 by the Office of Management and Budget, implemented the American Security Drone Act (ASDA) provisions that took effect December 22, 2025. Combined with FHWA guidance and the FCC’s Covered List action on the same date, these restrictions prohibit using federal funds to procure, operate, or maintain drones manufactured by Chinese companies, primarily DJI and Autel.
The source: NASAO member outreach compiled between December 2025 and January 2026, published February 28, 2026 as Revision 2.

The federal DJI ban grounded up to 100% of some state drone fleets

The white paper’s state-by-state data tells a story that individual news reports could not. This is not a handful of agencies scrambling to adjust. This is systemic operational disruption across American transportation infrastructure.

Wisconsin grounded 100% of its fleet. Colorado lost approximately 90% of its operational capacity, grounding 16 units and operating with just 5 small drones. Nebraska reports 86% of its fleet impacted across 13 airframes. Indiana sits at 85% with 20 to 30 airframes affected and approximately $400,000 in equipment investment at risk. Minnesota reports 84% of its aircraft are foreign-made, with operations now segmented by funding source. Georgia lost about 80% of its fleet, 34 aircraft worth roughly $225,000, with insufficient budget for replacements and a phased transition plan instead.

Oregon itself is one of the hardest-hit states proportionally. Of 22 active drones, 21 are grounded. The state has exactly one NDAA-approved platform still operational.

New York reports 23 of 25 drones are DJI or Autel, now restricted on any federally funded project. Alabama lost 75% of its 16-airframe fleet, facing replacement costs of $15,000 to $30,000 per unit. Alaska has 65 of 130 drones restricted, estimates $1.8 million in lost equipment value, and projects $3.9 million to replace them.

California presents an interesting case. DJI accounts for about 30% of the state’s fleet (91 of 307 drones), but California went further than federal requirements. The state banned DJI and Autel operations on all projects, not just federally funded work, as of December 22, 2025.

Only two states in the survey reported zero impact: Texas (which already operated a compliant or NDAA supply chain, though it notes FCC policy could affect future procurements) and South Carolina (which operates exclusively Blue List aircraft and components).

Replacement costs have exploded while budgets remain flat

The financial picture across every reporting state confirms what DroneXL’s investigation of Florida’s $200 million DJI ban disaster revealed at the state level: compliant alternatives cost dramatically more for equivalent or inferior capability.

Idaho provides the clearest price escalation example in the white paper. A drone the state purchased in May 2025 for approximately $15,000 now costs over $42,000 to replace with a compliant alternative. That is a nearly 3x increase for a single airframe, and Idaho has 8 of 16 drones affected.

Alaska’s numbers are the largest in the survey: $1.8 million in affected equipment and an estimated $3.9 million to replace 65 restricted drones. Utah reports 64 of 70 total drones classified as “foreign adversary” systems, with a fiscal note of approximately $735,000 for a mixed replacement plan. Indiana has roughly $400,000 in affected equipment across 20 to 30 airframes and no budget to replace any of it. Nebraska has $45,000 invested in 13 affected airframes and is pursuing a staggered replacement strategy because the budget simply is not there for a full transition.

Multiple states note that the problem goes beyond sticker price. Compliant alternatives may not match the performance of the DJI and Autel platforms they are replacing, particularly for survey-grade mapping, LiDAR payloads, and established software workflows. This tracks with what a leaked Department of Interior memo, first reported by the Financial Times, warned: Blue UAS drones cost 8 to 14 times more than DJI equivalents while reducing sensor capacity by 95% and meeting only 20% of civilian mission requirements.

The white paper puts a national price tag on the DJI ban for the first time

Using the 467 directly counted impacted airframes as a floor, the white paper scales to 50 states (467 x 2.0 = 934 airframes) and presents three cost scenarios for state transportation agencies alone. Each scenario includes a “wrap factor” to cover software subscriptions, retraining, workflow changes, and vehicle integration on top of raw hardware replacement.

The low scenario assumes 900 impacted airframes at $15,000 each with a 15% transition wrap, totaling approximately $15.5 million. The moderate planning scenario assumes 1,500 airframes at $30,000 each with a 25% wrap, reaching about $56 million. The high scenario, reflecting payload-heavy missions like LiDAR survey work, assumes 2,500 airframes at $60,000 each with a 40% wrap, totaling approximately $210 million.

But state agencies are only part of the picture. The white paper explicitly warns that local transportation agencies (counties, cities, MPOs, transit agencies) and contractors may face higher costs than the states themselves. Several state respondents told ODAV that local and municipal impacts likely exceed state DOT impacts and that contractor toolchains are also affected.

Because no inventory of local and contractor drone fleets exists, the white paper models local exposure as a multiplier of the state-level estimates. At the moderate scenario (4x the state floor), local agency and contractor transition costs reach approximately $225 million. At the high end (8x), local costs alone hit $1.7 billion.

Combined state and local national exposure: approximately $50 million on the low end to $2 billion on the high end.

An alternate model in Appendix B of the white paper uses an “enumerated entity method” based on national counts of counties (3,143), incorporated places (19,479), MPOs (408), and public transit agencies (3,000). Using moderate adoption rate assumptions, this method estimates 1,426 impacted local airframes and a combined state-plus-local exposure of approximately $40 million to $330 million. The truth likely falls somewhere between the two models.

Emergency response is already degrading

The white paper identifies emergency response as the highest-consequence mission area affected by the ban. State respondents describe drones as essential for rapid landslide assessment, rockfall monitoring, flood damage documentation, and incident response. Where compliant platforms are limited, agencies report slower response times, higher field exposure for personnel, and reduced ability to document disaster events for federal reimbursement.

The funding-source segmentation problem makes emergency response especially vulnerable. Several states are attempting a workaround: continue flying restricted drones on state-funded work while banning them from federally funded projects. But emergencies do not come with funding labels attached. A state agency might deploy a DJI drone to a landslide under state authority and later seek federal reimbursement through FEMA. Under current restrictions, using a non-compliant drone on that response could jeopardize the federal funding claim.

This is exactly what we warned about in November 2025 when we wrote that the DJI ban means lives lost, not just lost profits. The white paper now provides the institutional data to back that up. Oregon, with one working drone out of 22, cannot provide the same level of emergency aerial support it could six months ago. Wisconsin, with its entire fleet grounded, has zero aerial response capacity from its state UAS program.

The governance mess that nobody planned for

Beyond the hardware costs, the white paper documents an administrative nightmare that compounds the operational disruption. Multiple states report decentralized procurement and governance structures, with district-level drone purchases and no centralized UAS budget. This makes fleet transition and compliance tracking much harder to manage.

The contractor problem is potentially larger than the agency problem. States with limited visibility into contractor UAS operations anticipate compliance friction at the project manager level. A state DOT might have a clear policy on which drones can fly on federally funded work, but if the survey contractor showing up to a highway project has a fleet of DJI Matrice 300 RTKs, that project is delayed until the contractor either replaces equipment or the state finds a compliant alternative.

Several states explicitly noted this contractor visibility gap. They know their contractors are affected but cannot quantify how many contractor-owned airframes are at risk. The white paper’s local and contractor cost scenarios attempt to fill this data void, but the actual numbers remain unknown.

Oregon Exposes The Real Cost Of The Dji Ban — Photo credit: DJI

The white paper recommends a waiver until September 2027 and immediate federal funding

The ODAV white paper does not just document the damage. It proposes four specific actions for federal and state decision-makers.

First, clarify applicability and timing. States report confusion about whether restrictions apply to legacy systems, state-funded systems used on federal-aid projects, and contractor operations. Clear, uniform guidance would reduce inconsistent implementation and project delays. The paper recommends a waiver until September 2027.

Second, provide transition support. Agencies face unfunded replacement liabilities and retraining costs with no transition funding. The paper calls for Congress to immediately appropriate what it describes as “$50 million authorized by the DIIG Grant” (Drone Infrastructure Inspection Grant) of the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act as a down payment on the transition. That grant program was designed to help state and local agencies build compliant drone inspection programs, but the funds have not reached the agencies that need them.

Third, address capability parity. Survey-grade mapping, LiDAR, and specialized inspection missions are disproportionately affected because compliant alternatives cannot match the performance of the banned equipment at comparable price points.

Fourth, recognize emergency response realities. Emergencies evolve fast and funding sources can shift after initial response. Policies need to account for field conditions where operators cannot stop to verify whether a drone is approved for the funding stream that will eventually reimburse the response.

DroneXL’s Take

I have covered the DJI ban for over a year now. I have written about individual states, individual fire departments, individual police agencies losing capability. This white paper is different. This is 25 state aviation and transportation agencies, coordinated through NASAO, reporting in aggregate what happened to their programs. It is the most significant document to emerge from the DJI ban fallout since the FCC’s December 22, 2025 Covered List action.

It matters because it comes from government officials, not industry lobbyists, not DJI, not drone advocacy groups. These are state aviation directors and transportation engineers reporting what happened to their own programs with their own money.

For context, here is what we have documented piece by piece over the past year: Florida’s $200 million disaster. An Arizona fire chief warning that lives will be lost. Texas DPS quietly building a 450-drone fleet that is 97% Chinese-made. The Pilot Institute survey of 8,056 operators showing 81% will reduce future drone investments. Oregon just compiled all of those individual data points into institutional evidence. And the institutional evidence confirms what every individual story suggested: this ban was implemented without transition planning, without adequate funding, and without honest assessment of what it would cost.

The waiver recommendation through September 2027 is an admission from state officials that the December 2025 deadline was unrealistic. You cannot ground 75 to 100% of a state’s drone fleet and expect agencies to replace that capability within weeks or months when compliant alternatives cost 2 to 4 times more and agency budgets were set before the restrictions took effect.

When Kenji Sugahara emailed me this white paper yesterday, my first thought was: this is the document that should have existed before the ban took effect, not three months after. Someone should have counted the drones, estimated the costs, and built a transition timeline before restricting 467 airframes across 25 states. Nobody did. Oregon did it after the fact, and the numbers speak for themselves.

Here is my prediction: this white paper will end up on desks in Congress and at FHWA within weeks. The question is whether anyone acts on it before the next hurricane season, the next wildfire, or the next bridge inspection that gets delayed because the drone that should be doing the survey is sitting in a storage closet. Oregon has one working drone. Wisconsin has zero. Those are not acceptable numbers for states responsible for thousands of miles of roads, hundreds of bridges, and the safety of millions of people.

Meanwhile, DJI has taken the FCC to federal court, arguing the ban is procedurally and substantively flawed. That case will take years. The states cannot wait that long.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.