FCC Wants Your Input on Drone Spectrum and Licensing Before May 1 Deadline

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is asking drone operators, manufacturers, public safety agencies, and investors to file comments on a proposed set of reforms before May 1, 2026. The public notice, titled “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” and formally designated DA-26-314, was released April 1, 2026, jointly by the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) and Office of Engineering and Technology (OET). Reply comments are due May 18. This is not a routine filing. The notice covers spectrum access, experimental licensing, Counter-UAS regulatory barriers, and federal coordination — the specific chokepoints that have slowed American drone development for years.

If you fly commercially, operate a public safety drone program, or build UAS hardware, this proceeding directly affects what spectrum you’ll be able to use, how quickly you can get experimental approvals, and whether the government will ever untangle the legal mess around Counter-UAS jamming. Comments can be filed at the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System under Docket No. 26-74.

Six Policy Areas the FCC Is Actively Soliciting Input On

The FCC structured the notice around six distinct topics, each with specific technical questions. This is not a vague invitation to submit ideas — the agency is asking pointed questions and expects substantive answers. As we detailed in our full breakdown of the public notice, the six areas are: spectrum access, experimental licensing, testbeds and innovation zones, Counter-UAS regulatory barriers, federal coordination, and market-based investment incentives.

Spectrum is the most technically concrete of the six. Most U.S. drones today run on unlicensed 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands — the same crowded frequencies shared with home Wi-Fi routers. Those bands were never designed for the reliable, low-latency control links that Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations demand. The FCC adopted initial rules for drone use of the 5030–5091 MHz band in 2024, allocating a 10 MHz block at 5040–5050 MHz, but implementation stalled. The April 1 notice asks what it would take to actually activate that allocation. The commission is also reconsidering the 960–1164 MHz band and asking whether airborne-use restrictions on commercial flexible-use bands — including Citizens Broadband Radio Service at 3.5 GHz — should be lifted.

Counter-UAS Rules Have Created a Legal Gray Area That Needs Fixing

Section 333 of the Communications Act of 1934 prohibits willful interference with licensed radio communications. That statute creates a direct legal problem for any counter-drone system that disrupts a UAS signal, even one posing an active threat. Every public safety agency running a Counter-UAS program has been sitting in that gray area on RF jamming, and no federal agency has formally acknowledged it. This notice does. The FCC is asking how to address the Section 333 barrier and whether its rules should separately define research and development uses of Counter-UAS technology versus operational interdiction by law enforcement.

Oregon’s Department of Aviation took this further in its draft comment filing published last week, drawing a line between detection, tracking, identification, situational awareness, communications testing, and mitigation — six functions the state argues should not be treated as a single regulatory category. That granularity is exactly the kind of input the FCC needs to write workable rules.

The Notice Builds on Two June 2025 Executive Orders

The regulatory push behind DA-26-314 traces directly to two executive orders signed June 6, 2025: Unleashing American Drone Dominance and Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty. Those orders directed all federal agencies to prioritize domestic UAS production and reduce dependence on foreign-made systems. The FCC’s most visible implementation was the December 2025 decision to add all foreign-produced drones and critical components to its Covered List. That decision closed the U.S. market to new foreign drone imports, triggering a wave of exemption requests and a Ninth Circuit legal challenge from DJI.

Four enterprise systems from non-Chinese manufacturers received conditional approvals and were removed from the Covered List in March 2026. DJI’s case remains pending. The Pentagon filed classified intelligence with the FCC opposing DJI’s removal petition in April 2026, raising the stakes further. The April 1 notice is the FCC’s attempt to build a forward-looking regulatory framework while that legal fight continues in parallel.

Since January 2025, the FCC has granted 227 UAS experimental approvals — a 68 percent increase compared to the entire 2021–2024 period — along with eight Counter-UAS approvals, the first such licenses the agency has ever issued. FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who outlined exemption pathways at CES 2026 in January, said the commission is working to promote U.S. drone leadership by “cutting red tape, modernizing obsolete regulations, and securing a domestic drone supply chain.”

How to File Comments Before May 1

Comments can be submitted through the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System at fcc.gov/ecfs. Search for Docket No. 26-74 to find the correct proceeding. The comment deadline is May 1, 2026. Reply comments responding to what others file are due May 18, 2026. Filings can be as short as a paragraph or as long as a full technical brief. Operators who have experienced spectrum interference during BVLOS missions, public safety agencies managing fleet transitions away from restricted drones, and manufacturers navigating experimental licensing delays all have concrete, first-hand experiences that carry weight in FCC proceedings.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve been watching the FCC drone spectrum issue go unaddressed since at least 2022, when the 5030–5091 MHz band was already being discussed as a potential dedicated UAS band. The commission allocated a slice of it in 2024, published congratulatory statements, and then let the implementation sit. The April 1 notice is the first time I’ve seen the FCC formally admit — in its own words — that the spectrum it already set aside hasn’t been put to use, and ask the industry to explain why. That’s progress, even if it’s slow.

The Counter-UAS section is where I’d spend the most energy if filing comments. The Section 333 barrier has existed for decades, but it became operationally urgent the moment public safety agencies started running interdiction programs at stadiums, prisons, and airports. The legal exposure is real. Agencies have been hoping no one files a lawsuit. The FCC acknowledging the problem out loud gives the industry a path to get it fixed through rulemaking, which is far more durable than the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach.

The harder truth is timing. This comment period feeds a rulemaking cycle. Rulemakings take 12 to 18 months under the best conditions. The current exemption window for restricted foreign drones expires January 1, 2027. The domestic supply chain the government says it wants to build at scale doesn’t exist yet. If the FCC hasn’t issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on spectrum access by Q3 2026, “American drone dominance” is a banner phrase, not a regulatory project.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.