Michigan House Passes 2 Of 15 SHIELD Drone Bills, Both Aimed At Chinese-Made Aircraft Procurement

The Michigan House on Tuesday passed two of the 15 bills in the SHIELD Michigan drone package, sending procurement restrictions on Chinese-made drones to the Senate while leaving the most legally contested provisions stalled in the House. House Bills 5329 and 5331 both target the same goal: barring state agencies and other public entities from spending state dollars on drones made by companies on federal “concern” lists, including the Department of Defense’s NDAA Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies and the Commerce Department’s Entity List. The other 13 bills, including the proposed “no drone zone” criminal penalties, police drone takedown authority, mandatory state geofencing app, and the statewide MDOT drone registry, did not move to the floor.

The press release from Rep. William Bruck (R-Erie Township), the package’s lead sponsor, announced “House passage of his bipartisan S.H.I.E.L.D. Michigan plan” and stated the package “now advances to the Senate for further consideration.” That framing collapses a 2-of-15 partial vote into an apparent full-package win. I flagged the federal preemption problems with this package in DroneXL’s February 2026 analysis, and the political signal in this week’s partial vote is more interesting than the bills that actually passed.

What HB 5329 and HB 5331 actually do

Both bills focus on procurement, not airspace. HB 5329, sponsored by Rep. Josh Schriver, prohibits any public entity from contracting to buy a drone that contains software developed in whole or in part by an entity on the NDAA Section 1260H list, the Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Sanction List under 31 CFR Part 586, or the Entity List under 15 CFR Part 744 Supplement No. 4. HB 5331, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Conlin (D-Ann Arbor Township), bars the use of state funds for drone purchases from those same entities through an amendment to the Management and Budget Act.

The bills are paired by design. According to the House Fiscal Agency analysis, HB 5329 cannot take effect unless HB 5330, the cybersecurity standards companion bill, is also enacted. HB 5330 has not passed the House. That tie-bar creates an immediate problem for anyone trying to call this a substantive policy change: one of the two bills that did pass is legally inoperative without a third bill that did not.

Conlin told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in March that her bill aligns Michigan’s drone procurement standards with federal guidelines and was modeled on a similar Kansas law. The five-year operational replacement window for DJI and other Chinese-made drones already in state inventory sits in HB 5328, which has not advanced.

The 13 bills still sitting in the House

The unpassed bills contain the provisions DroneXL flagged in February as likely to face federal preemption challenges. They include criminal penalties for drone flights over critical infrastructure, authority for state and local police to disable drones, the mandatory smartphone geofencing app for all drone operators, the standardized “No Drone Zone” signage program, expanded trespass provisions covering drone flights over private property, and the MDOT-administered statewide drone registry.

The House Fiscal Agency confirmed that the fiscal impact on state departments and local governments cannot currently be estimated. MDOT’s Office of Aeronautics told analysts that the operational ban in HB 5328 would require the department to replace most of its current drone fleet, which it uses for emergency response and bridge inspection, among other uses. Drones range from $5,000 to $50,000 each, per the analysis. DroneXL’s February 2026 coverage cited a $60 million implementation estimate across the full package.

The press release overstates what happened

Bruck’s release uses phrasing that conflates the package label with the actual vote. “House passage of his bipartisan S.H.I.E.L.D. Michigan plan” and “the package now advances to the Senate” both describe what only two of fifteen bills did. The other 13 are still in the House. Yahoo News, which carried the WTOL11 report on the vote, correctly noted that HB 5329 and HB 5331 “are the first two passed of the 15-bill package” and that “the other 13 bills in the legislative package are expected to be considered at a later date.”

That gap matters because it tells you which provisions even a friendly bipartisan majority is not yet willing to put on the floor. Procurement restrictions on Chinese-made drones are the lowest-friction part of state drone politics in 2026. They poll well and they do not run into FAA preemption. Authorizing police to shoot down drones and mandating a state geofencing app for all operators carry different legal exposure. The legislature evidently knows this.

Federal preemption is still the wall

Michigan’s drone preemption statute, MCL 259.305, already prevents local governments from making their own drone rules. The 2022 Michigan Court of Appeals decision against Ottawa County held that line, and the Michigan Coalition of Drone Operators has used it to challenge campus-wide bans as well. The SHIELD package would let the state do at the state level what local governments cannot do, and several of the unpassed bills push directly into FAA authority over airspace. The FAA’s July 2023 Office of the Chief Counsel fact sheet stated that state and local laws regulating airspace use face field preemption. The 2017 Singer v. City of Newton federal court ruling struck down a Massachusetts city ordinance on the same grounds.

Bruck has argued the federal SAFER SKIES Act, included in the December 2025 NDAA, provides cover for the police drone takedown authority in the SHIELD package. That law authorizes trained state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to disable drones that pose a “credible threat” to public safety, large events, critical infrastructure, and correctional facilities. The cover is real but narrow. SAFER SKIES does not authorize generalized “no drone zone” enforcement. It authorizes credible-threat counter-UAS at specifically protected events and sites, which is a different legal animal from a state-issued criminal statute applied to recreational and Part 107 operators.

DroneXL’s Take

I covered the SHIELD package in February when it landed for its first committee hearing. The substance has not improved since then. What changed this week is the politics, and the politics tell a useful story.

The two bills that passed are the ones every state in the country can pass without much trouble in 2026. Procurement bans on Chinese-made drones for state agencies are now the federal default, with the Pentagon and the FCC both moving in the same direction. Michigan piling on with HB 5329 and HB 5331 is unremarkable. It is the political equivalent of voting for a flag-and-puppies bill, and the tie-bar to HB 5330 means the “win” is legally inert until the cybersecurity companion bill also passes.

The bills that did not pass are the ones that actually mattered for everyday Part 107 operators and recreational pilots in Michigan. The “no drone zone” criminal penalties. The police takedown authority. The mandatory state geofencing app. The expanded trespass provisions. Those are the bills that would have changed how flying a drone in Michigan actually works. They did not advance.

That is the actual story. Even with bipartisan sponsorship, stakeholder engagement, and 18 months of drafting work, the harder bills could not get a floor vote. The Michigan Coalition of Drone Operators, the same group that beat Ottawa County in 2022 and is still in court with the University of Michigan, has been engaged on this package from the start. Their concerns about federal preemption and about distinguishing negligent from malicious flying are documented in the committee record.

The Senate gets HB 5329 and HB 5331 next. Watch what happens with HB 5328, the operational ban on Chinese-made drones already in state fleets, if and when the House sends it over. MDOT has already told the legislature, in writing, that the operational ban would require replacing most of its current drones. Whether the legislature is willing to swallow that cost when the bill is no longer abstract is an open question, not a prediction.

The bigger open question is whether the remaining 13 bills come up for a House vote at all, or whether the package gets quietly broken into pieces and only the procurement-friendly ones move. Bruck has not signaled a timeline for the rest. Neither has House leadership. The press release this week is doing some heavy lifting to make a partial vote look like more than it is. Readers who track state drone legislation should weight what got voted on, not what got branded.

Sources: Michigan House Republicans press release, Yahoo News / WTOL11, Michigan House Fiscal Agency analysis.

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