Autel Tells FCC The Drone Ban Rests On Secret Evidence And Borrowed Allegations Aimed At DJI

Autel Robotics filed a reply at the Federal Communications Commission arguing the agency added the company to its Covered List on the basis of classified material Autel was never allowed to see and technical complaints originally aimed at DJI. The reply landed in ET Docket 26-23 for the May 11, 2026 deadline, and it sharpens the constitutional case Autel raised when it filed its Application for Review in January.

The reply does something Autel has not done publicly before. It walks through sworn declarations describing how the company handles flight data and what encryption protects its communications. None of that operational detail appeared in the December 22, 2025 Public Notice that put the company on the Covered List. I have followed this proceeding since the FCC’s October 28, 2025 vote that granted the agency retroactive ban authority, and this is the first time Autel’s substantive technical record has reached the public docket in a single document.

The Fifth Amendment Claim Is The Spine Of The Filing

Autel argues the determination process relied on classified and undisclosed material, citing language in the Department of War’s own filings as acknowledgment that such material was used. The company says it was never given meaningful notice or a chance to respond before the regulatory action took effect.

The filing leans on Ralls Corp. v. CFIUS, the 2014 D.C. Circuit ruling that held national security review cannot rest on opaque, category-wide assumptions without giving affected companies access to at least the unclassified portion of the record against them. Autel applies the same logic to the FCC proceeding. “The Constitution does not permit so severe a deprivation to rest on opaque, category-wide assumptions,” the company wrote.

Autel Wants The Record To Stop Treating It As An Extension Of DJI

The filing attacks the Foundation for American Innovation’s opposition brief by name. That brief, Autel argues, leaned heavily on DJI-specific controversies involving AeroScope, mobile app behavior, and alleged telemetry collection, and used them to justify keeping Autel on the Covered List. Autel’s response is that evidence against one company cannot automatically justify restrictions on another.

This separation argument is more than rhetorical positioning. Section 1709 of the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act named DJI and Autel together, but the FCC’s December 22, 2025 Public Notice swept in every foreign-made drone manufacturer regardless of whether national security agencies had reviewed them individually. Autel argues that lack of individualized review is the procedural defect at the heart of the Application for Review.

The Operational Claims Are Specific Enough To Be Tested

The reply describes Autel’s data handling in terms the FCC record had not previously seen. According to the filing in ET Docket 26-23, flight data is stored locally by default and not automatically uploaded to company servers. Drone communications and stored data use AES-128 or AES-256 encryption. No third party has been authorized to access drone operation software or customer accounts.

These are not abstract assurances. They are claims a national security agency could verify or rebut. The filing puts the technical record into the docket precisely so the next round of FCC deliberation cannot dismiss Autel with the same category-wide framing the original Public Notice used.

The FCC Is The Only Forum Where Autel Is Currently Fighting

Autel’s Application for Review at the FCC is the slowest of the legal pathways open to foreign drone makers blocked by the Covered List. The China Unicom precedent shows the agency taking nearly three years to resolve a similar reconsideration petition. DJI’s parallel Ninth Circuit case (Case 26-1029) tests whether the FCC met its statutory burden under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, and DJI’s separate D.C. Circuit appeal of the Pentagon’s Section 1260H designation runs on a different proceeding entirely.

Autel has no parallel Ninth Circuit lawsuit on file. Its case lives or dies at the FCC. That makes the substance of this reply more consequential for Autel than the equivalent reply is for DJI, because the FCC is the only forum where Autel is currently arguing the merits. The same reply deadline produced the broader operator-level filings DroneXL covered on May 7, but Autel’s own brief is the document that has to carry the constitutional argument.

DroneXL’s Take

Autel has been a fixture of DroneXL’s reporting since I covered the company’s made-in-USA EVO II Dual Bundles announcement in September 2020. The company’s claim that it has been operationally distinct from DJI for years is consistent with the way I have written about it across that period. Whether the FCC record agrees with my editorial position is a different question, and one the docket is now better positioned to answer than it was last month.

The encryption and local-storage claims matter because they are falsifiable. If a national security agency holds data that contradicts them, the FCC reply now creates a record where that contradiction has to surface. If no such contradiction exists, the December 22, 2025 Public Notice will look less like a security determination and more like the categorical industrial policy critics have always argued it is. The same logic applied when the FCC extended the same playbook to consumer routers in March without showing its evidence then either.

Watch ET Docket 26-23 between now and the full Commission’s ruling on the Application for Review. The FCC has not committed to a timeline. The agency could rule before DJI’s requested six-month abeyance in the Ninth Circuit expires, in which case the Autel decision arrives first and shapes the Ninth Circuit record. The agency could also sit on the petition for years, as it did with China Unicom. Both paths are on the table. Neither has been ruled out.

What Autel did not address in this filing, and was not required to, is the joint-venture clause in Section 1709 that bars the company from setting up domestic production through partnerships with US manufacturers, even if the FCC eventually exempts its current products. The SiFly, Mobilicom, ScoutDI, and Verge exemptions in March showed the conditional approval pathway works for non-Chinese manufacturers willing to onshore covered components. That pathway is closed to Autel by statute, not by FCC discretion. Whether Congress is willing to revisit Section 1709 once the FCC record fills in is an open question that the Application for Review itself cannot answer.

Source: Autel Robotics Application for Review and reply filings, FCC ET Docket 26-23.

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