FCC Clears VEX AIR Classroom Drone From Covered List As Exemption Tally Reaches Eleven Manufacturers, DJI Stays Blocked

The FCC‘s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau on June 4 exempted the VEX AIR Uncrewed Aircraft System from the Covered List, after the Department of War granted Innovation First International a Conditional Approval that runs through December 31, 2026. The same public notice, DA 26-548, clears five Sagemcom USA router models from the list through December 5, 2027.

The VEX AIR is not an enterprise inspection platform or a defense system. It is an indoor classroom drone for high school and college STEM programs, with a flight ceiling of 2.5 meters (8 feet). It is the first education-market drone to clear the national security review, and its approval says as much about the reach of the December drone ban as it does about VEX.

I have tracked every Covered List public notice since the FCC added all foreign-made drones on December 22, 2025. The cadence is now steady: the Bureau has issued Conditional Approval batches roughly every two to three weeks since mid-March.

VEX AIR Becomes The First Classroom Drone To Clear National Security Review

The VEX AIR, built by Texas-based Innovation First International under its VEX Robotics brand, received a Department of War Conditional Approval dated June 4, 2026. The determination exempts the drone from the FCC Covered List through December 31, 2026, restoring its path to FCC equipment authorization and U.S. sales.

VEX Robotics introduced the AIR at ISTELive 25 in July 2025 as its first drone product. The spec sheet reads nothing like a security threat: indoor use only, a maximum altitude of 2.5 meters (8 feet), interchangeable mission modules, a dual-camera system, and a touchscreen controller with live video for classroom competitions in grades 9 through 12.

That a teaching tool which never leaves the gymnasium needed an interagency national security clearance is the counter-intuitive part. The December order swept in all UAS and UAS critical components produced abroad, regardless of use case or operating environment. A drone capped below basketball-rim height fell under the same prohibition as an industrial platform at the Part 107 weight ceiling of 25 kilograms (55 pounds). The Conditional Approval process was the only way back in.

The Drone Exemption List Now Spans Eleven Manufacturers

Eleven drone manufacturers have now secured Department of War Conditional Approvals since the pathway opened, starting with the first four exemptions in March 2026 and growing through near-biweekly public notices into June. Every UAS approval on the books terminates on the same date.

The mix has broadened with each batch. The March approvals were enterprise systems aimed at inspection and tactical communications. Since then the Department of War has cleared a confined-space inspection drone, a warehouse inventory platform, cargo aircraft, agricultural spray drones, and now a classroom trainer. Neither DJI nor Autel, the two manufacturers behind most of the drones Americans actually fly, appears anywhere on the list.

On the router side, Sagemcom joins Netgear, Amazon’s eero, Adtran, Calix, Nokia, and Alpha Networks, all cleared between April and June. The list of approved devices lives on the FCC’s supply chain page, which the Bureau updates with each public notice.

Every Drone Exemption Expires On December 31, 2026

All eleven UAS Conditional Approvals terminate on December 31, 2026, one day before the Blue UAS and Buy American carve-outs lapse on January 1, 2027. Router approvals, by contrast, run into late 2027, a horizon nearly a full year longer than any drone receives.

The FCC has not published what renewal looks like. When the agency exempted Blue UAS drones in January, the January 1, 2027 sunset was baked into the Department of War’s determination. The Conditional Approvals carry the same end date. Whether the Department of War re-reviews each manufacturer, extends approvals in bulk, or lets them lapse is not addressed in any public notice the Bureau has issued in this docket since December.

The asymmetry with routers is hard to miss. A Sagemcom gateway gets clearance into December 2027. A drone that flies indoors at 2.5 meters gets just under seven months. Nothing in DA 26-548 explains the difference.

DJI And Autel Remain Locked Out Of The Process

No Chinese manufacturer has received a Conditional Approval, and DJI and Autel Robotics remain blocked from new FCC equipment authorizations while both companies contest the Covered List designation through separate legal and administrative channels that are still pending as of this writing.

DJI is fighting on three tracks. Its petition for reconsideration at the FCC drew a Department of Defense opposition filing that cited classified intelligence, including an annex delivered to Congress in April. Its Ninth Circuit petition, Case 26-1029, filed February 20, asks a federal court to vacate the December designation. Its D.C. Circuit appeal of the Pentagon’s Section 1260H listing was argued in February.

Autel filed an Application for Review arguing the ban rests on secret evidence and borrowed allegations aimed at DJI. The Section 1709 joint-venture clause bars Autel from the onshoring partnerships that could otherwise open the Conditional Approval route, a statutory wall the FCC cannot waive.

Meanwhile, existing authorized hardware keeps flying. The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology extended the firmware waiver to January 2029, conceding that cutting off security patches for the installed fleet would be worse than the ban itself.

DroneXL’s Take

When FCC Chairman Brendan Carr outlined the Conditional Approval pathway at CES 2026, I wrote that the drone community should pay closer attention to it than to his Wi-Fi announcements. Five months later, the verdict on the mechanism itself is in: it works, on a predictable cadence, for manufacturers the Department of War is willing to look at. Four enterprise systems in March became eleven manufacturers by June, and the profile has shifted from tactical data links to warehouse robots and a high school trainer.

The VEX AIR approval is the most revealing entry yet, precisely because it is the least threatening. As I reported in January, the early exemptions did little for anyone outside government sales. A classroom drone clearing the process shows the review reaching the consumer-adjacent end of the market. It also shows what the December order actually banned: not a threat category, but an entire manufacturing geography, down to drones that cannot climb above a doorframe.

Two dates matter from here, and both are on the calendar rather than in anyone’s imagination. December 31, 2026 is when all eleven UAS approvals terminate, with no published renewal process. And DJI’s Ninth Circuit case 26-1029 is pending now; if the court narrows or vacates the December designation, the entire Conditional Approval architecture built on top of it changes shape. Whether the Department of War intends these exemptions as a bridge to something permanent or as a year-long trial is a question no public notice has answered. I will keep asking it.

Source: Federal Communications Commission

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