The FCC wrote drone light shows into its definition of military-grade equipment by name. Category 7 of Public Notice DA 26-758, the July proposal to cut off imports and sales of previously authorized foreign drones, covers swarming systems, and its second bullet reaches aircraft built for synchronized formations, “including applications such as multi-UAS light shows.” Comments in PS Docket 26-189 close September 2.
The industry that sentence describes runs overwhelmingly on foreign-built aircraft. The largest American operators fly Korean-made fleets, Chinese manufacturers supply most of the world’s show drone equipment, and even the company Kimbal Musk built from Intel’s old light show division runs a factory in China.
I have photographed these shows myself, from 600 drones rising over the IJ in Amsterdam in January 2023 to the 1,000-drone Franchise Freedom performance over Central Park that fall. The aircraft I watched that night in New York now sit inside a national security definition.
The FCC Puts Light Shows Inside Its Swarm Category
Category 7 defines swarming UAS two ways: autonomous systems that coordinate without human intervention, and aircraft purpose-built for synchronized formation flight. The second definition names multi-drone light shows as an example. Six other categories cover thermal imaging, LiDAR, docking stations, sprayers, defense-article aircraft, and anything at 55 pounds or more.
We broke down the full seven-category proposal when it landed on July 21. The mechanics matter here. The Federal Register published the notice on August 3, setting the September 2 comment deadline, and the proposal carries a 180-day wind-down after any final action. Marketing, in FCC usage, covers advertising, distribution, sale, and lease. A foreign-built show drone on the Covered List could no longer be imported or sold, and covered replacement components would dry up with it.
Existing fleets keep flying. The proposal exempts continued use of equipment already purchased, along with Blue UAS listed products, Buy American qualifying hardware, and anything holding a Conditional Approval from the Department of War or Homeland Security. The squeeze lands on fleet growth and replacement, which is where a show business lives. Operators add aircraft every season, and a crashed or aging drone needs a successor from somewhere.
The December 2025 Covered List action already blocked new authorizations for foreign show drones. As we reported last week, the July proposal goes further by reaching hardware the FCC already approved.
American Show Operators Fly Korean-Built Aircraft
Most of the American drone light show industry flies one aircraft: the UVify IFO, built in South Korea. UVify’s chief operating officer Robert Cheek put the number at roughly 70 percent of American show companies in January, with about 80 percent of the global light show market on the company’s hardware.
UVify is headquartered in Seattle with a sales office in San Francisco, and it raised nearly $42 million in a Series B round this February. None of that changes the analysis under the Covered List entry, which turns on where the aircraft is produced. A Korean-built IFO is foreign-produced covered equipment, and a formation-flight aircraft is the textbook Category 7 machine.
Sky Elements, the Texas company that bills itself as the largest show provider in the country, flies IFO fleets. Brightflight Drone Shows in Denver has grown past 800 aircraft at roughly $1,000 each while flying the Colorado 150 tour we covered in January, and it cleared a fresh FAA altitude waiver this week authorizing 500-foot operations over Highlands Ranch. That is the regulatory posture of this industry: FAA waivers, visual observers, NOTAMs, geofences. The FCC now files the aircraft category under military capability.
Domestic builders exist. Firefly Drone Shows in Detroit engineers its aircraft in-house and markets itself as the only US-built show operator. Verge Aero, whose X-series hardware we covered back in 2022, designs and builds its own aircraft. Both stand to gain from a proposal that removes their foreign competition, and neither comes close to supplying the whole industry today.
Chinese Manufacturers Supply Most Of The World’s Show Drones
On the equipment side, the global market belongs to Shenzhen. A QYResearch report that Damoda promotes puts its share of drone show equipment at 36.42 percent worldwide. Crosstown rival HighGreat holds 24.12 percent, with Chinese suppliers near 80 percent combined.
Those are figures a market leader circulates about itself, and they track with everything visible in the field. Damoda holds six Guinness records, flew 10,197 drones from a single computer in September 2024, and made its North American debut over San Diego in May 2025 with a 1,000-drone show. The company flew CES 2026 in Las Vegas this past January as its listed official drone show operator. HighGreat claims annual production capacity of one million drones from its Longgang facility.
The dual-use question around this hardware is not imaginary. When Damoda unveiled a containerized system last fall that auto-deploys 648 drones from a truck at one click, The War Zone covered it as a signal of evolving swarm threats, while noting the system is built for entertainment and flies pre-scripted, localized routines.
Nova Sky Stories Manufactures In The US, Europe, And China
The strangest supply chain in the industry belongs to the company with the most American story. Nova Sky Stories is what became of Intel’s drone light show division, which Kimbal Musk bought in 2022 along with 9,000 Shooting Star aircraft.
Those Intel-lineage drones flew Super Bowl halftime shows, the Tokyo Olympics, and the Central Park performance we covered in October 2023. The 600 drones I photographed over Amsterdam at the A’DAM Tower show in January 2023 were Nova aircraft from that same Intel bloodline.
Boulder-based Nova raised $50 million last August, with Jeffrey Katzenberg joining the board through WndrCo. Asked about tariffs on Yahoo Finance, Musk said the company builds its own drones in factories in the US, Europe, and China: “You’ve got to be able to manufacture in the markets you’re going to serve.” Under a country-of-production rule, the China-built portion of an American founder’s fleet sits on the Covered List next to Damoda’s.
Creative Skies Tells Show Operators To File Before September 2
At least one operator is organizing. Creative Skies published an industry alert on Docket 26-189 arguing that six of the seven categories describe aircraft show pilots never touch, and that Category 7’s second bullet reaches the entire light show business.
The FCC asks directly whether its list adequately captures military-grade equipment and whether domestic alternatives exist, and the alert lands on that opening: “They are asking us the exact question we can answer.” The warning in the alert is about the record. If the docket holds a national security determination and filings from defense-funded commenters, and nothing from the people who build and fly show aircraft, the proposal gets adopted on that record. Comments go through the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System under PS Docket 26-189, and the Drone Advocacy Alliance action page walks through both filing routes. Disclosure: DroneXL has been a Drone Advocacy Alliance partner since June 2024, and the Alliance receives sponsorship from DJI.
DroneXL’s Take
A show drone carries a light bulb. It flies a pre-programmed path inside a geofence, over a secured perimeter, under an FAA waiver that took months to win. Brightflight’s new 500-foot authorization runs five pages of provisions, down to NOTAM filing windows and a prohibition on ADS-B transmissions. This is the most supervised category of civilian drone flight in America, and the FCC just filed its aircraft under military capability.
I will give the Commission the honest version of its case. Swarm technology is genuinely dual-use, and Damoda’s one-click container launcher unsettled defense analysts for defensible reasons. Chinese firms holding roughly 80 percent of the global show equipment market is a real concentration, not a talking point. If the concern is that hardware, the December action already answered it: no new foreign-built show drone can earn an FCC authorization without landing an exemption. The July proposal reaches past that border and into the replacement pipeline of American small businesses.
And look at who it actually catches. The workhorse of the US industry is built in South Korea, a treaty ally, by a company headquartered in Seattle that just raised American venture money. Write “produced in China” and you get a supply chain policy. Write “foreign” and you sweep a Texas operator’s Korean fleet into the same bucket as hardware from Shenzhen. That is not security drafting, and my read is the category was written to be wide first and justified second.
The question that decides most of the industry’s supply line is whether the Korean-built IFO can land one of the three exemption lanes: Blue UAS, Buy American, or a Conditional Approval with an onshoring plan. Nothing in the docket answers it yet. Watch the September 2 record for whether show operators put their fleet counts and replacement costs in front of the agency, because the FCC decides on the record it gets, and right now the loudest voices in that record want this hardware gone. An industry that replaced fireworks by being safer should not go quiet while being defined as a weapons category.
Sources: FCC Public Notice DA 26-758, Federal Register 91 FR 48870, FCC Fact Sheet, Creative Skies Industry Alert, DroneVideos, Yahoo Finance, The War Zone, FAA Certificate of Waiver 107W-2026-01798
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
