Commercial UAV Expo opens Tuesday at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, and the first item on the conference program is a 9 a.m. panel on what the FCC’s Covered List decision means for commercial fleets. More than 3,700 professionals and 240-plus exhibitors are here for three days. Two federal deadlines fall inside them.
DJI has booth 903 and a $20 afternoon workshop. It has no keynote slot. It is also carrying a projected $1.56 billion loss for 2026 from the same Federal Communications Commission action the opening panel is built around, a number that comes from DJI’s own filing at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
DroneXL is on the floor Tuesday and Wednesday, and I have tracked every Covered List public notice since the Commission issued the first one on December 22, 2025. The panel that opens this show covers that decision. The proceeding that could actually strand American fleets closes for comment tomorrow.
The Covered List Blocks New Models And Leaves Existing Fleets Alone
The FCC added foreign-made drones and critical components to its Covered List on December 22, 2025. The Commission’s own public notice said the action applies to new device models, leaves existing owners alone, and lets retailers keep selling models authorized before that date.
That is the ruling Tuesday morning’s panel takes apart. Will Dawson of The Agricultural Drone Initiative and Ben Hance of DroneDeploy join Jared Janacek of Texas Drone Company, moderated by Commercial UAV News’ Erin Williams, to work through what December means for fleet procurement. It is a fair question. It is also last year’s question. DroneXL walked through the December order and what it did and did not touch the week it landed.
This year’s question is Public Notice DA 26-758, docketed as PS Docket 26-189. It proposes pulling import and marketing clearance from foreign drones the Commission has already authorized, across seven capability categories that reach thermal sensors and dock-equipped aircraft on sale today. Comments close Wednesday, September 2, the middle day of this show.
That machinery is not hypothetical. On June 26 the FCC used exactly this tool against previously authorized telecom equipment from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua, closing a four-year window in which pre-approved models could still legally enter the country. Drones were left out of that order. They are the subject of this one.
DJI Booked A Booth, A Paid Workshop And No Stage Time
DJI Enterprise announced booth 903 for the three-day show and is running a two-part workshop Tuesday afternoon on L3 LiDAR processing in Terra and FlightHub 2 dock automation. Registration costs $20. Neither of the expo’s two 2026 keynotes includes anyone from DJI.
The workshop runs 1 to 5 p.m. with a half-hour break in the middle, and it is the whole of DJI’s stage presence this week. The same expo page still carries the company’s 2024 entry, a four-hour Precision Surveying demonstration led by a named DJI solutions engineer and included with any conference or exhibitor pass. Two years on, the listing is a $20 add-on.
The reason is in the court record. DJI filed its petition for review on February 20 as Case 26-1029, and brought in former FCC enforcement chief Travis LeBlanc to argue it. An April 15 opposition brief, signed by LeBlanc and former Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, put figures on the damage for the first time. The FCC has set aside authorizations for 14 DJI products, five of them aircraft, which DJI projects at $700 million. Another 25 planned 2026 launches cannot receive authorization at all, which DJI puts at $860 million. That is the $1.56 billion.
American Contractors Fly DJI At 97 Percent With No Domestic Backup
DJI builds the primary drone for 97.1% of Associated Builders and Contractors members who fly, according to a survey the trade association released on August 17. Autel Robotics takes the remaining 2.9%. Not one respondent named Skydio, the only American manufacturer on the ballot.
Most of those programs are small. 61.9% of the drone-flying respondents have spent between $1,000 and $10,000 on hardware and related equipment, and four in five use the aircraft for site progress monitoring. Few of them have a procurement department. They bought a Mavic because it worked.
Agriculture got there first. A year ago DroneXL reported on farmers pricing American-made spray options as the Covered List deadline approached, which is roughly the constituency Dawson represents on that panel. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in December that the agency would work with US drone makers to “unleash American drone dominance.” ABC’s ballot is what that looks like nine months on.
Section 232 Tariffs Take Effect On The Show’s Closing Day
Section 232 tariffs on imported drones and components take effect Thursday, September 3, the final day of the expo. President Trump signed the proclamation on August 13. Drones over 25 kilograms (55 pounds) at maximum takeoff weight, thermal-equipped aircraft and docking stations pay 100%. Nearly everything else pays 25%.
The duty applies to declared import value rather than retail price, so what a buyer actually pays depends on how much of it importers swallow. The proclamation adopts Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s finding that the country relies too heavily on foreign sources for uncrewed systems and their components. Exhibitors will spend Thursday morning selling hardware that gets more expensive before the hall closes.
DroneXL’s Take
The scheduling here is almost too neat. A room full of operators spends Tuesday morning working out what a December ruling did to their fleets. The proceeding that could take those fleets away closes its comment window Wednesday, one floor and one day from that room. Most of the people it affects will be standing in a convention center in Nevada rather than typing into a docket.
Give the government its strongest point first. The Commission did not invent this. Congress wrote Section 1709 into the FY25 defense bill, and under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act the FCC cannot update that list on its own initiative. The national security determination behind December came from the executive branch. The FCC’s own motion to dismiss argues the statutes leave it no discretion to skip an update once the conditions are met. December’s version also drew a real line: your drone stayed legal, your dealer kept selling. Two days after that order I wrote that the Commission could close that door whenever it chose, and in June it showed exactly how.
What is on the table now is different. Pulling import and marketing clearance from aircraft that 97.1% of American contractors already standardized on would be a demolition with nothing built to replace it. Skydio was on ABC’s ballot. It scored zero. You do not fix a supply chain by removing the only tools that work and hoping a domestic industry materializes to fill the hole. That is the part I keep waiting for someone at the Commission to answer.
One question sits under all of this, and it is a narrow one. The FCC built the legacy-equipment tool in its October 2025 equipment authorization order, used it for the first time on June 26 against five Chinese telecom brands, and has not said whether it will point the same tool at drones. PS Docket 26-189 is where that question is being asked. Wednesday is when the asking stops.
None of what decides this is on the exhibit floor. What lands in PS Docket 26-189 by Wednesday night will matter more than anything said at a booth, and so will the Ninth Circuit. DJI asked that court in April to deny the FCC’s motion to dismiss and hold the case for six months, with a status report due in November. The court has not ruled. DroneXL is here through Wednesday, and the readout from the panel follows.
If you have a press release, or you want to grab me at the show for a quick interview or a product demo, I am at Caesars Forum through Wednesday. Reach me at haye [at] dronexl [dot] co.
Sources: Commercial UAV News, Commercial UAV Expo, FCC Public Notice DOC-416839A1, DJI Enterprise
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
