DroneXL filed formal comments with the Federal Communications Commission today in PS Docket 26-189, asking the agency to withdraw its proposed ban on importing and selling foreign-made drones that carry thermal sensors, LiDAR or docking stations, and to replace it with data-security standards that apply to every manufacturer. The comment window closes tonight.

I have covered this docket since the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau opened it on July 21, and the filing below is the argument I have been building in that coverage, put on the record where the Commission is legally required to consider it. The full text follows, unedited, so that any pilot, department or business still writing a comment this evening can see what one looks like and borrow whatever helps.

Disclosure, as in the filing itself: DroneXL has been a partner of the Drone Advocacy Alliance since June 2024. The Alliance receives sponsorship from DJI. DroneXL is not paid by DJI, and these comments are mine.

The Filing Asks The FCC To Narrow Its Definition And Test Every Drone

The filing asks the Commission to decline the prohibition as written and to narrow its seven-category definition of military-grade, which currently reaches any drone carrying a thermal sensor, any drone carrying LiDAR, and every docking station. In place of an origin-based ban, it proposes verifiable data-security requirements for every manufacturer.

The core of the argument is a contradiction inside Public Notice DA 26-758 itself. In its economic analysis the Bureau tentatively concludes the ban will not hurt consumers because recreational pilots are unlikely to fly military-grade aircraft. Under the definition written a few pages earlier, the DJI Air 3S, Mini 5 Pro, Avata 360 and Neo 2 are all military-grade, because each carries a short-range LiDAR sensor for obstacle avoidance. DroneXL laid out that overlap on August 16. The filing asks the Commission to reconcile the two positions before adopting either.

The eight specific requests at the end of the letter cover the rest: carve-outs for public safety agencies and Part 107 operators, an exemption for sub-250 gram and entry-level aircraft, completion of the security review Congress asked for in Section 1709 of the FY2025 NDAA, and, if any restriction survives, grandfathered repair parts and a wind-down of at least 24 months.

Comments Close Tonight And The FCC Already Refused To Extend

Comments in PS Docket 26-189 are due today, September 2, 2026. The Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology denied three requests to extend the deadline on August 28, and by Tuesday evening fewer than 3,000 comments had been filed.

The deadline comes from the Federal Register notice published August 3 at 91 FR 48870, which set comments at 30 days from publication. The extension requests came from DRONERESPONDERS, the Commercial Drone Alliance and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the Bureau turned all three down in Order DA 26-892. Electronic comments count as filed on the deadline date if they land by midnight Eastern time, per the FCC’s own filing guidance.

Greg Reverdiau of Pilot Institute told the Commercial UAV Expo keynote audience Tuesday that about 2,600 comments were on file when he last counted, against nearly half a million certificated remote pilots. DroneXL reported that count and his reaction to it last night. One comment for every 180 Part 107 holders is the record the Bureau will read.

How To File Your Own Comment In Docket 26-189

Filing takes about ten minutes. No lawyer is required. The FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System accepts a short typed comment through its Express form, or a longer document with attachments through its Standard form, and both land in the same public docket under proceeding number 26-189.

For a typed comment, open the ECFS Express form. In the Proceeding(s) box, type 26-189 and select the entry for PS Docket No. 26-189 when it appears; the docket must show as selected before you move on. Type your name into Name(s) of Filer(s) and press Enter so it registers. Add your email, which ECFS does not publish, and your mailing address, which it does. Paste your comment into the Brief Comments box, tick the acknowledgment, and submit. Save the confirmation number the system returns.

For anything longer than a few paragraphs, or if you have replacement quotes, invoices, fleet inventories or grant paperwork to put on the record, use the Standard filing form instead. Enter the same proceeding number, choose Comment as the filing type, and upload a PDF. The Bureau asked in the notice for exactly this kind of data: how many aircraft are already in the country, what they cost to replace, and what shipments are en route.

On what to write, Reverdiau’s advice from the Tuesday keynote is the best I heard all week. Describe your own operation: what the drone does, who depends on the work, what losing import clearance for it costs you, in dollars where you have them. A paragraph about your county’s search-and-rescue team carries more weight than a page of policy. The Drone Advocacy Alliance keeps a step-by-step filing page, and the Drone Service Providers Alliance has been walking operators through this for weeks. Everything you file is public, including the name and address you enter.

The Full Text Of DroneXL’s Comments

What follows is the complete text of the comments DroneXL filed on September 2, 2026, reproduced as filed. Readers who want a structure to borrow are welcome to it, though the notice asks for operators’ own cost figures, which no publication can supply on their behalf.

Comments of Haye Kesteloo, Editor-in-Chief, DroneXL

Before the Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC 20554 In the Matter of: Seeking Comment on Prohibiting the Importation and Marketing of Certain Foreign-Produced UAS and UAS Critical Components PS Docket No. 26-189, Public Notice DA 26-758

Filed: September 2, 2026

Who I am and why I am filing

I am the founder and Editor-in-Chief of DroneXL.co, an independent drone news publication based in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Since April 2020 I have published more than 8,400 articles on drone technology, regulation, public safety programs and the drone industry, reaching roughly 5.5 million readers a year, most of them American pilots, first responders, small business owners and drone service providers. I have covered this docket since the Bureau and OET opened it on July 21, 2026, and I have read Public Notice DA 26-758 in full.

Disclosure: DroneXL has been a partner of the Drone Advocacy Alliance since June 2024. The Alliance receives sponsorship from DJI. DroneXL is not paid by DJI and these comments are my own.

I am not writing to argue that national security is unimportant. I am writing because the Commission has chosen the widest possible reading of the interagency determination it is acting on, and the record should reflect what that choice costs the people who fly this equipment for a living.

1. The proposed “military-grade” definition is written backward from the hardware, not forward from the threat

The notice defines seven categories: aircraft at or above 55 lb (25 kg), aerosol dispensers, thermal imaging sensors, LiDAR sensing, docking stations, aircraft built to carry a defense article, and swarming systems.

Two of these describe genuinely specialized capabilities. The others describe the standard toolkit of American commercial and public-safety aviation:

  • LiDAR. Category four reaches any drone that integrates LiDAR sensing. That includes the DJI Air 3S, Mini 5 Pro, Avata 360 and the 151-gram Neo 2, each of which carries a short-range, forward-facing sensor with a published range of roughly 0.3 to 25 meters. Its function is low-light obstacle avoidance. It cannot map terrain, penetrate foliage or navigate a GPS-denied environment, which are the justifications the notice cites for including LiDAR at all. A palm-launched selfie drone is not a defense article because it can avoid a tree branch.

    The notice also ignores what obstacle-avoidance LiDAR is actually for on working aircraft: it is the sensor that lets a pilot fly safely indoors, inside a burning or collapsed structure, through smoke, and in the low-visibility conditions where cameras alone fail. Firefighters use it to clear a building before sending people in. Inspectors use it inside tanks, culverts and warehouses. Removing it does not make anyone safer. It makes the drone more likely to hit something, and it takes away the tool that keeps a human out of the dangerous space.

  • Thermal imaging. A thermal sensor on a sub-2 kg aircraft is how volunteer search-and-rescue teams find a lost hiker after dark, how fire departments read hot spots through smoke, and how roofing and solar contractors find moisture and failed panels. It is a life-safety tool before it is anything else.

  • Docking stations. Docks are the backbone of Drone as First Responder programs across the country. Pulling their import and marketing clearance does not protect those departments; it strands them.

  • Aerosol dispensers and 55 lb aircraft. These are agricultural spray platforms. American farmers adopted them because they are cheaper, safer and more precise than the alternatives.

The Commission should narrow the definition to capabilities that are actually specialized: exclude short-range obstacle-avoidance sensors from the LiDAR category entirely, and carve out thermal sensors and docking stations used by public safety agencies and Part 107 commercial operators.

2. The notice contradicts itself, and the cost analysis rests on the contradiction

In the economic section, the Commission tentatively concludes the prohibition will not materially harm consumers because recreational users are “unlikely to fly military-grade UAS.” Earlier in the same document it writes a definition under which four of the most popular consumer drones sold in this country are military-grade because they carry obstacle sensors.

Both statements cannot be true. Either the definition is wrong or the cost analysis is. The Commission should reconcile them on the record before adopting either.

3. Domestic fundraising is not domestic replacement capacity

To argue the ban will not bite, the notice points at capital raised by Zipline, BRINC, Skydio, Anduril, Neros, Red Cat and Unusual Machines. Raised capital is not shipped product. None of these companies today offers a sub-250 gram consumer aircraft, a $500 thermal-capable small drone, or a dock-based DFR system at the price and volume American departments and small operators currently buy. Several of them do not sell to consumers at all.

A survey of 885 operators presented at Commercial UAV Expo this week found 45.8% of them frozen in wait-and-see mode on purchasing. Pilot Institute told the same audience it expects a drone hiring cliff within two to three years as training pipelines dry up. That is the economic effect of this proceeding before a single rule has been adopted.

I ask the Commission to require actual evidence of available, price-comparable domestic substitutes for each capability category before removing the imports that category depends on.

4. Affordable small drones are an entry point into aviation. This proposal closes it.

The notice treats a $300 consumer drone as a national security artifact. In practice it is the first aircraft most future aviation professionals ever fly.

I have interviewed hundreds of drone service providers, public safety pilots and industry hires over six years of covering this industry. The pattern is consistent: they started as hobbyists with an affordable drone or an RC model aircraft, earned a Part 107 certificate, took on paying work, and built a business or a career from there. Many went on to manned aviation, aerospace engineering, or public safety flight programs. Nearly half a million Americans now hold a Part 107 certificate. Very few of them started with a $10,000 enterprise platform.

The aircraft that feed that pipeline are precisely the ones this definition sweeps in: sub-250 gram drones and entry-level consumer models whose only “military-grade” feature is a short-range obstacle sensor. Remove them from the American market and there is no affordable domestic substitute for a teenager to learn on. The Academy of Model Aeronautics is asking its members to file in this docket for the same reason: model aviation has been the on-ramp to aviation careers for a century, and this proposal narrows that on-ramp without ever acknowledging it exists.

Pilot Institute told the Commercial UAV Expo keynote audience this week that it expects a drone hiring cliff within two to three years. The damage from this proceeding lands on the next generation of pilots, technicians and small business owners, not on the current one. The Commission’s cost analysis does not account for a single dollar of it.

5. Volunteer fire departments and search-and-rescue teams cannot absorb this

The public agencies with the most to lose here are the ones with the least money. Volunteer fire departments and search-and-rescue organizations across rural America run on donations and small grants. They adopted thermal-equipped small drones because a $5,000 to $7,000 aircraft with a 640×512 radiometric sensor, such as the DJI Mavic 3 Thermal or Autel EVO II Dual 640T, gave them a capability that previously required a helicopter they could never afford. That capability finds a missing child in a cornfield after dark, spots a hiker with a broken leg below a ridgeline, and shows a firefighter where the fire is inside a roof before anyone climbs onto it.

Domestic and Blue UAS thermal platforms with comparable capability run two to four times as much: roughly $7,000 to $9,000 for a Parrot ANAFI USA, $12,000 to $20,000 or more for Skydio X2 and X10 thermal packages before recurring software licensing, and $13,000 to $18,000 for BRINC LEMUR 2 and Teal 2 class aircraft. For a paid metropolitan department that is a budget line. For a volunteer department it is the difference between having the tool and not having it. When the aircraft they own fails and no replacement or repair part can be imported, the capability is gone, and the people it would have found are not found.

The Commission should not adopt a rule whose predictable effect is that fewer Americans are located alive by the volunteers who go looking for them.

6. The security concerns are real. A sales ban is the wrong instrument for them.

The concern with foreign-produced drones is data: where flight logs, imagery and telemetry go, and who can reach the aircraft through its firmware. Those are engineering problems with engineering answers, and the Commission has the authority to demand them as a condition of equipment authorization, for every manufacturer regardless of country of origin:

  • Mandatory local data mode and no-network operation, verifiable by independent test.
  • Third-party code and firmware audits, with results filed with the Commission.
  • Data residency requirements: telemetry and imagery stored on U.S. infrastructure, or not at all.
  • Flight-log encryption and operator ownership of all data.
  • Disclosure and independent verification of every remote-command pathway.

Congress asked for exactly this kind of review in Section 1709 of the FY2025 NDAA. No agency completed it, and DJI was added to the Covered List by default in December 2025 rather than by a finding. The Commission is now proposing to build a retroactive sales ban on top of a designation that was never the product of a technical review. Doing the review, and writing performance-based security standards from what it finds, would make every drone sold in America safer. Banning one country’s hardware makes Americans buy less capable equipment, or none, and leaves the security question unanswered for everyone else.

7. Revoking authorizations the Commission already granted destroys regulatory certainty

Every aircraft this proposal reaches passed the Commission’s own equipment authorization process. Operators, dealers and public agencies bought in reliance on that. A 180-day wind-down after Federal Register publication does not come close to covering inventory already inside the country, shipments in transit, or the depreciation schedules on fleets that departments financed over multiple years. If the Commission proceeds at all, it should grandfather all previously authorized models indefinitely for import of repair parts and accessories, allow existing U.S. inventory to be sold through without a deadline, and set any wind-down for new units at no less than 24 months.

8. What I am asking the Commission to do

  1. Decline to adopt the proposed prohibition as written.
  2. Narrow the “military-grade” definition to exclude obstacle-avoidance sensors, and carve out thermal sensors, docking stations and agricultural platforms used by public safety and Part 107 operators.
  3. Reconcile the definition with the economic analysis before taking further action.
  4. Replace an origin-based ban with performance-based, verifiable data-security requirements that apply to every manufacturer seeking equipment authorization.
  5. Complete the security review Congress asked for and put its findings on the public record.
  6. Exempt sub-250 gram aircraft and entry-level consumer models from any prohibition, and account in the cost analysis for the loss of the aviation training pipeline they support.
  7. Exempt public safety agencies, including volunteer fire departments and search-and-rescue organizations, from any restriction on acquiring, repairing or replacing thermal-equipped aircraft and docking stations.
  8. If any restriction proceeds, grandfather repair parts and existing inventory and extend the wind-down to at least 24 months.

The drones in these categories put out fires, find missing people, inspect bridges and power lines, spray crops, and pay the mortgages of thousands of small American businesses. They are also the first aircraft the next generation of American pilots will ever fly. Security concerns about them deserve a serious answer. Taking them away from a volunteer firefighter and a fourteen-year-old in a backyard is not one.

Respectfully submitted,

Haye Kesteloo Founder and Editor-in-Chief, DroneXL.co Croton-on-Hudson, New York haye at dronexl dot co

DroneXL’s Take

The FCC will decide this proceeding on the record it holds at midnight tonight, and that record is thin: a few thousand filings from an industry of nearly half a million certificated pilots. The next few hours decide whether the operators this rule reaches are in the file at all.

I will grant the Bureau this much. The data question behind the Covered List is a real one, and I have never argued otherwise. Where flight logs go and who can reach a drone’s firmware are legitimate things for a regulator to demand answers about. That is why the filing asks for those answers as a condition of authorization for every manufacturer, rather than a ban on one country’s hardware that leaves the question open for everyone else.

What I don’t accept is the way this document was assembled. A definition that makes a 151-gram selfie drone military-grade, sitting a few pages from an economic finding that consumers won’t be affected because they don’t fly military-grade drones, is not a security analysis. It is a list of DJI’s product features with a rationale attached afterward. If the Bureau adopts the rule without fixing that contradiction, the order will say so in its own text, and that is the first thing I will read when it lands.

On timing, I am working from one precedent, so treat this as a bet rather than a forecast. The Bureau’s Huawei-era prohibition went from proposal on March 27 to adoption on June 26, three months, and took effect on July 16. On that pace a decision in this docket before the end of the year is the expectation, and the 180-day wind-down would then run into mid-2027. Anyone counting on this proposal to stall in the file should read that earlier timeline first.

File your comments today. Not this weekend, not after the analysis lands, today, before midnight Eastern. If you fly a thermal drone for a volunteer department, run a dock for a DFR program, or map with LiDAR to pay your bills, the agency has asked you in writing what losing that equipment costs, and the how-to above takes ten minutes. The filing you just read is one entry. Yours is the one the Bureau hasn’t seen. Go write it, then send three other pilots the link.

Sources: FCC Public Notice DA 26-758; Federal Register 91 FR 48870; FCC Order DA 26-892 denying extension requests; FCC guidance on filing comments; FCC Electronic Comment Filing System; DroneXL comments as filed, September 2, 2026

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