FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told the Small Business Administration’s Defense Industrial Base Drone Summit on Thursday that President Trump’s policies have put “billions of dollars now flowing into production plants here in America.” About an hour later, the FCC’s official account posted a clip of Carr under a headline claiming $5 billion in new U.S. drone investment.
The figure is the FCC’s scoreboard for its December 22, 2025 decision to put every foreign-made drone and drone component on the Covered List, which blocks new models from FCC authorization. It is also the economic argument behind the agency’s next move: a proposed sales ban on foreign drones carrying thermal cameras, LiDAR or docking stations.
On July 21, an FCC fact sheet put the total at over $4 billion. The itemized list the agency published with its July drone proposal counts a five-year pledge as its single largest entry.
FCC Footnotes Mix Venture Rounds, A Valuation And Five-Year Pledges
The FCC’s own list of investments sits in two footnotes of FCC Public Notice DA 26-758. One covers money raised since December. The other covers money only committed, and its anchor is Skydio’s $3.5 billion plan, spread across five years and announced in April.
The raised column cites Zipline’s $600 million round alongside a Reuters story on Zipline’s $7.6 billion valuation (a valuation is what investors think a company is worth; it builds nothing). It also lists Swarm Aero’s Series A and Portuguese drone maker Tekever opening its first U.S. office. A third footnote adds Red Cat’s upsized equity offering and PDW’s $110 million Series B.
Some of it is steel and payroll. The footnotes point to BRINC’s new Seattle factory and an Anduril plant that started building high-speed combat drones in March. Motor startup Westmag, which DroneXL covered when it raised $11 million to build drone motors in South San Francisco, reported committed orders for hundreds of thousands of units, a component class the Covered List now bars from new foreign authorizations.
The committed column is softer. Skydio’s own announcement describes $3.5 billion to be invested over the next five years, with a new plant five times its current space and more than 2,000 jobs. It landed one day after the company closed a $110 million Series F at a $4.4 billion valuation. The same footnote counts a Denton, Texas city council vote on an $870,000 factory incentive and Quantum Cyber’s letter of intent to buy a 43,000-square-foot building.
The FCC repeated the $5 billion figure on X Thursday, but Carr has been saying it since at least August 4, when he used the figure on the TBPN podcast. That was two weeks after the FCC’s written fact sheet, quoted by Military.com, said over $4 billion.
The Investment Number Is The FCC’s Case For Banning Thermal Drones
In DA 26-758, the FCC’s bureaus tentatively conclude that banning sales of foreign thermal, LiDAR, docking and heavy-lift drones would “similarly generate substantial investment in domestic production.” That projected investment is weighed as a public benefit against the cost to operators, which the notice calls minor.
The operators disagreed. Comments in PS Docket 26-189 closed September 2, and Pilot Institute’s count of the record (Pilot Institute is a DroneXL partner) found 3,770 filings against the proposal and 16 for it, with 298 from public safety agencies. DJI’s own filing, signed by former Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, argues the seven “military-grade” categories were invented inside the FCC and endorsed by no security agency. The proposal, which I covered on July 22, has not been adopted, and the FCC turned down requests to extend its comment window.
The squeeze is arriving from other directions anyway. Section 232 tariffs of 25% on imported drones up to 25 kilograms (55 pounds), and 100% on thermal-equipped and heavier aircraft, took effect September 3. On October 13, the FCC stops authorizing new U.S.-built drones that contain DJI or Autel logic-bearing chips. And Thursday’s host, the SBA, made drones a priority sector for 90% loan guarantees when it and the Department of War created the Smaller War Plants Commission on August 25.
DroneXL’s Take
I want American drone factories. Skydio’s plant, BRINC’s Seattle move and Westmag’s motor line are good news. What I don’t accept is the FCC grading its own ban with a number that blends a Zipline valuation, a city council vote and a five-year promise, then citing that grade as the reason to pull thermal drones off the shelf for fire departments and search teams. I filed DroneXL’s comment in Docket 26-189 on September 2, alongside thousands of pilots, agencies and service providers who made the same case. Investment pledges don’t find a missing hiker at 2 a.m. A thermal drone does. Until the FCC publishes the tally behind $5 billion and can point to American thermal aircraft a county sheriff can actually buy at a price the budget covers, that number is a talking point, and it should carry no weight in Docket 26-189.
Sources: FCC Public Notice DA 26-758, Brendan Carr on X, FCC on X, Skydio, Military.com, Benzinga, U.S. Small Business Administration
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
