The Department of Homeland Security’s test lab scored the DJI Matrice 4T at 4.6 out of 5 and the DJI Matrice 30T at 4.3 when it flew them at Hudson Yards in July 2025, against 3.7 for the Skydio X10D and 2.4 for the Parrot ANAFI USA GOV. The figures come from a 12-page addendum to the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory’s Blue UAS assessment, numbered SAVER-T-R-40, dated July 2026 and marked For Official Use Only. DroneXL has obtained a copy. The public report DHS published in September described the comparison in one sentence, said evaluators found “significant differences,” and did not say in which direction.
The two DJI aircraft outscored both Blue UAS on all nine criteria the lab measured, from camera acuity to controller interface. The addendum also records one Matrice 30T losing its satellite and vision positioning at night in a narrow urban canyon, drifting into a structure and leaving the aircraft unusable. DHS lists two disadvantages for each DJI aircraft. Neither one concerns how it flew.
The scores land in departments that have been making this argument without the data. An Arizona fire chief told DroneXL last December that lives would be lost if the DJI ban took his department’s air capability away. Oregon’s aviation department counted 467 restricted drones across 25 states. Utah’s Weber County Search and Rescue flies DJI aircraft on its searches, and its drone team coordinator told the FCC in September that a ban would cost American lives. The addendum says the agencies DHS recruited fly “predominantly DJI.” Until now, the only public sign that DHS had scored those aircraft was one sentence in the September report; the SAVER program’s own Blue UAS page lists a 2023 TechNote and a 2024 focus group report and nothing else.
DJI Matrice 4T Scored Highest of Any Aircraft in the Series
The Matrice 4T’s overall 4.6 is the highest DHS recorded in any round of the Blue UAS series, and its 4.9s for both cameras and for link quality are the highest criterion scores in either document. The Matrice 30T’s 4.7 for time to redeploy is the best of any platform.
| Criterion at Hudson Yards | DJI Matrice 4T | DJI Matrice 30T | Skydio X10D | Parrot ANAFI USA GOV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EO camera visual acuity | 4.9 | 4.6 | 3.9 | 2.6 |
| IR camera visual acuity | 4.9 | 4.2 | 3.2 | 2.3 |
| Flight duration | 4.6 | 4.2 | 3.9 | 3.0 |
| Command and control link quality | 4.9 | 4.2 | 3.4 | 1.8 |
| Latency | 4.6 | 4.4 | 4.1 | 1.7 |
| Time to redeploy | 4.1 | 4.7 | 3.6 | 2.1 |
| Deployability | 4.3 | 4.0 | 3.4 | 2.7 |
| Ease of use | 4.6 | 4.4 | 4.0 | 3.0 |
| Ground control station interface | 4.4 | 4.1 | 4.0 | 2.8 |
| Overall score | 4.6 | 4.3 | 3.7 | 2.4 |
Evaluators wrote that the Matrice 4T held position and kept its video feed “where other systems failed,” including in areas with heavy RF interference and buildings blocking the sky. One evaluator saw the aircraft briefly lose GNSS near the ground, and reported that its vision-based positioning held it in place until it climbed to where more satellites were visible. They could read license plates at long range at night, the airframe did not overheat on assessment days above 90°F (32°C), and most redeployments took under a minute. Their complaints were about the controller: too many features up front, quick-access buttons that were hard to customize, and a screen with no raised lip to protect its edges.
The Matrice 30T’s evaluators credited the hot-swappable aircraft and controller batteries for the fastest turnarounds in the series, and one said the thermal camera let them see where vehicles had been parked. Some found the aircraft sensitive to inputs in flight and said it suited experienced pilots. One said deploying it with a payload would take two people. Others found the controller screen cluttered and the zoom slider cumbersome.
In the public report, the X10D’s 3.7 was the best Blue UAS result at Hudson Yards, and the Ascent AeroSystems Spirit, Freefly Astro and Teal 2 were not scored there because they could not hold position. DroneXL covered those findings in DHS Lab Grounds 3 of 5 Blue UAS in NYC, Withholds Chinese Drone Scores. The addendum confirms that four of the seven aircraft DHS brought to Manhattan held position, and two of the four were DJI’s.
One Matrice 30T Drifted Into a Structure After Losing GNSS at Night
The addendum’s link quality section for the Matrice 30T records one aircraft loss. At night in a narrow urban canyon it lost GNSS and, per the report’s footnote, vision positioning, and fell back to attitude mode. The evaluator lost control and it drifted into a structure, which left it unusable.
DHS describes attitude mode in a footnote as positioning based on the aircraft’s attitude alone, without GNSS or vision sensors, used as a fallback when both references are lost. The same section still gives the Matrice 30T a 4.2 for link quality and says evaluators described it as dependable for operational use, with occasional minor issues at the farthest distances and in the densest areas.
The two disadvantages DHS lists for each DJI aircraft are identical: cybersecurity concerns because the manufacturer is based in a covered nation, and that sales “benefit a covered nation and divert funds from investment in domestic manufacturers.” The advantages column for the Matrice 4T runs to nine items, including the highest-rated link, cameras and flight duration in the series. The addendum states, as the public report does, that SAVER examined operator experience only and did not evaluate national security risk under any statute.
The Matrice 4T cost DHS $12,958 and the Matrice 30T $18,608, both on procurement quotes. The public report priced the X10D at $28,382 at the time of the urban round, and put the six Blue UAS between $13,964 and $56,195. A footnote in the addendum says the DJI aircraft were bought “under specific clauses allowing the operation of foreign nation covered UAS for testing and evaluation purposes.”
DHS Dated the Comparison Two Months Before It Published the Report Without It
The addendum is dated July 2026 and numbered SAVER-T-R-40. The public report, SAVER-T-R-39, is dated September 2026 and says results for the covered-nation platforms “is available to public safety agencies upon request” through [email protected]. The addendum carries a date two months before the report that does not include it.
The addendum explains why the DJI aircraft were there at all. Throughout the three-round series, evaluators asked to compare their agencies’ existing aircraft, “predominantly DJI,” against the Blue platforms to understand the capability gaps. DHS added the two DJI models for the final round, chose them because they are what state and local responders deploy, and matched them to the selection criteria used for the Blue UAS. Its introduction adds a word the public version leaves out: agencies still rely on covered-nation drones for their “reliability, price, and overall performance.”
The cover sheet says the material is to be shared on a need-to-know basis and locked away when unattended. The public report says the results it contains are available to any public safety agency that emails to ask. The addendum names no evaluator or agency, and DroneXL is not publishing the document itself.
DroneXL sent questions to the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, DJI, Skydio and Parrot on the evening of September 29 with a deadline of 9 a.m. ET on October 1. Parrot answered. Marie Calleux, who handles investor relations and corporate communication for Parrot, said the company has not been given the test configuration, radio settings, operating conditions or methodology behind the comparison, and that the headline scores alone do not give it “sufficient information for us to meaningfully assess the comparison.” She said the ANAFI USA GOV remains a supported platform, that Parrot cannot establish whether the July 2025 configuration represents the software in use today, and that the aircraft is an earlier-generation platform; Parrot’s current defense and public safety offering is built around the ANAFI UKR. DJI’s senior communications manager, Daisy Kong, replied within an hour: “If we decide to comment, it will be after your story runs,” with most of the company’s headquarters staff away for the National Day holidays in China. Skydio and DHS had not responded by publication time. DroneXL will update this article if they do.
Those numbers arrive as Congress is being asked, by the Drone Service Providers Alliance among others, to replace the country-of-origin ban with a security test every manufacturer must pass. The test Congress ordered for DJI and Autel in the FY2025 NDAA was never conducted, and the FCC added foreign drones to its Covered List in December 2025 without it.
DroneXL’s Take
The DJI drones in most public safety fleets were not bought out of ignorance, and this addendum is the federal government’s own evidence for that. The public report told agencies to research the capabilities of available equipment before buying. This is the research, and DHS did it for them.
A few years ago I had lunch with a retired New York City firefighter who laughed at the idea of a drone on a fireground. To him they were toys. The thermal camera that scored 4.9 in this report shows a crew where the roof is hot before anyone walks on it, and the link that scored 4.9 keeps the aircraft over the scene while the pilot watches the feed instead of the sticks. A volunteer fire department or a county search team gets one budget line for that. The aircraft on it has to power on, hold between buildings and keep its video up, and DHS’s own evaluators have now scored which ones do.
The cybersecurity concern DHS lists is real and this test did not measure it; SAVER says so twice. One Matrice 30T also ended a flight against a building after losing both of its position references, which is the kind of failure that gets an aircraft grounded in a fleet review, and it belongs in any fair reading of these scores. Neither point changes the direction of the numbers.
My read is that the performance data should have been in the public report, next to the Blue UAS scores, so that the agencies spending the money and the members of Congress voting on bans could weigh it. Any public safety agency can request the covered-nation results from NUSTL today. If yours does, share what you get.
Sources: [Unmanned Aircraft Systems in a Complex Urban Environment, Assessment Report Addendum, SAVER-T-R-40, DHS S&T / NUSTL, July 2026, marked For Official Use Only, obtained by DroneXL]; Blue UAS for First Responders Comparative Assessment Report, SAVER-T-R-39, DHS S&T / NUSTL, September 2026; DHS SAVER program, Blue UAS for First Responders
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
