Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., used a press release on Monday to promote his October 14 letter asking FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to keep DJI and Autel Robotics on the Covered List. DroneXL covered the letter last week, when the FCC entered it into both companies’ dockets. Scott wants the agency to reject DJI’s petition for reconsideration and Autel’s application for review, which would leave both companies blocked from new FCC equipment authorizations.

Scott’s home state already bars its agencies from flying Chinese-made drones. When that ban took hold in Florida, state Sen. Tom Wright estimated that police and local governments had spent at least $200 million on the aircraft they had to park. The Legislature set aside $25 million to replace them.

Wright Put Florida’s Replacement Bill At Twice The $200 Million Fleet

Replacing Florida’s grounded drones would cost at least twice the $200 million agencies had spent, Wright said in 2023, because American manufacturers had doubled their prices. Against that, the Legislature’s $25 million covered one-eighth of what the grounded fleet had cost in the first place.

“It’s money, taxpayer money, that’s gonna get wasted,” Wright said of the $25 million plan, according to Lawrence Mower’s May 2023 report for the Miami Herald. DroneXL carried Wright’s estimate the same week. The ban came out of SB 44, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in 2021, more than two years after Scott left the governor’s office for the Senate.

The grounded aircraft were supposed to go to the University of South Florida’s cybersecurity center so it could assess what risk they posed. When DroneXL checked in November 2025, USF had published no findings. That same month, Florida arranged to send more than 500 of the confiscated drones to U.S. Special Operations Command, whose operators were to shoot them down with shotguns at a counter-drone training event scheduled for December 4 to 6 at Camp Blanding.

Florida Police Rebuilt On Skydio And BRINC, Often On Multi-Year Deals

The St. Cloud Police Department flies Skydio X10 drones from two autonomous docks, with two more planned, under a five-year program projected at $890,000. AirMed&Rescue, which reported the figure in December 2025, called it Central Florida’s first full drone-as-first-responder program.

Lakeland went longer without. Its five Chinese-made aircraft sat grounded from 2022 until February 2025, and the restart cost $162,095 for four Skydio drones through Axon on a three-year deal plus one BRINC aircraft. On October 5 the city commission approved a ten-year, $22 million Axon agreement that adds docked drones to a bundle of body cameras, TASERs and software. DroneXL covered St. Cloud’s price tag when it was announced.

Wright’s 2023 estimate priced the drones agencies had already bought. Docked drone-as-first-responder programs are a new capability that would cost money with any vendor, so not all of that spending is ban cost. The ban decided which vendors Florida agencies could buy from.

Scott’s Dumping Claim Cites A Coalition Of American Drone Makers

Scott’s letter says “China has flooded the global market with artificially low-priced DJI and Autel drones” since 2015. The footnote behind that sentence links to a white paper on AUVSI’s website filed under its Partnership for Drone Competitiveness, a coalition of drone makers the trade association launched in 2023.

The four-page letter says the dumping has driven numerous American companies out of business. It names none of them. AUVSI used the same partnership’s name in a January 2024 email to a Utah lawmaker in which the association backed SB 135’s proposed ban on purchasing drones made by covered foreign entities.

Scott’s press release credits him with passing the Countering CCP Drones and Supporting Drones for Law Enforcement Act in the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act. When Scott introduced that bill with Sen. Mark Warner in July 2024, his office said it created a short-term Department of Transportation grant program for first responders to replace Chinese drones. Section 1709, the provision that became law, has no grant program.

DroneXL’s Take

I think Scott is asking Brendan Carr to hold the whole country to a plan Florida police have been paying for since their ban took hold. His office still uses the bill’s full name, but the half that would have paid first responders to replace their drones never made it into Section 1709.

The federal listing doesn’t ground drones already in the air, and that is a real difference from Florida. It does block every new DJI model, and the FCC has proposed a sales ban that would reach models it already authorized. And a senator arguing that subsidized imports wiped out American competitors should be able to cite something other than a paper from those competitors’ own coalition, and name at least one company.

The FCC still has to rule on DJI’s petition. If your department flies DJI, I’d treat Florida’s numbers as the best estimate you have of what replacing that fleet will cost.

Sources: Office of Sen. Rick Scott press release, October 19, 2026, Sen. Rick Scott letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, October 14, 2026, Office of Sen. Rick Scott press release, July 30, 2024, Public Law 118-159, Section 1709, Miami Herald via Stars and Stripes (Lawrence Mower), May 3, 2023, AirMed&Rescue, FOX 13 Tampa Bay

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