The defense bill that decides which drones American agencies may fly — Section 1709, the Covered List, and the compliance fight.
DJI is done waiting for Washington to play fair. Two months after the FCC added all foreign-made drones to its Covered List, the world’s largest drone manufacturer has taken the fight to federal court, filing a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit challenging the December 22, 2025, decision that blocked…
Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have four stories for you this week. The FAA has issued several large fines for drone pilots, Paladin Drones launches a new NDAA-compliant drone, a new GAO report flags major safety gaps for BVLOS integration, and an Amazon delivery drone has crashed in Texas yet again. Let’s…
Paladin Drones, the Houston-based Drone as First Responder company that built much of its business on modified DJI hardware, just revealed the Knighthawk 2.0 at the World Defense Show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The new drone is NDAA-compliant, built in partnership with Portuguese NATO-certified manufacturer Beyond Vision, and clearly designed to open doors that DJI-based…
The U.S. Marine Corps has quietly crossed an important threshold in military drone development by creating its first fully NDAA compliant
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr revealed three new drone exemption pathways at CES 2026, including Blue UAS list approval, 65% domestic content threshold, and a case-by-case petition process. Here's what commercial operators need to know about avoiding Covered List restrictions.
DJI has issued its first official response to the FCC’s decision to add foreign-made drones to the Covered List, calling the action “disappointing” and accusing the administration of protectionism rather than legitimate security enforcement. In a statement provided to DroneXL, a DJI spokesperson confirmed that existing DJI products are not affected by yesterday’s FCC action…
We’ve been tracking the December 23 deadline for months, expecting DJI to land on the FCC’s Covered List through bureaucratic default. What the FCC actually did today goes far beyond anything we predicted. They didn’t just ban DJI. They banned all foreign-made drones and critical components. Every single one. And they did it in the…
The Neros Archer is the first fiber-optic FPV drone that is NDAA-compliant, and that’s not the only reason it’s turning heads. The Archer is a newly announced fiber-optic FPV drone from Neros Technologies (US) and Kela Technologies (Israel). A growing percentage of FPV drones used on the frontline are beginning to move in reverse; armies…
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