US government abandons plan to blacklist Chinese-made drones

anotherlab · Jan 12, 2026

mavic3usa said:
A message today from another government agency, DHS, which basically means we can expect a lot of "initiatives" from DHS over the next 6 months:

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If you want to skip the tweet from Ice Barbie, the actual press release can be read here. I wonder how much of the $115 million allocated for this will end up at the Strategy Group? It wouldn't be the first time that happened.

mavic3usa · Jan 12, 2026

anotherlab said:
If you want to skip the tweet from Ice Barbie, the actual press release can be read here. I wonder how much of the $115 million allocated for this will end up at the Strategy Group? It wouldn't be the first time that happened.

They will use these events as an excuse to create a major US government drone fleet which we will have to contend with for decades to come.

"....keep Americans safe as they attend festivities and events during a historic year of America’s 250th birthday and FIFA 2026."

hank970 · Tuesday at 12:33 AM

mavic3usa said:
A message today from another government agency, DHS, which basically means we can expect a lot of "initiatives" from DHS over the next 6 months:

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"Drones represent the new frontier of American air superiority. Under President Trump, we are entering a new era to defend our air superiority to protect our borders and the interior of the United States.With the creation of the DHS Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems, President Trump continues his historic legacy in developing American dominance.This will help us continue to secure the border and cripple the cartels, protect our infrastructure, and keep Americans safe as they attend festivities and events during a historic year of America’s 250th birthday and FIFA 2026."

Blah, blah, blah...

The above statement is proof that talk is cheap. How so? Because supply exceeds demand.

anotherlab · Tuesday at 9:38 AM

mavic3usa said:
They will use these events as an excuse to create a major US government drone fleet which we will have to contend with for decades to come.

"....keep Americans safe as they attend festivities and events during a historic year of America’s 250th birthday and FIFA 2026."

It's more of counter-drone technology and practices.

mavic3usa · Tuesday at 11:25 AM

anotherlab said:
It's more of counter-drone technology and practices.

It's almost as if these guys can read my mind. They get it:

DHS Creates Permanent Counter-Drone Office: What The $115 Million Announcement Actually Means For Drone Pilots

After months of tracking the administration's counter-drone buildup, the bureaucratic shoe finally dropped. The Department of Homeland Security announced

dronexl.co

wco81 · Tuesday at 9:56 PM

So they will aggressively take down drones which they think are doing something wrong?

mavic3usa · Tuesday at 10:18 PM

wco81 said:
So they will aggressively take down drones which they think are doing something wrong?

They will.

mavic3usa · Saturday at 10:08 PM

It's crazy how everyone else heard about this before we did, meaning Commerce was about to step in and ban all drones on the spot. This explains why we had that period earlier where it seemed like current drones were marked down and inventory clearing fire-sale prices appeared to be spreading across so many sellers as if it was some sort of last call. Prices dipped and even today, there are sellers with near MSRP prices if not lower (a reversal from the constantly climbing prices thru the year). They knew....we didn't; they had heard that drastic measures were coming soon but our community was stuck on "all the current drone models are fine-forever because nobody has that kind of power which by the way, we are still stuck on it and convinced we are "in the clear."

Droning on and on... · 2026-01-18T12:30:42-0500

God this is so easy... Enforcement is not going to be stepped up because the general public is not interested in spending already limited resources busting recreational flyers exceeding VLOS, Observer rule, etc. etc. etc.

Any more than this has been a law enforcement priority yesterday, the last year, last decade.

mavic3usa · 2026-01-18T20:40:02-0500

I agree with it and I believe this recent article is well-timed and the *opinion* largely reflects my own as well. It reminded me of a discussion we had over a year ago starting with this post:

M

Post in thread 'Congress members warn that DJI drones 'register facial recognition data even when the system is off, and upload information to cloud storage''

Jul 4, 2024

Droning on and on... said:
While the Chinese are good, my bet is we can still out-engineer them.

what makes you think that?

USA companies could have out-engineered the Chinese on drones for the last 15 years but they didn't. Nobody really tried. They ceded the retail and recreational market to DJI and Autel

if Chinese drones are banned, where is the incentive for American companies to out-engineer Chinese drones in a protected market? I don't see any incentive at all. I see some incentive to rush some cheap, lower-tech products to the market to test it. But I'd think it would be at least 10 years or never...