![]() General Services Administration announced it would be buying drones for government purposes from only the Blue UAS list from then on. Despite these criticisms, in early 2021, the U.S. and European drone makers, known as the Blue UAS (unmanned aerial systems) list, in August 2020, many government drone users complained that the approved aircraft cost vastly more than Chinese-made options, had fewer features, and still contained Chinese-made component parts. Although the Department of Defense released a short roster of approved U.S. (The program is flying again today, but operates at a much smaller scale). Department of the Interior decided to ground the agency’s entire hundreds-strong, DJI-heavy drone fleet in 2019, shutting down a once-promising program engaged in everything from fire-spotting to scientific research. ![]() government suspicions toward DJI grew, bolstered by the Trump administration’s strong anti-China stance, leadership at the U.S. companies from exporting their products for DJI use.Īs U.S. The move kept DJI drones legally on sale but banned U.S. Commerce Department because of its technologies’ use in China’s Uyghur detention camps. The same year, DJI was officially blacklisted by the U.S. special operators in Syria-had turned to DJI drones instead. In 2017, members of the Department of Defense were banned from using DJI products after it came out that some service members frustrated by expensive and crash-happy official military products-including, allegedly, U.S. government has taken an ever more hardline stance toward DJI, citing fears about cybersecurity, illicit Chinese spying, and the company’s level of enmeshment with the Chinese state itself. hostility toward DJI drones, like other Chinese technology, has been in the works for a long time. “Everything is going to take longer and cost more.” “I’m not looking forward to using non-DJI quadcopters in the next event,” Merrick said. They can’t afford to purchase anything legal.”Īnd he’s worried about the future as yet another hurricane season rolls into Florida. “We’re already seeing smaller state agencies, and fiscally constrained counties, walking away from altogether. “We’re hamstringing public safety to appease some amorphous concerns about Chinese spying,” Merrick said. Ron DeSantis, and the state-approved drones he’s managed to purchase simply aren’t as good. ![]() Merrick’s drone-mapping team constantly deploys to assist disaster responders, from documenting the extent of Hurricane Irma’s destruction to creating 3D maps of the effects of the collapse of the Surfside condominium building.īut today, Merrick’s Chinese drone-heavy fleet is mostly grounded, thanks to recent action by the administration of Florida Gov. Take it from Dave Merrick, the director of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program and the Center for Disaster Risk Policy at Florida State University, who has spent years training hundreds of students to use drones to make maps during disasters. And American drone pilots in fields ranging from search and rescue to agriculture to scientific research, painfully aware that they lack good or affordable alternatives to Chinese products, are getting nervous. federal and state lawmakers, warning of Chinese interference, are introducing legislation cracking down on the DJI aircraft used by an overwhelming majority of U.S. And it’s not just DJI: China has become the global hub of the consumer drone industry, home to both DJI’s most successful competitors and the factories that make most of the electronic parts that around the world, from the United States to Ukraine, depend on. Fast forward to today, and DJI has become the overwhelming market leader in a civilian drone industry that largely exists thanks to its work, supplying more than 70 percent of the planet’s drone users with vast quantities of high-quality, dirt-cheap, and elegantly designed little flying robots. Whenever you hear the tell-tale whining buzz of a drone, anywhere in the world, you’re probably hearing a sound made in China.īack in 2006, Chinese technology company DJI created the very first cheap, off-the shelf drones that even poorly coordinated amateurs could use to shoot stunning video and create high-quality maps.
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