FCC moves to ban LiDAR-equipped foreign drones from US
The FCC is proposing to ban the import and sale of foreign-made drones with LiDAR sensors, classifying the technology as "military-grade." The move, building on a December 2025 ban on all foreign drones, could also affect thermal models and drone light-show swarms. DJI argues the label is a category error.
Drone maker DJI says the “military-grade” label is a category error.
- fitblipper
Stop manipulating our markets under the guize of national security or protecting Americans. If we need to be protected from bad behavior we need to be protected by all bad behavior regardless of it's origin.
Has back doors? Ban it. Has awful security around sensitive data? Ban it. Makes technology available to the masses that is a national security risk? Ban it(if you most). Why give US companies a pass on this? It's because the US government wants in on using the products with bad behavior while still trying to stop other governments the same power.
- Animats
What's the FCC's statutory authority for this? This adds mobile LIDAR units to the FCC's "Covered List". The CFR entry for the Covered List [1] claims this is under the Secure and Trusted Communications Act of 2019, [2] or the FCC's authority to regulate RF emitters. RF is generally considered to end at 3 terahertz, per the ITU.
Whether the FCC has jurisdiction over non-communication uses of lasers is not at all clear. Lasers are usually regulated in the US by the Food and Drug Administration.
Expect lawsuits.
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-116publ124/pdf/PLAW...
- amanaplanacanal
American consumers are stuck with crappier and much more expensive tech. Thanks Mr President! I'm sure that's what your voters were asking for!
- runlevel1
The government's response to the security threat of drones has been illogical and negligent at every turn.
For example, the Big Beautiful Bill only appropriated $800M for counter-UAV systems. That's insanely low given the broad threat exposure and the fact that they've literally changed what ground combat looks like. For perspective, we spent $400M on the Qatari 747 retrofit and appropriated $400M on the hope that "naval shipbuilding autonomy and AI" might be a thing.
- buran77
What about Lidar-equipped (and why not, even cameras) foreign cars that scan every one of the country's roads and everything around them? Cars are increasingly packing this kind of tech and telemetry.
- ChrisArchitect
Related:
National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]
- Danox
Another dumb move how do you expect to keep up to the rest of the world, which will just move on, another thing that’s bad is that most of the local US drone companies are not exactly moving all that fast to make drones for civilian use within America, they all want to cater/make military drones to sell at a high price to the American government at the expense of the American taxpayer.
- ethin
Aaaaand this "ban" will be just as incompetently executed as the ban that happened like, what, a couple weeks ago about drones? Literally all the manufacturers did was create some shell companies, change the branding a bit, and boom. So much for banning things, amiright? Not to mention the shear amount of customer confusion because now they have to figure out what differentiates all these new brands nobody has ever heard of.