If this were the case I'd expect it to be related to all drones from China though. It also doesn't seem needed given the contracts can just state the requirement without extra hoopla.
It's good practice on forums with a global membership, especially when talking about a Chinese company's latest product, to specific where you are / which country's laws you're talking about.
"From August 15, manufacturers of certain powerful drones and computers will have to give technical details to the authorities to obtain a licence prior to export, Xinhua news agency says.
The new regulations from the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs are aimed in particular at drones which can fly for more than one hour and at heights of more than 15,420 metres."
So basically, drones powered by internal combustion engines need to be design-certified.
Chinese airspace is highly regulated, especially in the cities mentioned. Theoretically, every single drone flight has to be reported and registered with multiple military and civil agencies.
The commercial use aspect also came into play- if you were hired to use the drone to do something (like take pictures), or were a company using a drone as part of a product/service, it would arguably fall under a different set of rules. Which is another reason clarification was needed.
1.) DJI offers many drones related to infrastructure mapping and maintenance, as well as agricultural tasks. From a national security perspective, it is a non-trivial threat vector for a Chinese company to not only have intimate knowledge of US infrastructure by being their drone supplier, but also by becoming a dependency of US infrastructure. In the event of a war, all of the drones could be grounded or used for nefarious purposes.
2.) When it comes to protectionism, I'm generally against it, but I have different thoughts when it comes to China. They have banned Uber, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, etc, and just make their own versions of it. Then they have absolutely no respect for international laws when it comes to IP. They don't compete economically according to the same rules as everyone else, and don't deserve to be treated the same way.
3.) I have 2 DJI drones. The fact that there is no mention of compensation in this legislature is absurd. Fortunately, I don't rely on these for my business, but imagine if you were a filmmaker, tree trimmer, real estate agent, etc, who had bought many drones for your business. Not only are you grounding the tools that they've already come to depend on, but there isn't an existing viable alternative on the market for many of these tasks.
I don't get this either. Almost any existing consumer drone over 0.55 pounds could possibly fall straight down onto someone's head and kill them, in an unlucky scenario.
Maybe the requirement is trying to encourage (or allow) the development of drones that are spatially extended/soft, e.g. drones that contain inflated components.
Since a drone can potentially violate restricted airspace, I could see some regulatory body eventually requiring approval/certification before a drone aircraft can be sold. I can imagine private pilots aren't too keen on running into some out of control flying piece of garbage at a few thousand feet.
The US doesn't care if Americans buy them from Canada. The point of the law is to encourage US made drone manufacturing, because we'll need it during a war.
They don't care if a drone here or there slips thought, it's irrelevant to the point of the law.
> That requirement feels very arbitrary, and it feels like a requirement that will eventually go away.
Because it's the only way they found to regulate the behavior. They would prefer to regulate all of the drone flying, but they have limitations in power in a variety of ways, and they don't want to bother Congress about it.
> The drone needs to have an air worthyness certificate and be flown by a full pilot in order for the FAA to allow it.
It's highly dependent on drone weight and usage, but most drones are in the <55 lb category, which doesn't require either of those things for commercial use: https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/
Drones above 55 lbs do require a section 333 waiver and a part 61 airmen certificate, which is basically a mild step up from the part 107 UAS pilot training requirement. Both are significantly easier, faster, and cheaper than even the cheapest private pilot's license.
Quite interesting how inconsistent the FAA is being about this relative to e.g. hot air balloons. At the moment the requirements for drones are significantly more strict than hot air balloons even if they pose less of a risk to the public.
Seems like a classic knee jerk reaction to media fearmongering. The fact they're called "drones" at all (when that term was previously reserved for larger and typically armed UAVs) doesn't help.
Sure, but DJI drones already weren't eligible for procurement in US defense anyway, so there's not a major net change there (barring weird edge case loopholes with third-party modifications). Skydio already got their protectionism in the federal space, this is a step beyond.
This point came up in another comment, and it's definitely reasonable - but I still don't see why DJI would require your location when using products other than drones, which they do. And as I noted before, they are providing an app which has been axed from the official store. Aside from this, as I'm sure you're aware, any information that DJI collect has a nonzero chance of being handed over the the Chinese authorities for any reason whatsoever.
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