Dji Drone Ban and How it Will Affect Small American Businesses

Today I contacted lawmakers to let them know how the CCP Drones Act or H.R. 2864 and the Drones For First Responders Act (DFT Act) must not pass as it is written. This wide-reaching ban would hurt many Americans like me and the company I work for, who’s small businesses use drones for agriculture, forest management, construction, survey, inspections, research as well as many other services.

Like we have seen so many times before, legislation gets passed that looks shiny and attractive on the outside, but when you delve into it, there is a whole lot wrong. This is the case with the DFR Act and H.R. 2864. The short version is that they both aim to prohibit dji drones from the U.S. market claiming it's in the interest of "National Security". We have been offered no proof that China is spying on us through these drones. If this is truly the motivation behind this ban then why would they leavy a hefty tax on us owners to stay legal until they eventually ban them all together in 2030? It doesn't make sense does it? It almost seems like there is some hefty lobbying going on from U.S. Based drone manufactures who cannot compete with dji's excellence.

There are plenty of articles out there for you to read up on the history of this effort against dji such as Chris Flavel: Background and Lobbying Efforts Against DJI, Stuart Smith Opinion: The Argument Against Banning Chinese Drones and Dji's own blog shows the effort being put out to dispel any rumors about nefarious data collection.

A little searching online will turn up quite a few pieces on what the legislation is about, and why it needs to be shot down.

Currently, there is no U.S. based drone manufacturer that can come even close to competing with dji products for reliability, safety, and economy. I have outlined that in my letter below to my Representative and Senators.

If you are an owner of a dji drone or any of their other products, or simply just do not agree with this overstep from Congress, please take a few minutes to write your elected officials and ask them to STOP this. Drone Advocacy Alliance makes it super easy. Just write down your thoughts and they will submit it to your State officials.

Below is my letter to lawmakers regarding CCP Drones Act, HR 2864. My DFTA ACT letter was similar. Feel free to use the letter as a springboard for your own petition on the Drone Advocacy Alliance website.

My letter to lawmakers:

Please oppose the Countering CCP Drones Act, HR 2864 and attempts to include it in the 2025 NDAA. This wide-reaching ban would hurt many Americans like me who’s small businesses use drones for agriculture, forest management, construction, survey, inspections, research as well as many other services.

If you have ever used different drones for any purpose, you would know that dji drones far outpace any drone on the U.S. market. Drones started off many years ago as unreliable. They would have software malfunctions. They would have glitches and wouldn’t respond to remote commands. They would frequently “run-away” and the operator would be left hunting for their down drone for hours only to find it crashed with thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the drone as well as collateral damage.

Through countless iterations and innovations, dji has become THE BEST drone producer in the world. Their drones are reliable. Reliable for first responders.

First responders use dji drones and sensors to conduct search and rescue, track fleeing suspects, conduct surveillance, maintain situational awareness in the sky during disaster response, and be an eye in the sky to keep officers safe during armed response.

One might suggest that first responders purchase a different drone from a different manufacture. I equivalate this to banning police vehicles, making a police department scale back to bicycles as their only mode of transportation. They would not be able to patrol as much ground, response time would move from minutes to hours, and violators would be able to get away. Why would we ban THE BEST technology, sending them back to use inferior drones to protect their lives, and the lives of our loved ones?

Through countless iterations and innovations, dji has become THE BEST drone producer in the world. Their drones are reliable. Reliable for wildfire fighting.

Did you know that dji makes a drone that carries different payloads such as a state-of-the-art thermal sensor for mapping wildfire hot spots as well as a sensor that can map the fire footprint and its operations, producing very high-resolution imagery? This drone, like all dji drones, terrain follows, has THE BEST obstacle avoidance on the market, is reliable, and is not going to run off and crash causing collateral damage in this emergency response situation. There is no comparable drone on the market.

Through countless iterations and innovations, dji has become THE BEST drone producer in the world. Their drones are reliable. Reliable for Farmers of America.

Farmers across America use the dji Agras drone to apply herbicide, fungicide, fertilizer and insecticides to their crops. We are talking about millions of acres a year being covered by the Agras for crop management. It is more environmentally friendly than other methods and it costs less, less to the farmer and to the environment.? There is no other reliable drone on the market that can compete with the dji Agras. The Agras is fast, holds a large payload, dispenses chemicals accurately, terrain follows, has state-of-the-art object avoidance features, and does what is expected every time. You never want a 200lb drone full of restricted chemicals “running off” during operations. Imagine the kind of damage that would do.

Dji drones are also used to map farmers crops for water stress, nutrition deficiency, pest damage, invasive weeds, and disease. The dji sensor payloads used in these cases, with dji drones, are reliable, accurate, and affordable. No U.S. based company has produce drones and sensors that compare.

Through countless iterations and innovations, dji has become THE BEST drone producer in the world. Their drones are reliable. Reliable for small businesses.

The U.S. has many small businesses that use dji drones to survey. Here in Oregon, we survey constructions sites, city infrastructure, bridges, cell towers, solar panels, stockpiles, powerlines, substations, forest plantations, rivers and so much more. The majority of us are using dji drones because the other American drones are inferior in areas that are necessary for the reliability, safety, and efficiency of drone operations.

I have over 1,000 hours of drone flight in my time doing aerial survey. I have flown 10s of thousands of acres of rugged timberland to survey young and old tree plantations. I have surveyed head waters and stream channels to delineate their location which allows us to protect these resources during forest operations. I have flown power lines and sub stations doing visual and thermal inspections that convey to the public utility districts areas where there are fire dangers and hazards to their operations and surrounding land. I have flown dji’s LiDAR payload to produce terrain models and imagery of landslides that have covered roads so that resource managers could plan for restoration projects. I have flown thousands of acres of agriculture land to help farmers make informed decisions that lead to higher yields and more food for American livestock and people. All these drone remote sensing projects are important to the proper management of resources whether its people, natural resources, or infrastructure. We would not be able to do what we do without dji. They are THE BEST in the industry of drones, remote sensing payloads, and agriculture payloads.

CCP Drones Act, HR 2864 prevents THE BEST products from the world’s most popular drone manufacturer from coming to market and could even take away FCC authorizations for the drones I already own and use. Drones millions of Americans already own and use. This prevents me from choosing THE BEST technology on the market and could ground entire fleets currently used by public safety agencies, small businesses, municipalities, farmers, and the USFS.

This ban would force thousands of small businesses to close, hurting me personally, the drone industry and American economy. Replacing the drones isn’t an option for me and other operators because there is nothing on the market with similar capabilities, reliability, cost and privacy protections. For example, unlike most electronics, my dji drone’s photos and videos aren’t shared by default, I have to opt in to do that.?

If this ban is truly in the interest of U.S. security and not the result of lobbyists for American based drone companies, investigate the issue and find tangible proof that China is stealing our data and/or require dji to do a simple software update to eliminate the feature for the data to be shared remotely. A software update for U.S. operated dji drones could fix this issue.

Most of our iPhones are made in China. Are we banning those next? Don’t let ill-informed politicians and American based drone lobbyists hurt the drone industry and American jobs. Don’t send us back to the era of inferior, unreliable, unsafe drones. Please oppose HR 2864. Thank you.