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I'm in favor of tighter regulation on drone imports, both for national security reasons and to try to jumpstart a US drone industry. Not allowing _any_ foreign

I'm in favor of tighter regulation on drone imports, both for national security reasons and to try to jumpstart a US drone industry. Not allowing _any_ foreign made components, however, is insane, as is not even auditing DJI when they didn't put up a fight. They have to know they're just killing the small drone industry completely.

shuntress 9mo ago
Limiting competition does not jump start anything it simply introduces complacency.
- showerst 9mo ago
  There’s currently nobody in the us small drone market to get complacent. Is there a single company that designs and builds sub $10,000 drones in the US?
lazide 9mo ago
Less drones for you, more for the military. There is no real downsides for the current gov’t here.
- showerst 9mo ago
  I build hobby scale drones for fun, mostly sub250g micros with no military value. I’d pay more for domestic parts, because I think the capability is strategically valuable, and the quality of Chinese stuff is super variable. There’s basically no industry here because the aliexpress parts are so cheap, so I support some protectionism, understanding that it will make the hobby more expensive. I think you’re probably right, but I think going for million dollar drones from anduril while wiping the rest of the market is a miscalculation.
  - bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
    Where is the ban of cheap motors, escs, cameras, radios from aliexpress? How does this affect hobby drone market at all?
    - lazide 9mo ago
      Based on the article, it says it also bans motors, controllers, etc. pretty much all major parts.
      - bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
        Wow, the title of the article really buries the lead as this is a much bigger deal than banning new versions of fully assembled drones made by a Chinese company. I can’t even think of another country that makes 4S Lipo batteries or the motors or the ESC’s or the VTX or the GPS module..
        lazide 9mo ago
        Yup, it essentially defacto bans civilian drones - unless something pretty major changes with domestic manufacturing anyway.
        bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
        No, I imagine that they will start assembling the pcbs in Vietnam from Chinese chips
        lazide 9mo ago
        Won’t help them since the Vietnamese chips will likely be similarly banned.
  - tucnak 9mo ago
    What makes you think U.S.-manufactured parts would be less "variable" than Chinese stuff? I would guess the opposite to be the case: reliability comes from scale, and there's very little scale in U.S. electronics manufacturing in the first place. Chinese stuff ranges from cheap to expensive, super reliable and super unreliable, too.
explorigin 9mo ago
> CTO & Co-Founder, GovHawk. Checks out. More legislation boosts your business.
- showerst 9mo ago
  Both making and removing regulation boosts my business, as my clients care about changes. That said, I assure you that one regulation getting made out of millions has no effect on my bottom line. The drone thing is a personal opinion. If the US ends up in a war (whether it’s one I agree with or not, likely not), I don’t want millions of drones to be remote controllable by the folks we’re fighting.
  - sroussey 9mo ago
    This is silly. You are worried that china will remotely control my DJI mini during a war? How will it even get out of my closet to create such havoc for 26 minutes before it drops out of the sky begging me for a new battery?
    - showerst 9mo ago
      I'm honestly much more worried about the fact that China has access to production lines for zillions of the things than what they'd do with existing ones, but I did make the comment so I'll run with it =). Let's put on our fun James Bond villain hats for a bit. The US has around 1.75MM drones that people have bothered to register. DJI has around 75% of that, so call it 1.25MM. This registration program is relatively new so let's say 750K of those are still operable. How many of those are in the air at any given time? Keep in mind many of these bigger registered drones are used by businesses. Let's say it's 1%, so 7,500 drones suddenly open some backdoor and get commanded to do a nose dive for the nearest power line. Now add in the smaller ones that are less likely to do damage, but there are 10x as many. Now combine it with a simultaneous cyber attack on infrastructure, and some pre-planned terror attacks. Is it going to end the country? Of course not. Is there potential for that to cause huge chaos? I think so. Is that more absurd than the Hezbollah pager bombings? I don't think so. So yeah, I'd pay more for my drones, my cars, my cell phone towers, etc etc to avoid them being controlled by a country that we might end up in a stupid war with. I'm not saying you can make everything locally in the modern world, that's absurd. But there are valid strategic and natsec concerns about the US/China trade relationship in 2025.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
kevin42 9mo ago
I would love to see the US drone industry thrive, it's a major gap in both the consumer and military market. At the same time, several businesses have and are trying to compete in this business. The amount of capital required is enormous if anyone is going to compete with DJI and the like. I personally know someone in this situation. They have a great product and some traction, but going from low quantity bespoke solutions to cost competitive large scale manufacturing costs hundreds of millions. And the problem is, investors don't trust that the ban is going to last forever. The government could reverse the ban at any time, and that puts the US company back in a position where they can't compete with DJI, so the investors lose money. And they know that.

shuntress 9mo ago

Limiting competition does not jump start anything it simply introduces complacency.

showerst 9mo ago
There’s currently nobody in the us small drone market to get complacent. Is there a single company that designs and builds sub $10,000 drones in the US?

lazide 9mo ago

Less drones for you, more for the military. There is no real downsides for the current gov’t here.

showerst 9mo ago
I build hobby scale drones for fun, mostly sub250g micros with no military value. I’d pay more for domestic parts, because I think the capability is strategically valuable, and the quality of Chinese stuff is super variable. There’s basically no industry here because the aliexpress parts are so cheap, so I support some protectionism, understanding that it will make the hobby more expensive. I think you’re probably right, but I think going for million dollar drones from anduril while wiping the rest of the market is a miscalculation.
- bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
  Where is the ban of cheap motors, escs, cameras, radios from aliexpress? How does this affect hobby drone market at all?
  - lazide 9mo ago
    Based on the article, it says it also bans motors, controllers, etc. pretty much all major parts.
    - bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
      Wow, the title of the article really buries the lead as this is a much bigger deal than banning new versions of fully assembled drones made by a Chinese company. I can’t even think of another country that makes 4S Lipo batteries or the motors or the ESC’s or the VTX or the GPS module..
      - lazide 9mo ago
        Yup, it essentially defacto bans civilian drones - unless something pretty major changes with domestic manufacturing anyway.
        bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
        No, I imagine that they will start assembling the pcbs in Vietnam from Chinese chips
        lazide 9mo ago
        Won’t help them since the Vietnamese chips will likely be similarly banned.
- tucnak 9mo ago
  What makes you think U.S.-manufactured parts would be less "variable" than Chinese stuff? I would guess the opposite to be the case: reliability comes from scale, and there's very little scale in U.S. electronics manufacturing in the first place. Chinese stuff ranges from cheap to expensive, super reliable and super unreliable, too.

explorigin 9mo ago

> CTO & Co-Founder, GovHawk. Checks out. More legislation boosts your business.

showerst 9mo ago
Both making and removing regulation boosts my business, as my clients care about changes. That said, I assure you that one regulation getting made out of millions has no effect on my bottom line. The drone thing is a personal opinion. If the US ends up in a war (whether it’s one I agree with or not, likely not), I don’t want millions of drones to be remote controllable by the folks we’re fighting.
- sroussey 9mo ago
  This is silly. You are worried that china will remotely control my DJI mini during a war? How will it even get out of my closet to create such havoc for 26 minutes before it drops out of the sky begging me for a new battery?
  - showerst 9mo ago
    I'm honestly much more worried about the fact that China has access to production lines for zillions of the things than what they'd do with existing ones, but I did make the comment so I'll run with it =). Let's put on our fun James Bond villain hats for a bit. The US has around 1.75MM drones that people have bothered to register. DJI has around 75% of that, so call it 1.25MM. This registration program is relatively new so let's say 750K of those are still operable. How many of those are in the air at any given time? Keep in mind many of these bigger registered drones are used by businesses. Let's say it's 1%, so 7,500 drones suddenly open some backdoor and get commanded to do a nose dive for the nearest power line. Now add in the smaller ones that are less likely to do damage, but there are 10x as many. Now combine it with a simultaneous cyber attack on infrastructure, and some pre-planned terror attacks. Is it going to end the country? Of course not. Is there potential for that to cause huge chaos? I think so. Is that more absurd than the Hezbollah pager bombings? I don't think so. So yeah, I'd pay more for my drones, my cars, my cell phone towers, etc etc to avoid them being controlled by a country that we might end up in a stupid war with. I'm not saying you can make everything locally in the modern world, that's absurd. But there are valid strategic and natsec concerns about the US/China trade relationship in 2025.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

kevin42 9mo ago

I would love to see the US drone industry thrive, it's a major gap in both the consumer and military market. At the same time, several businesses have and are trying to compete in this business. The amount of capital required is enormous if anyone is going to compete with DJI and the like. I personally know someone in this situation. They have a great product and some traction, but going from low quantity bespoke solutions to cost competitive large scale manufacturing costs hundreds of millions. And the problem is, investors don't trust that the ban is going to last forever. The government could reverse the ban at any time, and that puts the US company back in a position where they can't compete with DJI, so the investors lose money. And they know that.