For years, DJI has fought its regulatory battles in Washington the conventional way — through lawyers, lobbyists, and carefully worded blog posts. Last week, the company reached for a different lever: its customers. In an X post published on the afternoon of August 7, DJI urged American operators of hardware like the Matrice 400 and Dock 2 to file comments with the Federal Communications Commission before a September 2 deadline, pointing them to a step-by-step filing guide from the Drone Advocacy Alliance. By Saturday morning, the post had roughly 24,000 views, and a companion appeal had gone up on DJI's Viewpoints policy blog, DroneXL reported August 8.

The target is FCC Public Notice DA 26-758, released July 21, which opened PS Docket 26-189. The proposal would prohibit the continued importation and marketing of previously authorized foreign-made drones and critical components that sit on the FCC's Covered List — equipment the agency has already approved, already in distribution channels, already flying for public safety agencies and enterprise fleets across the country. The Federal Register published the notice August 3, starting the 30-day clock that expires September 2.

Seven Categories, Broadly Drawn

The FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology frame the restriction around "military-grade" capability, citing national security concerns under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019. But the seven capability-based categories the notice defines sweep well beyond anything most operators would recognize as military hardware:

  • Aircraft with a takeoff weight of 55 pounds or more
  • Agricultural spray platforms operating under FAA economic-poison rules
  • Drones carrying thermal imaging payloads
  • Drones carrying LiDAR
  • Docking stations
  • Aircraft specially designed to incorporate a defense article
  • Swarming systems — a definition broad enough to include drone light shows

Thermal imagers are standard equipment for search-and-rescue and firefighting. LiDAR carriers underpin surveying and construction workflows. Docking stations are the backbone of drone-as-first-responder programs. And the swarming category, as written, could capture the choreographed light shows that have become a staple of civic celebrations.

"Marketing" in the notice covers advertising, distribution, sale, and lease. The proposal includes a 180-day wind-down after Federal Register publication, and carves out exemptions for aircraft on the Blue UAS Cleared List, Buy American domestic end products, federal government use, and imports for commercial testing and product development. Drones already in operators' hands would keep flying — the ban reaches the supply chain, not the airspace.

A Reversal, in DJI's Telling

DJI's core argument is that the FCC is changing the rules mid-game. When the FCC added foreign-produced drones and critical components — DJI's equipment included — to the Covered List in December 2025, the agency's position was that the listing blocked only new equipment authorizations. That reading is why the Osmo Pocket 4 never shipped in the United States while the Matrice 400 — authorized before the listing — stayed on shelves. In May, the FCC went further in the direction of continuity, extending a waiver that allows previously authorized foreign drones to receive firmware and software updates through at least January 1, 2029.

DA 26-758, in DJI's framing, walks all of that back: hardware the FCC itself authorized, and committed to keep updatable into 2029, would become illegal to import or even advertise. The company is simultaneously challenging the underlying Covered List action in the Ninth Circuit (Case 26-1029), meaning the docket fight and the court fight are now running in parallel.

The Data Fight at the Center of the Docket

The most consequential line in the notice may be the FCC's tentative conclusion that the prohibition "would not have substantial economic and supply chain impacts." That is a rebuttable presumption, and the Commission is explicitly asking commenters to rebut it — requesting data on fleet counts, replacement costs, inventory levels, and shipments.

This is where the comment war will actually be decided. Individual pilots venting about their favorite aircraft carry limited weight in an administrative record. Public safety agencies documenting the replacement cost of a thermal-equipped fleet, or enterprise operators quantifying docking-station infrastructure that has no domestic equivalent at comparable price points, are the filings that force an agency to grapple with its own economic assumptions — or hand a reviewing court a record showing it didn't. DJI's mobilization push is, functionally, an attempt to fill that record before September 2.

Comments can be filed through the FCC's express comment system under proceeding 26-189.

Why It Matters

This docket is the sharpest test yet of whether Covered List restrictions on Chinese drone equipment will stop at future authorizations or reach backward into hardware already approved and deployed. For US public safety and enterprise operators, the seven categories map almost exactly onto the highest-value use cases in the industry — thermal search-and-rescue, agricultural spraying, LiDAR surveying, automated dock-based operations. A ban on continued importation and marketing would freeze the supply of replacement aircraft and parts for those fleets on a 180-day fuse, with exemptions that mostly benefit government users rather than the fire departments, police agencies, and commercial operators flying the bulk of this equipment. And the FCC's tentative no-substantial-impact finding means silence is effectively assent: if operators don't put fleet and cost data into the record by September 2, the Commission's presumption stands. Whatever one thinks of DJI enlisting its customer base in its own regulatory defense, the outcome will shape what American drone programs can buy — and from whom — for years.

One transparency note worth flagging: DJI helps fund the Drone Advocacy Alliance, the group whose filing guide DJI is directing commenters to, and DroneXL — which first reported the mobilization campaign — is a DAA partner.

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