Policy & Regulation
Drone policy and regulation news from UASFeed — FAA rulemaking, BVLOS, Part 108, the DJI debate, export controls, and the rules shaping the uncrewed sky.
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Policy & Regulation
The Magnet Problem: How China’s Rare Earth Grip Threatens Every Drone on Earth
China controls 93% of global rare earth magnet manufacturing — the same magnets that spin every brushless motor in every military and commercial drone. When Beijing tightened export controls in 2025, the supply chain risk stopped being theoretical.
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Policy & Regulation
The Legal Architecture of Armed Drone Strikes: Three Overlapping Regimes, One Persistent Gap
Armed drones operate inside a dense, contested body of international law spanning the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Missile Technology Control Regime. Here is what that framework actually requires — and where it consistently breaks down.
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Policy & Regulation
China Closes the E-Commerce Loophole on Drone Component Exports
Beijing's new customs declarations — Announcements No. 77 and No. 78, effective June 30 — don't expand the controlled-items list. They demand paper trails that make it impossible to move drone components through platform intermediaries without explicit disclosure of every party in the chain.
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Policy & Regulation
The Layer Import Bans Can't Reach: Congress Targets Drone Magnet Supply Chain
A bipartisan House bill introduced June 10 pairs tiered production credits with an OEM demand-side incentive to pull rare-earth permanent magnet manufacturing out of China's grip — reaching the one chokepoint that banning Chinese drones outright cannot fix.
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Policy & Regulation
Is DJI Banned in the U.S.? A Precise Map of Six Overlapping Restrictions
"DJI is banned" is both true and false depending on which of six distinct legal instruments you mean. This explainer maps each layer — export controls, federal procurement, the DoD blacklist, the FCC Covered List, state laws, and the BVLOS draft rule — with its exact scope and status as of June 2026.
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Policy & Regulation
Remote ID for Drones, Explained: The License Plate in the Sky
14 CFR Part 89 requires virtually every drone flying in U.S. airspace to broadcast its position, speed, and the pilot's ground location in real time — and the FAA is now building its entire advanced-operations framework on top of that signal.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA Locks Down 11 Cities for the World Cup as DETER Gets Its First Big Test
Starting today, the FAA has activated overlapping TFRs across 11 US host cities through July 19 — an airspace lockdown without obvious precedent — with penalties reaching $100,000 and the new DETER enforcement program facing its first weeks-long, multi-city deployment.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA Part 108 and BVLOS, Explained: The Proposed Rule Reshaping Drone Operations
The FAA's proposed Part 108 would replace a patchwork of case-by-case waivers with a framework for routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations — but as of June 2026, it remains a proposal, no final rule exists, and the industry fault lines are deep.
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Policy & Regulation
Seven Years Late, FAA Proposes Petition-Based Drone Restrictions Over 9,000 Critical Infrastructure Sites
The FAA's long-overdue Section 2209 NPRM creates a two-tier Unmanned Aircraft Flight Restriction framework covering more than 9,000 facilities across 16 sectors. Comments close July 6, 2026.
