In late December, the Federal Communications Commission set the drone world abuzz with a sudden announcement that all new models of foreign-made drones and critical components would be banned from the United States. The move, aimed at reshoring and shoring up America’s drone industry, took many observers by surprise given the state of domestic drone supply chains. Because of the fledgling nature of America’s domestic drone industry, the ban is likely to throttle the overall availability of cheap, cutting-edge drones and spike prices for American hobbyists, consumers and businesses in the next few years. “It’s an absolute s—show. It’s terrible. The United States doesn’t make any drone components,” Chris Larson, CEO of the American drone-component manufacturer Standard Systems, told NBC News. “There’s a few suppliers here and there, but it’s really only popped upwards over the last couple years.” “The reality is, in the drone world, everything is made in China, and it’s going to take some time for things to get ramped up here,” he said. Asserting that non-American drones pose “unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States,” the FCC’s ban will affect huge swaths of America’s drone users who depend on cheap, primarily Chinese drones, as America’s drone supply chain and manufacturing capabilities are either nonexistent or nascent, according to NBC News’ interviews with 12 American drone manufacturers, experts, former defense officials and investors. They say catching up with China’s drone production quality and quantity will take some time — and pain. China is estimated to manufacture around 70% to 90% of drones used in America, depending on the exact use scenarios, and it controls close to 90% of the global drone market. One Chinese drone brand in particular, DJI, is thought to hold well over two-thirds of America’s personal and commercial drone market share. While many Americans use drones for fun, racing them competitively or using them to capture sweeping panoramic videos, many have grown to rely on the cheap drones for business purposes — from surveying whale blowholes to pollinating cornfields. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, over 837,000 drones were registered to fly in the United States as of 2025. The FCC’s recent ban, which was amended Jan. 7 to provide a year of leeway for certain drone brands to continue selling new models, will allow Americans to continue purchasing existing foreign-made models sold as of the date of the ban. Some sort of a ban was expected by many observers and had been telegraphed for years. The 2023 American Drone Security Act banned federal agencies from purchasing foreign-made drones, while the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act launched the review process that culminated in the recent ruling. Despite those earlier efforts, the size and immediacy of the Trump administration’s ban caught many by surprise. “I think the breadth of what they released was unexpected, but the actual actions themselves were not,” said Scott Shtofman, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, the drone industry’s leading trade group. “The scale of automated, autonomous production lines that you’d see in China, we don’t have that, and that’s because we didn’t have a demand signal against this subsidized Chinese platform,” Shtofman said, arguing that China’s drone dominance has emerged from heavy state support. The FCC’s new ban is the latest salvo in America’s race to embrace drones, joining ongoing drone initiatives funded by the U.S. military and laid out in an executive order in July aimed at unleashing American drone dominance. The abrupt ban on foreign drones could cause prices to jump for commercial and recreational users given limited American-made supply of advanced drones and relevant components. While new versions of drones provide ever-increasing battery life and improved autonomy, businesses seeking to replace broken or aging foreign-made drones will now be unable to replace them with the latest, most innovative models from abroad. Many American public safety agencies have adopted DJI drones to assist first responders on the ground. Those agencies could, instead, switch to American drones from manufacturers like Skydio, which boasts its own first-responder line of drones, but the switch would most likely increase short-term costs and require new infrastructure in the face of smaller production numbers. Though Skydio has been making a concerted push to grow its presence in the public safety industry, a recent survey of over 8,000 drone operators found that 13% of respondents from public safety agencies used fleets including Skydio drones, compared with almost 97% that include DJI drones. While there are over 300 active U.S.-based aerial drone companies, according to the drone trade group’s latest figures, many of them produce larger, more expensive drones meant for defense purposes, rendering them unsuitable for the surging consumer and commercial drone demand. Olaf Hichwa, a co-founder of the California-based defense technology company Neros Technologies and an avid drone racer, said the ban would be likely to have immediate and stinging implications. “My personal hobby will get more expensive. My drones will probably get worse and harder to buy. There will be pain,” Hichwa told NBC News. “Anyone who says that this is going to be easy probably doesn’t understand the problem fully. Industrial bases are not built overnight.” Trump Administration latest Gaza 20 hours ago Israel objects to U.S. announcement of leaders who will help oversee next steps in Gaza Student Loans Jan 17 Trump admin delays plan to withhold wages for student loan borrowers in default Trump administration Jan 15 U.S. names major sporting events other than World Cup, Olympics exempt from Trump visa ban Key drone components like motors, batteries, electronics and sensors largely come from intricate supply chains in China, and the purely American supplies that do exist have historically been prohibitively expensive for widespread adoption by drone manufacturers. Ben Barani, chief operating officer at Standard Systems, argues that the financial and profit incentives of drone manufacturing have historically been quite small compared with Chinese funding models. “The Chinese are so heavily subsidized in all industries, but specifically in the drone world, that they’re able to offer drones at a lower price.” “Companies in the U.S. are basically on their own, so they have to pay for all the research and development costs, all the operational costs, on their own. So keeping costs low can be pretty hard, especially on the commercial side of things,” he said. Drone supply chains are complex, from the rare-earth minerals like neodymium and dysprosium required to build magnets and motors to the composite frames that hold rotors and cameras. Building domestic production for each of those components will be challenging and expensive, according to Larson of Standard Systems, a special operations veteran. “If I need X, Y or Z component, you can give it to six different manufacturers if you’re in China that are all right across the street from you and get competitive bids. In the U.S., I might have one, maybe two options, and they know that they have pricing power,” Larson said. “Probably over the next two to three years, we’ll have quite a few manufacturers,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be at the same scale as China, but it’s going to be much more robust than it currently is.” The sudden market opportunity for American-made drones will also boost efforts by existing drone investors, according to Susan Roberts, vice president of strategy at the drone investing group Ondas Holdings. “What the FCC ban really does is accelerate clarity. It raises the bar on who can participate, and it reinforces the importance of controlling the things that matter over time: software, data paths, manufacturing and lifecycle support.” Mike Benitez, a veteran of the armed forces and the drone industry, cast the FCC’s recent announcement as melding national security and economic interests. “This announcement is part of a bigger coherent strategy to onshore or reshore some of those drone-making capabilities with economics that make sense not just for national security, but ultimately for all of the industries in the United States.” Benitez pointed to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the growing primacy of drone warfare as reasons to dramatically expand America’s drone manufacturing capacity. “Millions and millions of drones have been flown on both sides of the war,” Benitez said, referring to the cheap drones used to observe enemy movements, drop bombs and fly explosive-laden missions into enemy vehicles. “Underneath all of that, whether it’s from the Ukrainian side flying to Russia or the Russian side flying and attacking the Ukrainians, all of it is built by Chinese components.” As a result, Benitez joined a drone company called Purple Rhombus as CEO this month, aiming to use existing sheet-metal machining techniques to create small, cheap American drones en masse over the next few years. Hichwa’s Los Angeles-based Neros Technologies is already starting to wean America’s drone ecosystem off of Chinese components and drones, similar to an ongoing Taiwanese push to create drone supply chains minimally reliant on Chinese technology. Backed by prominent Silicon Valley investors and founded in 2023, Neros is churning out tens of thousands of drones annually and aims to produce over 325 per day in the near future, inspired by Hichwa’s experience visiting the drone-dominated battlefield in Ukraine. “Without a domestic drone industrial base, modern countries cannot defend themselves,” Hichwa said, emphasizing the importance of building as many components as possible in America. Neros won a contract in early 2025 to send thousands of drones to the Ukrainian front lines and was sanctioned by the Chinese government in late 2024 after it provided drones to Taiwan. Hichwa said the FCC’s recent ban would accelerate progress for civilian and military drones in the U.S. “By trying to promote the American consumer industrial base, that’s how you get the $500 drone that blows up the $2 million tank as we see in Ukraine.” “In the past, a lot of drones were ‘Made in America’ because they’re screwed together in America,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Anyone can figure out how to use a screwdriver.” “What matters,” Hichwa continued, “is whether there is an industrial base that makes the core components, the motors, the circuit boards, the radios, the electronics here in the States. The FCC ruling is one of the first efforts I’ve seen that actually seems to put weight behind this true push towards building and buying American-made systems.” ...read more read less