Extend the Pentagon’s ban on China’s consumer drones – By Mark Montgomery (Defense One) / Aug 14, 2023
The rest of the federal government—and state and local agencies and even private-sector infrastructure companies—should quit using this Chinese technology.
As a former Director of Operations at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, my birthday wish would be to have U.S. drones comprehensively map China’s infrastructure and download it to my targeting team. My war-planning counterpart in the People’s Liberation Army might be able to make that wish come true—unless we get serious about the threat of Chinese-made commercial drones that operate in the United States.
The People’s Republic of China is investing heavily to advance consumer-drone technology and secure global market domination for its manufacturers. National-security concerns about the use of these drones and the data they gather led the Defense Department in 2018 to forbid their use in the department and in 2022 to place the most prominent of the manufacturers—Shenzhen-based DJI—on a blacklist of companies believed to have ties to the Chinese military.
Those concerns have only deepened, and along several axes.
First, drones can be used to surveil sensitive locations—and Chinese-made ones cannot be trusted to keep out. Numerous PRC-made drones have been detected in restricted U.S. airspace, including over Washington, D.C., despite DJI’s claim that their drone design includes geofencing restrictions to avoid sensitive locations. Drones made by Autel Robotics, another prominent manufacturer, do not even have geofence restrictions.
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