Department of Defense
Every UASFeed story on Department of Defense — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Policy & Regulation
Civil Liberties Groups Urge D.C. Circuit to Vacate FAA's Rescinded Drone-Journalism Restriction
EFF, the ACLU and photojournalism groups tell the D.C. Circuit that the FAA's withdrawn drone flight ban near DHS operations still needs to be formally vacated, arguing the agency could reimpose the restriction that critics say criminalized filming ICE and CBP.
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Policy & Regulation
FCC Cracks Its Own Drone Ban Open Again: Two More Foreign UAS Win Conditional Approval to Keep Selling in the U.S.
The FCC has granted Conditional Approvals to two more foreign-produced drones — Exedy Globalparts' Ayre CX and Parallel Flight Technologies' Firefly — letting them sidestep the Covered List ban if they follow onshoring plans and keep passing government vetting.
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Policy & Regulation
Reverse Lend-Lease: Kyiv and Washington Reportedly Sign the First Bilateral Framework to Ship Ukrainian Combat Drones Into US Test Ranges
Reported July 21-22: a US-Ukraine statement of intent would let Ukrainian aerial, ground and maritime drones be temporarily exported to America for Pentagon testing — no procurement, no tech transfer, but a direct line into the $1 billion Drone Dominance requirements pipeline.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA's Critical-Infrastructure Drone-Restriction Rule Closes Its Public Comment Window
The FAA's first formal process letting critical-infrastructure operators petition for drone flight restrictions closed for public comment this week, setting up two new tiers of no-fly zones covering 16 sectors from energy to defense plants.
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Policy & Regulation
Drones as Plumbing: The House's FY27 NDAA Bets on Doctrine, Ranges, and a Common OS
The House's FY27 NDAA (H.R. 8800) pivots from buying more drones to building the scaffolding to run them — a common sUAS operating system, dedicated training corridors, formal autonomy doctrine, and new rules for AI that influences the use of force.
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Policy & Regulation
Hegseth Names a Pentagon 'Drone Czar': New DRPM-UxS to Absorb Almost Every Unmanned Program
A June 29 Hegseth memo creates a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems reporting to Deputy Secretary Feinberg, pulling tens of billions in Group 1-3 drones, ground robots and surface vessels under one office — with the Navy's MUSV the notable carve-out.
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Policy & Regulation
The Drone Lobby Storms Capitol Hill: Adversarial-UAS Bans, Counter-UAS Authority, and a $70B FY27 Bet
At AUVSI's June 24 Hill Day, 100+ industry leaders ran 90+ meetings to push procurement bans on adversarial-nation drones, more DHS counter-UAS grants, and permanent Blue/Green UAS pathways — as core DoD C-UAS authority nears its Dec. 31 sunset and FY27 steers $70B+ to drone dominance.
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Policy & Regulation
New Jersey's 2024 Drone Wave: What Federal Investigators Actually Found
In late 2024, weeks of nightly drone sightings across New Jersey and the Northeast triggered a federal investigation, thousands of public tips, and emergency airspace restrictions—before a four-agency joint statement concluded most reports were misidentified manned aircraft, with no foreign nexus and no national security threat.
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Policy & Regulation
Who Can Legally Shoot Down a Drone in the US — and Why the Answer Is Complicated
Federal aircraft law, the Aircraft Sabotage Act, and overlapping wiretapping statutes mean that almost nobody — not state police, not sheriffs, not private citizens — had clear legal authority to neutralize a rogue drone until Congress began carving out narrow exceptions.
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Policy & Regulation
The American Security Drone Act, Explained: What the Federal UAS Ban Actually Covers
The American Security Drone Act of 2023, enacted in the FY2024 NDAA, banned federal procurement and operation of Chinese-made drones — effective December 22, 2025 — extending to every contractor and grant recipient spending federal money, not just agencies.
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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
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.
