Commercial UAV Expo opened in Las Vegas on September 1 with a keynote that put a number on something the drone industry has been saying quietly for months: most operators are not ready for the regulatory shift they know is coming, and most are still flying hardware they know is politically exposed. A newly unveiled State of the Industry survey found that 43% of drone operators have not yet begun preparing for the FAA's incoming Part 108 beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) rule, even as 62.8% report that 76-100% of their fleets are DJI or other foreign-made aircraft.

The two data points, presented together during the show's opening keynote, describe an industry caught between two slow-moving pressures — a new operating rule that promises to unlock routine BVLOS flight, and a hardware-sourcing question that has hung over the sector for years without a clean resolution.

What the Survey Found

The State of the Industry survey, presented at the September 1-3 event, paints a picture of an operator base that is aware of Part 108 but largely has not translated that awareness into action. Beyond the 43% who haven't started preparing, roughly half of respondents said they are taking a "wait and see" approach toward NDAA-compliant alternatives to DJI and other Chinese-manufactured platforms — meaning they are neither committing to a transition plan nor ruling one out.

Asked what's actually holding back a shift away from foreign-made hardware, operators identified cost — not policy concerns — as the primary barrier. That ordering matters: it suggests the barrier isn't confusion about the rules or doubt that a transition will eventually be required, but a straightforward calculation that NDAA-compliant airframes and payloads remain more expensive than the DJI ecosystem most fleets were built around.

Pilot Institute co-founder Greg Reverdiau, addressing the keynote crowd, offered a line that captured the tension in the room: "Part 108 is running. We need to walk first." The comment reflects a rule that is moving forward on the FAA's timeline regardless of whether the operator community feels prepared for it.

The Regulatory Backdrop

Part 108 is the FAA's forthcoming rule for normalizing BVLOS operations — flights conducted beyond the operator's direct visual line of sight, a capability the industry has pursued for years through waivers and pilot programs rather than a standing regulatory pathway. According to the FAA's rulemaking record in the Federal Register, the proposed rule would give Part 108 UAS operators presumptive right-of-way over manned aircraft by default, with exceptions — including when the manned aircraft is broadcasting electronic conspicuity such as ADS-B Out, in Class B/C airspace, or during takeoff and landing — under which the unmanned aircraft must yield instead. That provision proved contentious: more than half of the roughly 3,100 comments the FAA received on the original August 2025 proposal addressed the right-of-way question directly, which is why the agency reopened the comment period in January 2026 specifically to gather more input on right-of-way and electronic conspicuity before finalizing the rule.

That rulemaking record is the regulatory baseline against which the survey's findings were measured. A rule of this scope typically carries operational, training, and equipment requirements that take time to absorb — which makes the 43% "haven't started" figure notable less as a surprise and more as a marker of how much runway operators believe they still have, or think they need.

Q&A: Why DJI Dependency and Part 108 Are Tangled Together

Q: Why would a BVLOS rule and a hardware-sourcing question show up in the same keynote?
A: Because for many operators, both changes point toward the same category of cost. NDAA-compliant aircraft have historically carried a price premium over DJI's mass-market platforms, and BVLOS-ready operations typically require additional equipment — detect-and-avoid systems, electronic conspicuity, and in some cases new airframes altogether. An operator weighing a hardware transition and a regulatory transition at the same time is looking at two capital-intensive changes landing close together.

Q: Does "wait and see" mean operators are ignoring the DJI question?
A: Not necessarily. The survey's roughly 50% "wait and see" figure suggests operators are tracking the issue without committing capital to it yet — a rational posture if the shape of future restrictions, or the availability of cheaper compliant alternatives, remains unsettled. But it also means well over half the sample has made no forward move, even as the DJI question has been live in policy discussions for years.

Q: Is cost really a bigger factor than policy risk?
A: According to the survey, yes — operators ranked cost above policy concerns as the primary barrier to switching away from foreign-made aircraft. That's a meaningful signal for vendors of NDAA-compliant hardware: the obstacle isn't persuading operators that a switch may eventually be necessary, it's closing the price gap.

A Different Kind of Recognition

The same day the survey was presented, Commercial UAV Expo hosted a separate moment that underscored what mature drone programs look like once the technology and training questions are settled. DRONERESPONDERS presented its Eric Talley Public Safety UAS Excellence Award — named for Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, who was killed in the line of duty on March 22, 2021 — to Greg Whiting, sUAS Program Manager for the Texas Military Department.

Whiting's program has now logged 100,000 sorties, built up from what started as a one-week training course in March 2022 and has since expanded into a three-week program supporting 80 full-time pilots. The numbers behind that flight volume are striking: an error rate of roughly one pilot mistake per 30,000 flights, about 47,000 sorties involving detection of illegal activity, and seizures totaling nearly $10 million in narcotics. Whiting also coordinated crewed and uncrewed operations during the central Texas flood response, a role that put the program's training and procedures to a real-world test outside routine law-enforcement support.

The award stood as a counterpoint to the survey data released the same day — a reminder that the operational payoff from disciplined drone programs is already well documented, even as much of the broader commercial sector is still working out how to get its fleets and its regulatory posture aligned.

Why It Matters

Part 108 is expected to be one of the most consequential UAS rules the FAA has issued, unlocking the routine BVLOS operations that much of the commercial drone business case — infrastructure inspection, agriculture, public safety, delivery — has been waiting on for years. A rule that gives compliant BVLOS operators presumptive right-of-way over manned aircraft by default, subject to yielding when the manned aircraft carries electronic conspicuity or operates in specific airspace, changes the economics of scaling a drone program, but only for operators positioned to meet its requirements. A 43% "haven't started" figure heading into the fall of 2026 suggests a meaningful share of the industry could be caught flat-footed when the rule takes effect, regardless of how much lead time the FAA ultimately provides.

The DJI dependency numbers carry their own weight. With 62.8% of surveyed fleets still majority or entirely DJI or other foreign-made aircraft, and cost identified as the primary obstacle to change, the industry's hardware base remains exposed to whatever restrictions federal or state policy eventually imposes on Chinese-manufactured drones — a risk that operators appear to be pricing as less urgent than the capital cost of switching now. Together, the two findings describe a sector that knows where the pressure points are but has, in large part, not yet moved to relieve them. Programs like the Texas Military Department's — built methodically over four years into a 100,000-sortie operation — offer a model of what disciplined preparation looks like, but the survey suggests it remains the exception rather than the norm.

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