Nearly a year after the Federal Communications Commission began squeezing Chinese-made drones out of the US market, American construction firms remain almost entirely reliant on DJI. A survey of Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) members, released August 17, 2026, and covered by drone trade press on August 24, found that among the member companies that fly drones, 97.1% use DJI as their primary aircraft. Not "most." Not "a plurality." Ninety-seven percent. It was the first year ABC had fielded a drone-usage survey, so the trade group has no prior-year figures to compare against — but the single snapshot it does have is stark.

Skydio, the American drone maker regulators and lawmakers have spent years positioning as the domestic alternative to DJI, registered as the primary platform for exactly zero percent of respondents.

What the Survey Found

ABC represents roughly 24,000 member companies across 67 chapters, spanning the commercial construction trades. The survey was fielded May 1–15, 2026, and found that 36.1% of respondent companies fly drones in some capacity — for site surveys, progress documentation, topographic mapping, and safety inspections, among other uses.

Within that drone-flying cohort, the platform breakdown was stark:

  • 97.1% use DJI as their primary drone platform
  • 2.9% use Autel as primary
  • 0% use Skydio as primary

DJI's grip extends into backup fleets as well, appearing in 86.2% of companies' secondary or backup aircraft — meaning even firms that keep a second platform on hand for redundancy are, more often than not, keeping a second DJI drone rather than diversifying to a different manufacturer.

Spending patterns suggest this is not a hobbyist afterthought. Among drone-flying respondents, 61.9% reported spending between $1,000 and $10,000 on drone hardware — a range consistent with commercial-grade mapping and inspection platforms rather than consumer toys. And when asked what stands in the way of wider adoption, the top barrier cited by respondents — 53.5% — was "regulatory and compliance issues," not cost, not training, not limited use cases.

DroneLife's companion coverage of the same survey, published the same day, framed the finding as a vulnerability rather than a success story: as the federal government tightens the squeeze on foreign drone manufacturers, it is likely to significantly raise costs for the construction firms that depend on them — precisely because ABC's own numbers show drone adoption in the industry is real and still expanding, not a niche experiment firms can easily walk away from.

The Regulatory Squeeze, So Far

The survey lands against a backdrop of two major FCC actions. On December 22, 2025, the Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau added all foreign-produced unmanned aircraft systems to its Covered List — the roster of communications equipment and services deemed a national security threat under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act. Placement on the Covered List bars the FCC from issuing new equipment authorizations for the listed products, effectively freezing new DJI and Autel models out of the US regulatory pipeline going forward.

The FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau built in a narrow exemption on January 7, 2026, acting on a national security determination from the Department of War: drones on the Defense Contract Management Agency's Blue UAS Cleared List, along with equipment qualifying as "domestic end products," were removed from the Covered List — and its authorization freeze — until January 1, 2027.

Then, on July 21, 2026, the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology went further. Public Notice DA 26-758, filed under PS Docket No. 26-189, proposes to prohibit the continued importation and marketing — not the use — of Covered List drones and components that meet a "military-grade" definition. Critically, that definition is not limited to aircraft built for combat: any UAS carrying LiDAR or thermal-imaging sensors falls within the proposed category, a scope that sweeps in a large share of the survey mapping and inspection platforms construction firms actually fly.

The proposal explicitly would not touch domestically produced UAS, federal government use, or non-military-grade equipment. Comments on the proposal are due September 2, 2026 — thirty days after Federal Register publication.

Why the Numbers Haven't Moved

What the FCC's actions have done, so far, is restrict what can newly enter the US market and what can be imported and sold going forward — not what companies already flying DJI hardware can continue to operate. That distinction matters enormously to the construction industry's numbers. A contractor who bought a DJI mapping drone in 2023 is not required to ground it under the December 2025 Covered List action or the July 2026 public notice; both measures are aimed at future imports, sales, and authorizations, not retroactive bans on equipment already in a company's fleet.

That framing helps explain why the ABC survey's "top barrier" finding — regulatory and compliance issues, at 53.5% — reads less like companies citing DJI-specific concerns and more like an industry watching a moving regulatory target it cannot yet plan around. Firms know new DJI and Autel purchases are getting harder to authorize. They do not yet know whether their existing hardware will eventually be swept up by a "military-grade" definition broad enough to include LiDAR and thermal sensors — capabilities that are standard, not exotic, on commercial construction survey drones.

Why It Matters

The construction industry's near-total DJI dependence is a real-world stress test of a policy built on the assumption that American alternatives would be ready to absorb displaced demand. A year after the Covered List expansion began cutting off new DJI and Autel authorizations, Skydio — the domestic manufacturer most often cited in Washington as the answer to Chinese drone dominance — has captured 0% of primary-platform share among construction firms large enough to be counted in a 24,000-member trade association's survey.

That gap is not simply about brand loyalty. It reflects price, product-line breadth for mapping and inspection use cases, and the sheer scale of an installed base that switching costs make expensive to walk away from. The July 2026 public notice raises the stakes further: because its "military-grade" definition catches any UAS carrying LiDAR or thermal sensors, the rulemaking under consideration in PS Docket 26-189 could eventually reach past new sales and into equipment types the construction industry already depends on for core survey work. With comments due September 2, 2026, the record being built now will shape whether the FCC's next move targets a narrow slice of genuinely military-spec hardware — or a much larger swath of the commercial drone fleet the ABC survey shows contractors actually fly.

Sources