Policy & Regulation
Drone policy and regulation news from UASFeed — FAA rulemaking, BVLOS, Part 108, the DJI debate, export controls, and the rules shaping the uncrewed sky.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA Drone Registration Explained: Who Must Register, How, and Why the Rule Almost Died
Every drone over 250 grams flown outdoors in the U.S. requires FAA registration before takeoff. Here is how the two-track system works, the legal battle that briefly voided the rule, and how Remote ID extends registration into the air.
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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 BVLOS Bottleneck: How Drone Delivery Regulation Varies Across the World
Wing has logged over 400,000 deliveries. Meituan runs 28,000 daily flights across 12 Chinese cities. Yet for most of the world, the fundamental question of who can fly autonomously over populated areas remains unresolved — a regulatory coordination problem, not an engineering one.
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Policy & Regulation
Drone Privacy Law in the US: A Jurisdictional Patchwork Built on 1980s Cases
The FAA controls where drones fly but explicitly disclaims authority over what they see. What fills that gap is a collision of 1940s property doctrine, Supreme Court aviation precedents from the Reagan era, 24 divergent state statutes, and a 2024 Michigan ruling that may define the legal terrain for years.
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Policy & Regulation
FAA Part 107 Explained: The Commercial Drone Certificate That Governs U.S. Airspace
14 CFR Part 107 sets the floor for every commercial UAS operation in the United States — and the FAA evaluates the purpose of your flight, not your intent. Here is what certification requires, what the operating rules permit, and what Part 108 changes next.
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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
The Legal Architecture of Armed Drone Strikes: Three Overlapping Regimes, One Persistent Gap
Armed drones operate inside a dense, contested body of international law spanning the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Missile Technology Control Regime. Here is what that framework actually requires — and where it consistently breaks down.
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Policy & Regulation
China Closes the E-Commerce Loophole on Drone Component Exports
Beijing's new customs declarations — Announcements No. 77 and No. 78, effective June 30 — don't expand the controlled-items list. They demand paper trails that make it impossible to move drone components through platform intermediaries without explicit disclosure of every party in the chain.
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Policy & Regulation
The Layer Import Bans Can't Reach: Congress Targets Drone Magnet Supply Chain
A bipartisan House bill introduced June 10 pairs tiered production credits with an OEM demand-side incentive to pull rare-earth permanent magnet manufacturing out of China's grip — reaching the one chokepoint that banning Chinese drones outright cannot fix.
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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.
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Policy & Regulation
Remote ID for Drones, Explained: The License Plate in the Sky
14 CFR Part 89 requires virtually every drone flying in U.S. airspace to broadcast its position, speed, and the pilot's ground location in real time — and the FAA is now building its entire advanced-operations framework on top of that signal.
