There has been an interesting development in the moves by the United States congress to ban Chinese drone maker DJI from offering its drones and related commercial services in the US market.

Reports from the US has it that the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has released the full text of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill which authorises funding for the country’s defence services for the coming year.

Except that, in this version of the bill – which was passed behind closed doors last month in a 22-3 vote – the section containing the Countering CCP Drones Act, is nowhere to be seen.

The passing of the NDAA in a House of Assembly vote made waves among the drone community worldwide because it contained provisions of the Countering CCP Drones Act that seek to curb the activities of Chinese drone maker DJI, the world leader in commercial drone technology, from operating in the US.

The House version of the bill would add equipment and services from DJI to the Federal Communications Commission’s covered list, blocking DJI from getting FCC licenses for future drone models, and potentially leading to the revocation of existing FCC authorisations.

The emergence of the SASC version of the bill has added new twist to the saga; and should it pass the full Senate vote, it must then be reconciled with the House version.

“As the SASC meets behind closed doors, it’s hard to know exactly why the provision against DJI in the House version was left out of the Senate mark-up,” Adam Welsh, head of global policy at DJI, told AgFunderNews.

“There has been a lot of engagement in recent weeks from people who rely on our products for their businesses, their livelihoods, to save lives [firefighters and other emergency services], to spray their crops, and you certainly would hope that that has an impact on the thinking.

“But we don’t know.”

Now, everyone with interest in the matter waits to see what happens.

 “As there are two versions of the NDAA, it will have to go to conference and conferees appointed from the House and from the Senate will have to sit down and hash out the differences in the text. And you don’t know who the conferees are until they are announced.

“If it (the China-origin drones section) had been in the Senate version, there’s a very good likelihood that it would have made it into the final bill,” Welsh added.  

“Because it’s not, they will have to debate the differences and try to figure out what the best options are. All we can do is keep engaging with people and reaffirm that there’s no data security issue with our product, that we’ve been vetted repeatedly, and that if they effectively ban DJI it’s going to not just hurt DJI but a number of different verticals including agriculture.”

Which means its more days with a squeaky bum for DJI people, who have been urging their clients to lobby with their local senators and house representatives so they vote against the bill.

“The August recess is coming up where senators and representatives will be back in their districts, so that’s a perfect opportunity for people to try to engage with lawmakers and explain why DJI drones are so important to their businesses.

“We definitely don’t want to take our foot off the gas, so we’re trying to meet with as many people we can on the Hill to go through what we do on data security, and we’re also encouraging our customers to stay engaged and keep up the pressure.”

More and more farmers have been leaning towards DJI drones for their precision agriculture needs, with the company’s resellers in the country claiming about 3.7 million acres of farmland were sprayed by drone across 41 states and 50 crop types in 2023.

Most of the drone spraying was done by DJI’s Agras models of agricultural drones

 “The message we want to get across [to lawmakers] is about the impact this [adding DJI to the covered list] would have on farmers and rural communities where spray drones have been a phenomenal boon,” said Mariah Scott, CEO of agricultural drone services company Rantizo.

Rantizo has operations across 35 states in the US, and primarily deploys drones made by DJI and fellow Chinese manufacturer XAG.

“Without DJI we don’t have US-manufactured alternatives that are competitive in terms of cost or performance.”

DJI is by far the world’s largest commercial drone manufacturing and services company, and its lates agricultural drone report claims that the company’s drones sprayed over 500million hectares of farmland in the year leading to June 2024.

It is a kind of market dominance that may be making some uncomfortable.

“It started out with questions about data security, which we’ve addressed, and then the argument moved on to our (dominant) market share and whether small [US] manufacturers can compete on price or quality, and so I think that’s now the main driver,” Welsh opined when asked about the possible motivation behind DJI’s imminent ban in the US.

“If another Chinese firm were the size of DJI, rest assured they would be targeted as well.”