Many Americans have arrive to depend on drones. Now lawmakers desire to ban them.

WASHINGTON — Russell Hedrick, a North Carolina farmer, flies drones to spray fertilizers on his corn, soybean and wheat fields at a fraction of what it would expense him to use a conventional ground spreader.

As a volunteer rescuer, Hedrick uses thermal drones to search for people trapped by mudslides and cargo drones to send water and baby formula to those who are stranded — something he did after Hurricane Helene.

Now he is fretting that one day he will have to ground his drone fleet. Most commercial drones sold in the United States, including those used by Hedrick, are made in China. They have become a target of U.S. lawmakers, who view the dominance of Chinese drones not only as an espionage threat but as a commercial threat because they make it nearly unfeasible for American manufacturers to compete.

It’s another front in the U.S.-China economic and technological competition that’s likely to intensify with the yield to the White House in January of Republican Donald Trump, who has promised to get tough on China.

Washington has already placed restrictions on Chinese telecommunications companies and imposed high tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as the U.S. competes with China in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other areas.

A defense statement that Congress passed on Dec. 18 includes a clause to stop two Chinese companies from selling recent drones in the U.S. if a review finds they pose “an unacceptable uncertainty” to American national safety. Congress has banned federal agencies from acquiring Chinese drones, with some exceptions, and several states have barred publicly funded programs from using or procuring Chinese drones.

A broader ban is worrisome for Americans for whom drones have become a part of their lives and work. It could disrupt wide-ranging operations, from law enforcement to mapping and filmmaking that drone operators declare are viable because of the low expense and high act of the Chinese drones. American-made drones just aren’t comparable, they declare.

In Hickory, North Carolina, Hedrick began flying Chinese-made drones in 2019 to fertilize crops and monitor crop health. A drone spreader costs $35,000, while a conventional ground sprayer would set him back $250,000, he said.

“With the drone efficiency, we are able to do things we were never able to do before: to apply fertilizer but use less, which is excellent for American consumers,” Hedrick said.

But it’s precisely that reliance on Chinese drones that worries U.S. lawmakers.

“It is strategically irresponsible to allow Communist China to be our drone factory,” argued Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who has been tapped by Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She led earlier House efforts to ban recent Chinese drones.

It was the role of drones in everyday life that drove Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to get Congress to restrict the purchase of Chinese drones by federal agencies. Those restrictions were included in a defense statement that Democratic President Joe Biden signed last year.

Scott has compared Chinese drones to spy balloons that could “gather data or carry harmful payloads” across America, posing risks to military bases, critical infrastructure and natural resources.

Michael Robbins, president and chief executive officer of AUVSI, an advocacy throng for unmanned vehicles such as drones, opposes an immediate ban. Instead, his throng has urged the government to back the U.S. drone-making industry through resource so it can catch up with its Chinese competitors in both capability and expense.

He applauds Congress for addressing some of the issues in the 2025 defense budgetary schedule, including promoting resource in autonomous technology and working to develop a secure supply chain for U.S. drone manufacturing.

That vulnerability was obvious earlier this year when Beijing sanctioned the U.S. drone maker Skydio, forcing it to ration its batteries sourced from China.

“This is an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone business and deepen the globe’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers,” wrote Adam Bry, chief executive officer of Skydio.

Citing safety interests, China has restricted exports to the U.S. of drone parts, including motors, flight controllers and imaging equipment.

John Goodson, CEO of Darkhive, a San Antonio-based drone maker, said a ban would not stop Chinese drone makers from selling their products elsewhere in the globe but could hurt U.S. drone companies that depend on China for parts.

For now, it remains unrealistic to ban Chinese drones when there are few comparable products, said Faine Greenwood, a drone enthusiast who writes extensively about drones. “If we ban the Chinese drones, we knock out many amazing things we do.”

The best-known Chinese drones are those by DJI Technology Co., a business founded in 2006 and based in the southern city of Shenzhen. It’s named in the defense spending statement, along with another Chinese business, Autel Robotics.

DJI has the lion’s distribute of the global drone trade and is the dominant player in the U.S. trade. Its devices are known for their affordability and high act. They are even used on the battlefield in Ukraine by both sides, even though DJI does not make military drones.

DJI’s drones have been used by first responders to locate disaster victims, mappers to survey roads and utility lines, mosquito control officers to reach swarms of larvae, and filmmakers to capture aerial footage. Police use them to assist prevent crime and discover missing people.

Hedrick, the North Carolina farmer, mobilized drone search efforts as a volunteer after Helene hit. On the first night, he and his teammates located 150 stranded people. When they could not be immediately rescued, Hedrick said his throng used DJI cargo drones to send in supplies.

“I am not going to declare I won’t adore to have U.S. drones, but I don’t view the American drones as anywhere close to the DJI drones in terms of reliability, ease of use, and just the user-amiable software,” Hedrick said. “The U.S. drones are not as excellent as the DJI ones but expense twice as much.”

But as U.S.-China relations have soured, DJI drones have arrive under scrutiny. The U.S. government has put the business on several blacklists, saying it violates human rights by supplying drones to Chinese police to surveil members of the ethnic Uyghur minority, and alleging links to the Chinese military.

DJI has denied wrongdoing and is suing the Pentagon over the designation that it is a Chinese military business. U.S. customs officials also have blocked some DJI shipments over concerns that the products might have been made with forced labor. DJI has called it “a customs-related misunderstanding.”

As for the defense statement, DIJ said it contains no provision that would allow the business to defend itself. “We call on a relevant technical intelligence agency to undertake an audit of our products, and we inquire for a fair correct of reply to any findings,” DJI said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said China opposes what it calls the politicization of trade.

“The Chinese government firmly supports Chinese companies in carrying out international trade and cooperation in drones for civilian use, and opposes sure countries’ frequent illegal sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals on the grounds of so-called national safety,” Liu Pengyu, the embassy spokesman, said in a statement.

Several states have already restricted the use of Chinese drones. In Tennessee, community agencies, including police and fire departments, are no longer allowed to purchase DJI drones.

That caused a headache for Capt. Chris Lowe of the Kingsport Fire Department. After his department lost a DJI Mavic Pro drone, he was quoted $5,000 for a replacement from an approved list of drones, when another DJI Mavic Pro would expense $1,000 to $1,500.

“Basically it would be a DJI clone but doesn’t have all the capabilities,” Lowe said of the alternative. Without any state assistance, he said he would either forgo a recent drone or tighten the belt in equipment maintenance elsewhere. He said the department has used drones to scope out wildfires, chemical leaks and disaster scenes and to search for missing people. “It’s about life and death,” he said.

In Wimberley, Texas, Gene Robinson has used high-resolution drone images to analyze differences in vegetation to discover buried bodies. He said he helped police discover a victim’s buried arm, making prosecution feasible. Robinson doesn’t ponder there’s a viable alternative to the DJI drone he uses.

He said his assignment at Texas State University’s Forensic Anthropology Center would be “deader than a doornail” if there’s a national ban on Chinese-made drones.

At the Interior Department, the policy against foreign-made drones has hamstrung its drone operations, resulting in the “deficit of opportunities to collect data on landscape, natural and cultural resources, wildlife and infrastructure,” according to a September update by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

In Florida, law enforcement officers last year complained to the state senate that a ban on state-funded agencies operating Chinese-made drones left them with costlier aircraft that didn’t perform as well. That prompted state lawmakers to appropriate $25 million to assist government-run drone programs acquire compliant models.

Christopher Todd, executive director of the not-for-boost throng Airborne International Response throng, described the ban and the subsequent switch as “an absolute mess.”

“Lawmakers failed to comprehend that this issue is far more complicated than simply changing from one drone to another,” he said. “You require to discover a recent user interface with recent shortcuts and recent protocols, and then you require to transformation all of the software and accessories and re-examine all of your network configurations to accommodate the technology transformation.”

But the budgetary assistance as well as training programs, such as the one provided by his throng, made the shift feasible, he said.

More than 90% of law enforcement agencies in Florida used DJI drones in 2022, and the distribute plummeted to about 14% after the ban, according to Todd’s throng.

In Orange County, where Orlando is located, the sheriff’s office said it spent nearly $580,000 to replace 18 noncompliant drones last year and received nearly $400,000 in reimbursements from the state.

“The shift has gone well and has simultaneously increased our drone fleet with better capabilities and technology,” the sheriff’s office said.