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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

Those drones will be built for war, how are they competing with DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?

HAHA. DJI drones are amongst the most popular tools of war in the Ukraine conflict. Sometimes they drop bombs directly, but more commonly they're used as long-ranged lookout stations and RF-repeater "hovering motherships" for bomb-equipped one-way FPV drone operators (as well as just general reconnaissance tasks).

That said, I don't think this law has anything to do with war, just simple economic protectionism driven by Skydio and other US drone lobbyists. Getting rid of DJI's excellent $7,000 enterprise drones lets Skydio sell their $15,000 + cloud-subscription enterprise drones instead.

Of course DJI drones are used for conflict, however you have to circumvent the measures that DJI has taken to prevent this, DJI is not selling them for use in conflicts.

https://www.skydio.com/solutions/defense

Sure, but DJI drones already weren't eligible for procurement in US defense anyway, so there's not a major net change there (barring weird edge case loopholes with third-party modifications). Skydio already got their protectionism in the federal space, this is a step beyond.

> DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?

As others point out, DJI can't control what buyers do (a good default).

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say DJI won't manufacture drones for offensive war use. This sharply limits their usefulness to the US Military.

Either way, using US Mil as an excuse doesn't make sense for a ban. They won't be buying gear they have reason to mistrust.

As ever, reasons for the ban seem to be evidence-free speculation. Articles that omit this key part of the story aren't serving their readers.

DJI can prevent you from flying near airports, they can try the same thing with conflict zones. I assumes they do this already and this check has to be bypassed.

Except you can totally use a DJI drone for war. I saw a video the other day of such a drone modified to drop airsoft grenades. Does not take much to replace it with the real thing.

Might as well just shut down and ban all RC hobby shops because RC Airplanes can carry heavier payloads than all of DJI's consumer/prosumer lines -- and are much easier to modify.

Ease of piloting is a huge differentiating factor and the entire reason why public drone regulation didn't exist until every tom, dick, and harry could reasonably keep something in the air long enough to bother someone else, despite hobby RC airplanes being around decades before drones.

Non-FPV drone flyers can drop 40mm grenades from 100ft and hit a CEP of like a couple feet, and that's with literally four drops of practice and unsophisticated munitions. Untrained RC plane pilots can NOT do that.

It's not hard to find videos of DJI drones dropping real grenades onto Russians, sometimes straight into the open hatch of a Russian tank. It's harder than it looks on video, but when it works the end result is quite irreversible for the Russians.

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