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Comment by nthypes | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know the model name of the drone used?

Article says brand is XAG so must be one of these: https://www.xa.com/en/plant-protection-uas The photo looks like either XAG P100 or P100 Pro.

Looks like a DJI Agras model to me! Amusing considering the recent news regarding DJI being banned.

One reason of them being banned is they are very good and hence very popular.

The main reason is a fear - which as far as I know is unsubstantiated - that China's got backdoors in tech sold in the west. But with so many hackers and national security agencies disassembling and analyzing these things, surely they'd have found it by now?

Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more about market protection. Which doesn't make much sense to me because is there a major US drone manufacturer that can't compete with DJI right now?

It's a fear that US has no similarly competitive drone companies

Check out Guardian Ag

> with so many hackers and national security agencies disassembling and analyzing these things, surely they'd have found it by now

This is a common misconception. With OTA updates, the backdoor can be introduced at any time in a future software version. For example, right before an attack.

I'm not sure whether they can be exported even if DJI is not banned.

Just check [0], their latest agricultural drone T60 sold in China has 60KG payload and AESA radars. (No English page provided)

They also has a T50 [1] with English introduction page.

While the air force of some countries in the world still does not have AESA, DJI already uses AESA to grow crops.

[0] https://ag.dji.com/cn/t60/specs

[1] https://ag.dji.com/t50/specs

If we are moving to neo feudalism, even upper middle class families might have a better air force than many smaller and poorer countries.

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