Drone Ban Update, Anzu Investigation, $300K FAA Fines, Best Buy DJI Neo Leaks

Welcome to Your Weekly UAS News Update

We have five stories for you this week. Yes, this is going to be a bit of a long one. We have updated Countering CCP Drones Act language, two of them actually. We also have representatives calling for an Anzu investigation. The FAA is proposing over $300,000 in fines; we’ll get to the details of that. It’s kind of interesting. Also, we have two “Drones for Good” stories about some rescues, and then lastly, Best Buy strikes again as a DJI leaker. Let’s get to it.

Updated Countering CCP Drones Act

Our first story, which is a bit of a long one: Senators Rick Scott (Republican from Florida), John Tester (Democrat from Montana), and Mark Warner (Democrat from Virginia) introduced a modified version of the Countering CCP Drones Act, which expands on the House version. Now take notes here because this is a standalone bill.

This standalone bill expands on the House version and essentially adds Autel Robotics to the FCC covered list of companies.

The modified language includes a partial reimbursement program for First Responders to purchase or lease approved drones. I’ll get to what “approved drone” means in a minute, but you can probably take a guess.

There are a few problems:

1. The reimbursement program is grant-based, which means that some departments will not qualify.
2. It’s only available for up to $15 million or two years, which means that past the deadline, First Responders will be forced to purchase expensive drones without having any kind of financial assistance, which means more taxpayer money being spent. Now keep in mind, $15 million is really a drop in the bucket. Some large departments out there spend several million dollars, just one department, on drones, especially when drones get pretty expensive because they’re not Chinese drones.
3. Commercial operators and hobbyists won’t receive any sort of reimbursement, which means that you’ll be paying more money potentially for drones.

Again, remember this is proposed. An “approved drone” is defined as one that is not designed, manufactured, or assembled by a country from the foreign entity or what’s called a “foreign entity of concern” (AKA China, Russia, and a few others). It also does not include software or has one or more critical components from a foreign entity of concern. You might ask, “What is a critical component on a drone?” Well, guess what? It’s not defined. So, a lot of pot holes in here, as always with useless politicians.

But hold on, because there’s actually more. The bill I just mentioned is a standalone bill. This is why I emphasized “standalone.” Now, in addition, Scott and Warner also introduced the Countering CCP Drones Act as an amendment to the Senate NDAA. But please note that at the moment, the amendment has not been adopted, and the full Senate has not even begun to debate their NDAA bill yet.

It does get complicated here regarding the options of how things will proceed. The full Senate could vote on their version of the NDAA or simply go to conference, which is a term used here where they will work out the differences between the House and Senate versions. Now, because there’s a lot of guessing involved as to what could happen, we won’t really speculate. But regardless, it is always a good time to contact your representative and let them know that you oppose the proposed bill, especially if you live in one of the states where your representative is one of the three persons that I just mentioned.

Lawmakers Call for Anzu Investigation

Speaking of useless politicians, this continues into our next story. We have lawmakers, namely John Moolenaar (Republican from Michigan) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (Democrat from Illinois), who are calling for an investigation into Anzu Robotics.

If you’re not familiar with Anzu, they have licensed hardware from DJI but use completely separate software that is developed in partnership with Aloft Air Control, which is an American company. The parts, the drones, are not produced in China; they’re produced outside of China. The aircraft, which is the Raptor and the Raptor Thermal, do not share any royalty or data with DJI, and Anzu has the right to modify and manufacture the technology on their own.

Moolenaar stated, and I quote, “We cannot allow Chinese companies to evade American scrutiny by white-labeling their product. The U.S. Government must take action to address this national security concern and flagrant disregard for American laws.”

I’d like to know, I read the report that was sent, I’d like to know what laws were broken because it really wasn’t clear in the letter. And then also, I would like to know what the national security concern is that Moolenaar and several others have been talking about.

Anzu was asked to answer eight specific questions by September 6. Whether or not they will answer is really up to them. I don’t think that there is any kind of mandate by law, but I might be wrong on that.

FAA Proposes Fines Against UAS Operators

Next up, speaking of government, the FAA has published a number of proposed fines against UAS operators. Among the most expensive was an operator in Florida that was fined $32,700 after interfering with a law enforcement operation. The drone was improperly registered and was unlit when it flew so close to a Police helicopter that the pilot saw the drone and diverted. I think we actually reported on that when it happened back in the day. The pilot also flew higher than the 400 ft maximum altitude.

Another incident occurred in Ohio when someone flew a drone into a football stadium. We’re pretty sure that this is the incident (obviously, the name of the people was not mentioned in this document by the FAA), but we’re pretty sure that this incident is one that we covered also in a news update. The pilot flew beyond visual line of sight into a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) over people. The final fine for that was $7,760. This is actually the person, if it’s the right person, who also taunted the FAA online and kept telling people that nothing would ever happen because the FAA would never be able to find him, which apparently they did.

There are a few more of these. If you want to read them, we’ll leave a link in the description, but this all combined was the total amount that we mentioned before.

Now, I do want to do a side note here. We hear people say either the FAA is not enforcing anything, or we hear people say that the FAA is enforcing a lot of violations. What’s clear to me from reading the report is that the FAA only gets involved when something pretty dramatic happens. If you’re going to be flying into a TFR, the FAA is going to be paying really close attention. If you’re going to be taunting the FAA, they’re going to be paying a lot more attention. If you forgot to put a registration sticker on your drone, they’re probably not going to care. If you do it once and you fly at 410 ft, they’re probably not going to care. They usually care when something happens.

People say, “Well, how does the FAA ever find out if I flew beyond visual line of sight?” Well, this is the perfect example of how the FAA finds out: because something happens. So, just keep that in mind. This is part of decision-making. This is part of how you become a pilot and fly in the airspace, by making these decisions. So anytime you go and fly your drone, keep that in mind. The FAA may not be behind every corner to find out what’s going on. They’re only going to get involved when something bad happens, and nobody is really trying to catch anybody doing a micro-violation with your drone.

Drones for Good: Rescue Stories

Fourth up, a drone was used – this is a double story. The first one is a drone that was used to locate a 93-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease in Tennessee this week. Shout out to the Sumner County EMA for locating the missing woman within one minute of launching the drone. This should tell you something about how useful these are as tools. The woman was uninjured and was returned to her home.

The second story just came right before I started recording, but I wanted to include it because it came from one of our students. I don’t think it has been covered anywhere else, but he was camping with his family in southeast Idaho near Rexburg. He explained that his wife and two teenage daughters went exploring down a creek on two different rafts but ended up getting caught in the strong current and couldn’t paddle back. He eventually called search and rescue as night fell.

He said that after two and a half hours – this is a quote from him – “After two and a half hours of searching by 24+ volunteers, two rescue boats, and a helicopter, it was a FLIR-equipped drone that found them.” They were all fine. He also said that the helicopter with its massive spotlight could not see his wife, who was standing on the sandbar, even as it passed by her twice, but the $10,000 drone with the FLIR camera could.

So, good job to both of these teams. I’m glad everyone came out of this unscathed, and I’m glad we can report on these good news.

DJI Leaker Strikes Again: Best Buy

And then lastly, we have a bit of news from everyone’s favorite DJI leaker, which has struck again. And yes, we’re talking about Best Buy. This is not the first time that Best Buy does a bit of an oops by releasing a drone to the public before they’re supposed to. This is at least the fourth time that I know of.

The DJI Neo (we’ve been talking about this) has been spotted at Best Buy, confirming many of the specs that we discussed in previous news updates, including the 135g weight, 4K video, full propeller cages, and then we have multiple control options and smart modes. Pricing appears to be $470 Canadian or $350 US.

Community News Updates

All right, time for some Community News updates before we go away. This week we announced the winner of the August drone photo contest. This month’s theme was “The Unexpected,” and there were a lot of fun photos out there that tried to stick with the plan. But this month’s winner is Daniel Laffler with this photo right here of a lightning strike.

Congratulations to Daniel, who will receive a custom trophy and $250 gift card. Stay tuned for the community update on next month’s theme, which we haven’t released just yet, and all the details.

And that’s it for this week. We’ll see you live on community for Happy Hour tonight, and then also a special edition of the Monday Live from Commercial UAV Expo next week. If you’re at the Expo, make sure you come and see us in Las Vegas. We have a big booth kind of on the left side as you enter. Otherwise, we’ll see you back here for News Update next week.