The White House wants to secure the future of American drone dominance. And now, they’re rolling out new sweeping changes to federal policies.
What’s happening:
- President Donald Trump has just signed a new executive order focused on accelerating domestic drone innovation and removing regulatory obstacles for drone companies based in America
Why it matters:
- The new executive order represents one of the largest federal policy changes in American history for drone hardware and software
Going deeper:
- The new executive order is largely focused on expanding Beyond Visual Line of Sight drone operations for both public safety missions and commercial operations and clearly establishes that all federal agencies need to procure new drones from American drone manufacturers and not foreign countries such as China
- The United States Federal Aviation Administration has also been instructed to speed up regulatory approvals for drones as well as publishing a new framework for integrating drones into American airspace
- The American military has also recently been aggressively ramping up their funding commitments to drone technology for combat, with United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just recently publishing a new memo that outlines the need for the United States Army to begin replacing manned helicopters aandarmoured vehicles with drones
The intrigue:
- The White House’s new executive order also has demanded that the United States Secretary of Commerce proposes new rules immediately to ensure that the drone supply chain being used by federal agencies is safe from foreign control and exploitation and to publicly identify foreign companies that should not longer be allowed to sell to the American government
