Trump’s Unleashing Drone Dominance Executive Order Released
Summary
On Friday, June 6th, President Trump released the Unleashing American Drone Dominance Executive Order (UADD E.O.[1]). The Agricultural Drone Initiative (ADI) appreciates the White House taking the time to weigh in on these critical issues, especially, for highlighting precision agricultural drones’ potential to transform American agriculture. ADI is proud to be part of the effort to accelerate the development of American drone technology and work with the FAA, and other industry leaders, to fully integrate UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) with a full suite of drone-specific regulations.
This Executive Order seeks to enable routine drone operations, scale up domestic production, and expand the export of trusted American-manufactured drones to global markets through the following actions:
Force the FAA to accelerate the timeline for the BVLOS rulemaking to have a finished rule in place by Q2 of 2026.
Push the FAA to transition from waivers to formal regulations generally, and where waivers are still relied on, facilitate their evaluation using artificial intelligence.
Support the domestic drone industrial base by supporting more government-funded research and development and giving preferential treatment and support to American drone companies.
Protect America from Chinese drones masquerading as American companies through the creation of a specialized Entities List as well as directing the Secretary of Commerce to issue proposed rulemaking and start investigations into threats and exploitations of the American drone market.
While this E.O. did address the threat of Chinese drones in general, there was no direct discussion on the 2025 NDAA’s § 1709 ban on DJI and Autel. As that provision automatically places DJI and Autel on the FCC’s Entities List if nothing else happens, we believe the Trump Administration has decided to passively let the poison-pill provision resolve the issue instead of tasking any agency with the determination.
Full Analysis
Shifting from Operating Under FAA Waivers to FAA Rules
ADI was extremely glad to see the Administration require that the FAA release the long-overdue BVLOS ANPRM by July 7th[2] - with a final rule due 240 days later. This is tremendous news for the ag-drone sector and the wider drone industry. Not only will this facilitate and expedite BVLOS applications, ADI hopes that this will significantly reduce the number of waivers the FAA is processing in general, expediting the processing time for the Part 137 Waivers which remain.
ADI also hopes that, after the BVLOS rulemaking process concludes, the FAA can begin the rulemaking process to replace 137 Waivers, to support the use of agricultural drones in precision agriculture, so that American farmers can compete with their Chinese counterparts, who are already aggressively implementing this technology.
The Challenge of Waivers for Agricultural Operations
While the waiver process has been used broadly by the FAA to close a number of regulatory gaps for UAV operations, agricultural drones represent a unique use-case that disproportionately incentivizes non-compliance by otherwise patriotic and law-abiding citizens. This, in turn, harms the FAA because it cannot properly regulate or understand the scope of this industry (best industry-estimates place the real number of heavy-lift agricultural drones at approximately 3-4x the number of the FAA’s issued waivers).
The FAA's stated wait times for heavy-lift agricultural drone operations are significantly underestimated, and the licensing process is overly complex and opaque for most new users. As a result, many first-time operators, having invested $40,000 or more in equipment, face a difficult choice: fly their drones unregistered to meet immediate agricultural needs or wait for a year or more for all the paperwork to clear, while watching the impatient crops (and loan payments) grow and grow. Rationally, most chose their farms and families over a distant and abstracted agency.
This situation often leads to a Catch-22: operators who initially fly without registration to avoid delays then cannot pass an FAA audit, so they never register at all. While ADI advocates for strict adherence to FAA regulations, we also emphasize the need for policymakers to address these practical challenges faced by operators in a way that does not constructively punish compliance.
At its core, the waiver system is simply too inefficient to handle a growing industry, and needs to be replaced with formalized rules for which tests can be administered and clear regulations that address the reality of agricultural drone operation can be published.
AI Waiver Processing
Section 4(c) of the UADD E.O. requires the implementation of AI tools to “assist in and expedite the review of UAS waiver applications under 14 C.F.R. part 107.” While ADI is keenly aware of the challenges waiver-based licensing presents, and we welcome any and all efforts to improve the process, ADI hopes the FAA will expand the AI processing program (if successful) to help process Part 137 Waivers as well.
ADI remains a strong proponent of shifting away from waivers to formalized rule-making for 137 Waivers - highly standardized, but lengthy boilerplate applications, which clog up the FAA, wasting their time and tax-payer money, while discouraging compliance.
Integrate UAS into NAS
Section 5 of the E.O. focuses on the effort to better integrate UAS into the NAS - a critical step for the industry that ADI wholly supports. The preponderance of agricultural drone operations are 15 to 25 feet off the ground or small multispectral drones briefly flying at 300 feet over farmland. As a result, our operations have a lower rate of interface with the larger operational airspace directly, compared to many other UAVs. ADI strongly supports these efforts as part of the process of developing a complete set of regulations for UAVs.
Of less significance for ADI, but worth mentioning, is section 4(d), which removes UAS operators’ obligation to adhere to the Convention on International Civil Aviation for UAS flights that take-off and land in the U.S.
Support of U.S. Drone Manufacturers
Sections seven through nine of this E.O. represent a major step in the right direction for our nation’s drone policy - particularly for agricultural drones. By acknowledging the critical need for the government to proactively support American drone development, the Trump Administration is helping America improve competition with Chinese drones.
Fight Back Against Chinese Ag Drones
This support is especially critical in the agricultural drone space. In America alone, ADI estimates Chinese agricultural drones have already absorbed over $375,000,000.00 in domestic demand for agricultural drones.[3] China is aggressively moving to take over the international agricultural drone market, with DJI alone selling over 400,000 of its Agras series heavy-lift drones around the world. That does not include other Chinese ag-drone giants such as XAG and EA Vision, which, anecdotally seem to be as big, or bigger, than DJI in developing nations. By relaxing export controls, American drones can better compete on the world stage as well.
Fortunately, DJI’s agricultural products still have consistency problems sufficient to leave room for American drone manufacturers to catch up. However, Federal support is needed to help compete with the heavily subsidized Chinese drone industry. This E.O. is a critical step forwards for our domestic drone industry.
Subsections 7(b) & 7(c) of this E.O. provides significant assistance to true American drone companies by creating a specific entities list for drone companies, and directing the Secretary of Commerce to investigate Chinese companies that are masquerading as American drones. This ‘trojan horse’ problem is especially poignant in the ag-drone industry, where many Chinese companies are downplaying or outright denying their ties to China.
Capitalize on our Research Universities’ Potential
Finally, ADI is extremely excited to see the E.O. push for the full exploitation of America’s growing network of FAA UAS Test Ranges (§ 5(b) of this E.O.). These facilities are critical for doing the fundamental research which is needed to solve the baseline engineering challenges for heavy-lift drones. Given the dual-use potential of the form factors that work for ag-drones, ADI hopes that this research can be as beneficial to the DOD as it is for agricultural application. If we can establish robust and ruggedized standards and guidelines, it will allow private capital to be spent diversifying and specializing in new ag-drone models.
Footnotes:
[1] As the Government Publishing Office has yet to assign an enumeration to this Executive Order, ADI is referring to it by its acronym.
[2] While § 4(a) of this E.O. sets the date as 30 days from the date of the order (June 6, 2025), July 6th is a Sunday, pushing the due date to July 7th.
[3] Heavy-lift agricultural drones and their necessary accessories cost, on average, approximately $37,000.00 per drone. ADI estimates there are approximately 10,500 heavy-lift ag drones in use in America right now, of which approximately 10,000 are Chinese origin.