FCC Bans Foreign-Made Drones, Drone Parts...Plus Motors and Batteries?

“Eric Trump's investment in Unusual Machines has been a significant move, especially with his appointment to the company's advisory board. This involvement has led to a notable increase in the company's stock value, which soared after his announcement. The company, which is involved in drone component manufacturing, has also secured a Pentagon contract to produce drone parts, further enhancing its financial prospects. However, the ethics surrounding this investment have raised questions, particularly regarding the potential conflicts of interest and the implications for the Trump family's business dealings” — NBC News

Less than a month after the appointment of Donald Trump Jr. to the Board of Advisors of domestic drone components supplier Unusual Machines, FCC document DA 25-1086 was released on December 22, 2025. It appears to expand the U.S. “covered list” (import ban list) of many foreign‑made drones and core unmanned aircraft components, including motors, radios, and flight controllers. 

For engineers, small businesses, and domestic manufacturers, the order signals a rapid shift from globally sourced components toward U.S. or allied supply, with potentially significant near‑term disruption. It perhaps even unarms, and disables public oversight for, the country for the next several years.

“UAS critical components produced in a foreign country pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons and should be included on the FCC’s Covered List” — U.S. Federal Communications Commission

This ban of an allegedly new threat to the U.S. military and crowds eerily harkens back to the British gun control program prior to the 1776 American Revolution. It included the 1774 import ban on firearms and gunpowder, the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gunpowder, and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations.

“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

These actions were part of a broader strategy to suppress colonial resistance and ensure the British government's control over the colonies. The ban on exports and the confiscations aimed to disarm the colonists and prevent them from using firearms in defense. Eerie, because why would civilian drones or drone parts pose a threat to U.S. military inside U.S. borders? Don’t authorities have anti-drone tech to protect crowds (with DNA sampling, social media history, fingerprinting and other biometrics, as if there will be any kind of crowd at the World Cup)?  

What DA 25-1086 Does

On December 22, 2025, DA 25-1086 was released as an FCC action updating the executive‑branch referral that underpins the “covered list” for communications equipment tied to national security risks. The update explicitly extends that framework to unmanned aircraft systems and a broad range of drone subsystems manufactured outside the United States.

The covered list entry cited in DA 25-1086 reaches beyond finished airframes to include data‑transmission devices, communications systems, flight controllers, ground control stations, navigation systems, sensors, cameras, batteries, and battery‑management systems, and even motors. In practice, treating these items as “covered” allows regulators to block new imports and authorizations for many non‑U.S. UAS components, even when those parts never required direct FCC certification in the past.

While the FCC does have jurisdiction over wireless communications systems, the FCC banning batteries (which, last we knew, were low-frequency devices with no radio emissions or communications when not in a system) and motors seems to be quite the stretch, considering BLDC motors can be used for all manner of consumer and industrial systems, not merely drones.

Impact on Existing Fleets and Supply Chains

For operators, DA 25-1086 doesn’t immediately criminalize ownership or use of drones and components (will having a BLDC motor in an engineer’s desk drawer become a misdemeanor or a felony?) that were lawfully purchased and already authorized under prior rules. Existing FCC‑certified drone models may continue to fly, but new sales or recertifications can be cut off if associated components are sourced from entities now considered covered.

The more acute impact falls on the replacement‑part and custom‑build ecosystem, where motors, electronic speed controllers (ESCs), and flight controllers were often imported without standalone communications authorizations.

Under the new approach, and despite not being communications or RF-emitting devices themselves, foreign‑made motors and other critical components can be treated as covered at the import and distribution level, choking off fresh supply even as installed fleets continue to operate until attrition and failures take their toll.

Engineering and Design Implications

American engineering teams that have optimized around Asian motor and electronics vendors now face forced redesign toward domestic or at least non‑covered suppliers, like Unusual Machines. That shift affects everything from thrust‑to‑weight tradeoffs and efficiency curves to EMI profiles and firmware stacks, because entire propulsion and control chains may need to be redesigned and requalified.

From a systems perspective, the order effectively converts component origin into a hard constraint alongside SWaP and cost, particularly for platforms that depend on FCC equipment authorization for links and control systems. Integration risk rises in the short term, as designers switch out reliable, well‑characterized foreign parts for newer domestic offerings that may not yet have the same cost, availability, performance history, or volume manufacturing maturity.

Small Business Effects

Small U.S. drone integrators, FPV shops, and specialist service providers are exposed immediately because most “American‑branded” airframes still rely heavily on foreign motors, batteries, and flight‑control hardware. Retailers importing components through common e‑commerce channels are likely to see shipments delayed, seized, or refused, with shelves for popular SKUs thinning quickly.

At the same time, the compliance and legal overhead created by DA 25-1086 will hit small entities hardest, as they often lack in‑house regulatory teams to track evolving covered‑list interpretations and potential exemptions. Many will be forced either to narrow product lines to clearly compliant domestic components, if they even exist, or pivot toward service‑only models that reuse existing customer hardware rather than selling new, potentially covered equipment.

Opportunities for Domestic Manufacturing

By constraining imports of foreign propulsion, power, and control components, DA 25-1086 creates a protected corridor for U.S. and NDAA‑aligned manufacturers to fill gaps in motors, ESCs, battery-management-system (BMS) modules, and RF links, like Unusual Machines — there aren’t very many to choose from.

The near‑term result is likely to be shortages and higher prices, and small business bankruptcies. However, over time, this demand is supposed to support investment in higher‑volume domestic motor winding, magnet supply, and precision machining tuned for non-consumer applications. Consumers, for the most part, will be excluded from possessing drones, which leaves the alleged domestic terrorism threat to the multi-billion-dollar professionals — the industrial-military complex.

A three-phase, permanent-magnet motor or a battery is now regulated by the FCC, on their own, and potentially banned from import. You can always buy them from Unusual Machines...

Meanwhile, Tiny Tim’s not getting a drone for Christmas.

A copy of DA 25-1086 is attached here for our readers’ convenience:

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