China’s Top Drone Maker Removes Security Features at a Very Weird Time
DJI has ended enforced no-fly zones in U.S. markets.
As the FBI and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was scrambling to find the pilot whose DJI drone illegally collided with an aircraft battling the devastating Los Angeles fires, the globally dominant Chinese manufacturer of that same drone made a startling announcement this week: It would be turning off controls worldwide, known as geofences, that actively prevented its drones from flying over airports, military bases, and disaster response zones (among other restricted areas).
According to the DJI announcement, the changes would shift restricted zones or no-fly zones in the United States to “enhanced warning zones, aligning with the FAA’s designated areas.”
Since 2015, in the wake of an incident where a hapless DJI drone pilot accidentally crashed his aircraft onto the White House lawn, DJI drones had shipped with software that prevented them from taking off in or flying into certain constantly updated restricted areas, including national security locations around Washington, D.C., and over active wildfires and other disasters in temporarily restricted areas. DJI’s most recent update turns that hard geofence feature off, substituting it with a in-app alert that irresponsible pilots can, presumably, simply ignore.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/15/dji-china-drones-geofencing-security-us/