Texas considers ban on Chinese drones for state agencies

First responders warn that proposed country-of-origin drone ban could hinder life-saving operations and increase costs for Texas agencies.

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

More than a dozen witnesses representing police, fire and emergency response agencies, spoke out recently against a bill pending in the Texas state legislature that could ban the purchase by government agencies of drones produced in China and other countries deemed to be hostile to the U.S.

House Bill 41, sponsored by state Republican state Representative Cole Hefner, would “prohibit a governmental entity from acquiring or using an unmanned aircraft, or related equipment or services,” produced by a country “identified by the U.S. director of national intelligence as a country that poses a risk to the national security of the United States.” The bill is largely aimed at China, which produces the vast majority of drones used in both commercial and public safety markets in the U.S.

The proposed legislation is among a number of similar bills being considered in a number of states, including Missouri and Wisconsin. Several states, most notably Florida, have already enacted similar bans, targeting Chinese-made drones.

At a recent hearing before the Texas House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs, 16 witnesses testified against the bill, compared with three witnesses in favor and three with neutral positions. Another 17 witnesses who were scheduled to testify but did not speak at the hearing expressed opposition to the bill, while six such witnesses were in favor of the legislation and four were neutral.

While most of the witnesses who spoke in opposition to the bill expressed their support of the stated aims of the legislation – ensuring that critical data collected by drones does not find its way into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party – they objected to the solution of issuing a country-of origin ban on the UAVs. Several of the witnesses expressed concerns that if they were unable to access drones produced by Chinese companies such as DJI and Autel, they would be forced to rely on less capable and more expensive products produced in the U.S. or allied nations.

“I’m here to tell you that if we were forced as search and rescue practitioners to use only the drones that are offered here in the United States, people will die,” said Kyle Nordfors UAS chairman for the Mountain Rescue Association.

Eddy Saldivar, a captain in the city of Arlington Fire Department, said his department learned about the value of DJI drones when trying to perform the rescue of a young man who had been swept off the roadway into a creek during a flash flood using a non-DJI drone. “We called for the drone and were unable to launch that drone due to it not being able to fly in the rain, and so it hindered our response. We searched and searched but we just couldn’t find the victim until was too late,” he said.

“It’s probable that tonight or tomorrow there’s going to be a five-year-old or an eight-year-old autistic kid that wanders off and in the pouring rain, and somewhere in this state or this country, we’re going to need to go out and we’re going to need to bring them home and, and the equipment that we pick is based on those needs.”

The proposed legislation establishes a five-year grace period for governmental entities that entered into a contract to buy a drone or related equipment covered by the ban before January 1 2026. The grace period would allow the agency to be able to continue to use the otherwise prohibited equipment until January 1, 2031. The bill would also establish a grant program for law enforcement agencies to replace existing drone fleets that were in use before January 1 2026.

“The grant program is to assist law enforcement in removing existing drones in use that may be manufactured by companies under the control of adversarial nations and replacing them with aircraft that are not,” said Hefner, who serves as chair of the Homeland Security Committee.

Several speakers representing non-police emergency response agencies complained that the grant program should be extended to include their agencies as well as those of law enforcement.

“It’s doesn’t include anything for those of us that are responding on the fire, emergency management and EMS side to wildfires, hurricanes, floods, search and rescue, hazmat response, fire suppression, and just general fire suppression,” said Coitt Kessler, a retired Austin firefighter.

Witnesses testifying in favor of the bill cited what they viewed as potential national security concerns that could stem from the use of Chinese-made drones.

“We are entrusted with protecting Texans tax dollars, and we must stop using those dollars to purchase adversary hardware,” said Scott Shtofman, the associate vice president and counsel for regulatory affairs for AUVSI. “We need to invest in American made-technology, which is rapidly improving its production with leading innovation.”

Jacqueline Deal, who testified on behalf of State Armor in favor the bill, cited the actions taken by various agencies of the federal government to restrict the use of Chinese-made drones. “The Defense Department has listed DJI as a Chinese military company, and it’s also been sanctioned by Treasury or Commerce, or both because of its role in the genocide in western China,” she said.

“And we need to be able to have our own hardware in the event of a war. That’s leverage or coercive pressure from China,” Deal said.

Several of the lawmakers on the committee express their concerns that data collected by Chinese-made drones potentially could make its way to China, where it could be used for nefarious purposes by the Chinese government. However, some of the speakers who fly drones in their operations said they have taken steps to prevent that from happening, by keeping their drones air-gapped, or isolated from the internet. They also recommended the use of third-party software, produced by American companies such as Austin-based DroneSense, rather than relying on the manufacturer’s software to control the drone.

“My recommendation allows us to use U.S.-based software on foreign hardware. It’s no different than your iPhone that has Foxconn chips,” said Rob Robertson a committee member and instructor for the Law Enforcement Drone Association (LEDA).

Hefner and other members of the Homeland Security Committee further raised the issue that hardware embedded in the production of the Chinese-made drones could be remotely triggered to cause problems for the end-user, but Robertson largely dismissed these concerns as well.

He noted that the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which recently was signed into law, mandated that a federal cybersecurity audit, specifically targeting DJI, be performed. “That’s why my recommendation is that we delay this (bill) and we reconsider this when we have the results of that study,” he said.

As to whether DJI might be concealing the existence of a secret “Chinese chip” capable of performing some nefarious action inside its drones, Robertson said, “I can tell you yes, there’s always a possibility. I can’t tell you there’s no way that this can happen, because it may happen.”

Read more:

• Texas Drone Law Heads to Supreme Court: Key Free Speech Case in the Balance
• Texas Police Secure Drone Data, Aim to Preserve Fleets Despite Ban Attempts
• Controversial Texas Drone Law Re-Instated, in a Blow for Journalists

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.