That these are banned but Chinese made robot vacuums and other appliances are not points to this not being about protecting individual Americans and more about protecting national interests (drones can map out terrain in a lot more detail and are mobile outside of your bedroom, and can be trivially weaponized)
My Chinese made robot vaccuum can't get from one end of a room to the other without bouncing off the walls multiple times. Makes it kind of hard to deliver ordinance like that. I really don't think these Chinese made robot vacuums you're afraid of are much of a threat.
Most of the money "given" to Ukraine was older stockpiled weapons that were approaching EOL or at least "refresh cycle" anyway and needed to be replaced. Instead of throwing it away or selling it, they gave it to Ukraine, and most of the actual money spend went to US armaments companies. The price tag you quote is the same as the "an $X value thrown in for free" you see in "deals" from shady companies.
We have neither the money (see national debt) nor production capacity (see 155mm shells, missile production, howitzer barrels, etc) to give billions away for somebody else’s war. Furthermore, the weapons had a cost when they were new, and replacing them now carries a higher cost. Saying the price tag is fictional is like saying my dinner is free because the steak was already in my fridge.
The money that was paid to build those weapons went into the American economy, to all the companies that built them, to the employees that work for those companies, etc. Nobody is saying they were "free", but the military industrial complex has always been a jobs program. It employs plenty of Americans, it pays the bills when weapons get made. So we had a bunch of old stock that needed to be replaced, and giving them to Ukraine is an easy win, for a lot of reasons. If Ukraine fell quickly and then Putin goes after Poland and other countries, it's going to cause a lot worse problems for the US and the world. So, giving these older weapons to Ukraine is saving money in the long run. Some people have no ability to see how actions (or inaction) have consequences, and they never think about the wider perspective, only their own little pocketbooks, so it might appear that giving weapons to Ukraine is somehow stealing money from you personally. And if that steak in the fridge is already freezer burned, do you really want to eat it? We're not talking about a brand new steak here.
I haven't kept up to date but does the US have that much more leverage over Canada anymore? Last I checked we have tariffs on most exports, including crude, wood, steel and aluminium (probably missing a bunch). General goods are tariff'ed at 35% while China is tariff'ed at 47.5%. They could get us to ban DJI for sure but I'd assume it'd be more through carrot than stick, because at this point we've been pretty consis…
The threat of invading is hard to beat.
you mean like the time they invaded and took Washington DC?
Canada being the only country to successfully invade the US
Less drones for you, more for the military. There is no real downsides for the current gov’t here.
I build hobby scale drones for fun, mostly sub250g micros with no military value. I’d pay more for domestic parts, because I think the capability is strategically valuable, and the quality of Chinese stuff is super variable. There’s basically no industry here because the aliexpress parts are so cheap, so I support some protectionism, understanding that it will make the hobby more expensive. I think you’re probably ri…
Where is the ban of cheap motors, escs, cameras, radios from aliexpress? How does this affect hobby drone market at all?
They're hard to develop . That is proven by the fact that DJI is by far the industry leader, and everyone else is trailing. We're not talking about duct-taping a Go Pro to an OTS drone.
They don't need to be that hard to develop. It's not like you need a return to base feature. Sort of like wanting to learn how to fly a plane, but not take off and land the plane. You don't need to have the full feature set of a DJI drone to make it a weapon. You also don't need to worry about the battery life of coming back, so you've essentially doubled your distance capabilities, so maybe a stronger radio. Do you…
I think you're pretty confused about what most of these drones are doing.
DJI drones aren't being used as weapons platforms in the US...
They're being used for industry (agriculture, real estate, land surveillance, fire monitoring)
No one gives a shit that it's not difficult to make a flying grenade. They care that all the features you're in here mouthing off about as "not important" are actually important.
Ah yes I'm sure it has nothing to do with the drones running closed proprietary software via OTA updates, with encrypted data connections back to China, while being outfitted with 8k cameras, gps, lidar, etc.
Reading the article, it actually doesn't. Many US-made drones are also banned.
So unless I'm reading this incorrectly, DJI can keep selling existing models forever in the US? The US just can't get updated versions of drones?
Until the FCC wakes up and decides to change any detail of how they certify (which can happen easily), and then everything becomes no longer certified, and you'd basically have a full blanket ban of any transmitter, receiver, esc, motor, completed drone (or anything else that even incidentally emits EMI) that wasn't built in the US. The cards are set up there that it's extremely easy for them to just "incidentally" change a few things and hey no more drones of almost any sort, or RC planes, or hell parts for a whole lot of things.
Source? Tfa says only new models of drones are banned.
You're correct. The ban targets the supply chain and future imports/sales, not retroactive possession. New foreign drones cannot be certified for sale in the US market going forward. Existing drones you already own aren't being confiscated or made illegal to fly
I thought the drones had geofencing, so it should be possible to geofence the entire US and block them that way?
They did murder a woman, but I agree that one murder is far short of a civil war. Even understanding that a single murder can be the spark that starts a fire, I don't think we're even close to that kind of scenario (contrary to the hyperbolic rhetoric which has become normalized from both sides over the past 10ish years.)
I build hobby scale drones for fun, mostly sub250g micros with no military value. I’d pay more for domestic parts, because I think the capability is strategically valuable, and the quality of Chinese stuff is super variable. There’s basically no industry here because the aliexpress parts are so cheap, so I support some protectionism, understanding that it will make the hobby more expensive. I think you’re probably ri…
Where is the ban of cheap motors, escs, cameras, radios from aliexpress? How does this affect hobby drone market at all?
Based on the article, it says it also bans motors, controllers, etc. pretty much all major parts.