In a new public notice released on Wednesday, the FCC has announced an update to its notice sent in late December that originally indicated that all foreign-made UAS and critical UAS components would be added to its Covered List. This week, in a new update that can be seen in its entirety here, the agency has announced an exemption for certain UAS and critical components that will last through the end of 2026. 

After receiving a National Security Determination from the Department of Defense, they now say that UAS and critical components that are included on the Blue UAS list are exempt “now and until January 1, 2027.” Similarly, running until the same date, UAS and UAS critical components that qualify as “domestic end products under the Buy American Standard” are under the same exemption. Because, according to the Department of Defense, these UAS and components do not “pose unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States or to the safety and security of U.S. persons,” it has been concluded that the equipment should be removed from the FCC’s Covered List.

This move is a significant one that should quell some – though certainly not all – apprehension around the original public notice for the added equipment to the Covered List. While the original announcement caught many in the industry by surprise given the breadth of the coverage that included all foreign-made UAS and components rather than those from adversarial nations, there was a significant carve-out included in that original announcement that gave power to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to provide clearance for specific equipment. 

As we covered in the aftermath of the original public notice, that carve-out had the potential to reduce some of the impact from the decision, but it was unclear what that process would look like and how long those decisions would take. This isn’t a perfect example of what that could look like, given the specific nature of these exemptions, but it is at least an indication that there is a real mechanism for these exemptions to be made.

In addition to these specific exemptions, the FCC also released an FAQ for the December additions to its Covered List. Among the information included within this FAQ is an answer to another question we posed in the article linked above around the FCC’s jurisdiction for equipment such as motors and batteries that generally do not fall under the FCC’s purview. To that point, the agency says, “Generic batteries and similar components are unlikely to have required FCC equipment authorization before, and therefore would not newly require FCC authorization.”