The FAA is cracking down on Chinese drones because American drone companies can't compete, actually they refuse- thats why the CEO of Skydio (and another US drone company) literally "lobbied"/bribed this current admin to ban new models. Also Don jr. Is on the board for unusual machines, an american drone maufacturer set to benefit from the ban.
It's why they refuse to actually audit DJI, instead just flat banning them- DJI has nothing to hide, and they know it. It was never about drones sending data back to china, which would be impossible to hide due to the required bandwidth alone.
It because the US government and big business have decided that if anybody's going to have a back door into your or my drone, it's going to be them. Mark my words, given the first excuse they will ban recreational drone flights, many reasons they don't want people to have drones, period.
Amazon wants the airspace for drone delivery, the admin doesn't like the idea of people filming their crimes, especially from the air.
Toss on what Ukraine showed the world drones are capable of in war, and you can see why they are seen as a liability now.
An internet connection is not required to fly, in fact I turn all phone radios off so at to not interfere w control frequencies. The fimi Navi app doesn't require those permissions.
And I don't enjoy unnecessary permission request, but usually you can opt out and unfortunately many, many IOT devices ask for too much. Though I would be more worried about my air fryer listening to me as it's always connected to the internet. I would definitely not buy an air fryer that had a Wi-Fi connection.
As for me I'm going with open source drones from now on.
