Last Friday was June 6th, the 81st anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy (the largest amphibious landing in history), which was a turning point in World War II.
Last Friday was also when the Trump Administration issued an executive order titled, “Unleashing American Drone Dominance.” Here are the opening paragraphs:
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), otherwise known as drones, enhance United States productivity, create high-skilled jobs, and are reshaping the future of aviation. Drones are already transforming industries from logistics and infrastructure inspection to precision agriculture, emergency response, and public safety. Emerging technologies such as electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft promise to modernize methods for cargo delivery, passenger transport, and other advanced air mobility capabilities.
The United States must accelerate the safe commercialization of drone technologies and fully integrate UAS into the National Airspace System. The time has come to accelerate testing and to enable routine drone operations, scale up domestic production, and expand the export of trusted, American-manufactured drone technologies to global markets. Building a strong and secure domestic drone sector is vital to reducing reliance on foreign sources, strengthening critical supply chains, and ensuring that the benefits of this technology are delivered to the American people.
This was actually one of several orders related to drones issued by the president last Friday. As summarized by Heather Somerville in a Wall Street Journal article titled, “Trump Orders Restrictions Slashed on U.S. Drones”:
One of the orders issued Friday directs the Federal Aviation Administration to speed the development of a new rule to allow operators to fly drones even if they are out of sight. It also encourages the federal government, local police and other first responders to use only American-made drones.
In addition, an order establishes a federal task force to find new ways to take down rogue drones and empower law enforcement to prosecute offending drone operators.
And the president said the Commerce Department should take steps to protect the drone supply chain from any national security risks presented by use of Chinese components.
Will historians look back on June 6, 2025 as D-Day for drones in the United States, a turning point in the use of drones in logistics and other applications?
Well, the orders certainly focus on overcoming several of the big hurdles in the way of making drone delivery more scalable. It directs, for example, the FAA to enable routine Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations for commercial applications, and for it to publish a revised roadmap for the integration of civil UAS into the National Airspace System.
But do the executive orders make drone delivery more affordable?
That is another big hurdle in the way of making drone delivery more ubiquitous.
Last June in “How Much Would You Pay For Drone Delivery?” I highlighted the high cost of using drones to deliver goods. As Liz Young highlighted in the Wall Street Journal at the time, “[drone] deliveries cost significantly more than using a car, bike or van to deliver goods, partly because of federal regulations requiring each drone to remain within sight of a human employee, logistics experts say.”
And from the same article:
“It’s all a question of how many people do you have involved in the drone delivery,” said Robin Riedel, a partner at McKinsey. If drone operators can reduce the labor required for each delivery, “the costs go down pretty tremendously,” he said.
So, according to McKinsey’s analysis, by enabling BVLOS operation, drone delivery becomes more economically feasible too.
Restricting the use of Chinese drones and components, however, will put upward pressure on costs and constrain the market. As Heather Somerville in the WSJ reports:
The American drone industry has been slow to develop, crushed by competition from China. The U.S. industry consists mostly of small companies with limited manufacturing capabilities. American-made drones generally cost thousands of dollars more and perform worse than their Chinese competitors, public safety officials and drone vendors have said.
China-based SZ DJI Technology, the world’s biggest drone maker, supplies 70% to 90% of drones to U.S. users outside the federal government.
The U.S. can produce up to about 100,000 drones in a year. Ukraine, meanwhile, builds more than two million a year.
(Speaking of Ukraine, its recent drone attack on Russian warplanes, which apparently involved drones deployed from containers on trucks, was certainly a catalyst for the executive orders, I believe).
Then there is the question of time. It’s one thing to issue executive orders, it’s another to make them a reality. The only thing we know for sure is that there is plenty of red tape to cut through, which is never quick or easy to do, and new layers of red tape are always emerging, including at the state and local level.
All that said, assuming all the directives in the executive orders are implemented, June 6, 2025 could be viewed as a D-Day for drones sometime in the future — that is, a turning point in making drones a viable transportation mode in the United States.
What do you think?
For related commentary, please read:
- FAA Approves Nationwide Drone Delivery, But There’s a Catch
- Walmart and IKEA: Drone Delivery vs. Drones in the Warehouse
- Drones Or Driverless Trucks: Which Will Deliver Most Business Benefits First?
- Delivery Drones: A Birth In Waiting
- Netflix Developing Original Series About Logistics Called “D Is For Drones”
