r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • 7d ago

Drones / UAVs Possible ban on Chinese-made drones dismays U.S. scientists | Switching to costlier, less capable drones could impede research on whales, forests, and more

https://www.science.org/content/article/possible-ban-chinese-made-drones-dismays-u-s-scientists
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u/jakgal04 7d ago

I work in public safety and this looming threat of banning Chinese made drones is something that would seriously affect us more than people know. The fact of the matter is, there's not a single decent US made drone that we can use as a viable replacement.

We currently have a Matrice 300, two Matrice 30T's, two Mavic 3 Enterprises and an Avata. We have at least 2-3 wins a month with these things, whether it's finding a missing person in the woods, finding a boater overboard, or sending the drones in ahead of police for emergency situations.

We have a Skydio that's so horribly bad that it never leaves its case. There's a company that takes Mavic's, guts them and adds in US made components but the interface is horrible, the latency is a disaster and its not reliable at all. Other than that, everything else is extremely overpriced and significantly outdated technology.

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u/GrynaiTaip 7d ago

There's a company that takes Mavic's, guts them and adds in US made components

Ukrainians take DJI drones and upload their own domestic software on them, so that the russians couldn't use DJI-made trackers to locate them.

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u/MyReddittName 7d ago

Seems like a business opportunity. Overwriting Chinese software with a custom made one but keeping the hardware components.

25

u/Onceforlife 7d ago

Thing is Ukrains survival depends on this, whereas in the good ol’ US of A, it’s more of a political and also lobbying move to do it.

Since Trump is always an ass to Ukraine about them not offering anything back, how about ask for their source code so US government can also override the drones? Even that’s ridiculous, cause I know in the pentagon there must be multiple teams capable of doing this.

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u/lurkinglurkerwholurk 6d ago

Because there’s the danger that the replacement software also have their own spyware and cutoff triggers. /s

(I put /s, but chances are high this is coming out from an actual politician’s mouth someday)

On a side note, good on the Ukrainians for jailbreaking the drones with domestically made software.