How a Foreign Drone Manufacturer Can Sell Drones Into the United States

Foreign drone manufacturers, distributors, component suppliers, and service companies frequently make the same mistake when entering the United States market: they assume there is one “drone agency” they need to satisfy or they assume satifying things with one agency fixes everything with everyone else.  Those are two misunderstandings that can cost a lot of time and money.

The United States regulates unmanned aircraft through a web of federal agencies, each with its own statutes, regulations, enforcement attorneys, and penalty structures. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) controls the safety side of flying. The Department of Transportation (DOT) controls the economic side of operating aircraft commercially. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) controls what crosses the border inbound. The Commerce and State Departments control what crosses the border outbound — including “deemed exports” that never physically leave the country. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) controls the radio transmitters inside every drone and controller. And on top of all of that sits a rapidly hardening layer of country-of-origin restrictions aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Chinese-made aircraft and components.

A foreign company can be perfectly compliant with five of these regimes and still have its entire U.S. business model destroyed by the sixth. I have seen shipments seized at the port, equipment authorizations denied, declarations of compliance rescinded, and multi-million dollar fines imposed — often against companies that genuinely believed they were doing everything right because they had checked the FAA box and stopped there.

This article is a roadmap for foreign companies selling drones, drone components, or drone services into the United States, or operating drones inside the United States. Each section gives you the essentials, flags how that topic interacts with the others, and links out to my in-depth articles on each subject so you can go deeper where your business needs it.

The Big Picture: Who Regulates What in the U.S. Drone Market

The United States is a federated system. Federal law, state law, county ordinances, and even city rules can all apply to a single drone operation at the same time. I walk through that entire structure — federal public laws, the Federal Aviation Regulations, the other federal agencies, the 50 states, and international resources — in my Ultimate Guide to Drone Laws. For a foreign company doing business here, the federal layer is where most of the landmines sit, and it breaks down roughly like this:

• FAA — aircraft registration, pilot certification, operating rules (Part 107 for under 55 pounds, exemptions and Part 91 for 55 pounds and heavier), Remote Identification under 14 CFR Part 89, and airworthiness.
• DOT (Office of the Secretary) — economic authority to engage in air commerce, including the foreign civil aircraft permit regime in 14 CFR Part 375, plus hazardous materials transportation rules administered with PHMSA.
• CBP (Department of Homeland Security) — tariff classification, duties (including Section 301 China tariffs), intellectual property enforcement at the border, and forced labor enforcement under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. See my Drone Import Laws article.
• Commerce Department (BIS) and State Department (DDTC) — the Export Administration Regulations and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. See my Drone Export Control Laws article.
• FCC — equipment authorization for every radio transmitter in your product, and now the Covered List restrictions on foreign-made unmanned aircraft systems and critical components. See my article on the FCC adding foreign drones to the Covered List.
• NTSB, NOAA, NPS, DOI, and the states — accident reporting, protected airspace areas, land-use restrictions, and state procurement laws.

Keep this map in mind as you read. Nearly every business decision a foreign drone company makes — where to manufacture, which components to source, whom to hire, how to ship, what frequencies to use — touches at least two of these agencies.

Federal Aviation Administration: Registration, Pilots, and Operations

The FAA enforces the Federal Aviation Regulations, and for foreign companies the first surprise usually arrives at aircraft registration. Under 49 U.S.C. § 44102, an aircraft may be registered in the United States only if it is owned by a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident, or a corporation organized under U.S. law — and for non-citizen corporations organized in the U.S., 14 CFR § 47.9 adds the requirement that the aircraft be based and primarily used in the United States, with at least 60 percent of flight hours accumulated here. A foreign parent company that simply ships aircraft to a U.S. sales office and tries to register them in its own name will hit this wall. The usual solutions are forming a qualifying U.S. subsidiary, structuring around the non-citizen corporation rules, or using a voting trust — and the right answer depends on your corporate structure and what you plan to do with the aircraft.

For small unmanned aircraft under 55 pounds, registration runs through 14 CFR Part 48 (the online FAA DroneZone system). Part 48 contains its own treatment for foreign owners: for aircraft owned by foreign persons and operated in the United States, the certificate the FAA issues functions as a recognition of ownership rather than a full certificate of U.S. registration. Aircraft weighing 55 pounds or more cannot use Part 48 at all — they must be registered under Part 47 with an N-number, which is one of the many reasons heavy drones are a different legal animal (more on that below and in my dedicated guide).

On the pilot side, the good news is that Part 107 does not require U.S. citizenship. A foreign national employee can obtain an FAA remote pilot certificate if they are at least 16, can read, speak, write, and understand English, pass the aeronautical knowledge test, and clear Transportation Security Administration vetting. What trips up foreign companies is not the certificate — it is everything wrapped around the operation: Remote ID compliance (next section), airspace authorizations, waivers for advanced operations, and, critically, export controls that can be violated simply by letting the wrong employee access controlled technical data, as discussed in the export section below.

Foreign-registered aircraft raise an additional layer. Under 49 U.S.C. § 41703, foreign civil aircraft may be navigated in the United States only under specific conditions, and Part 89 requires the operator of a foreign-registered civil unmanned aircraft to file a notice of identification with the FAA before operating here. Layered on top of the FAA’s safety authority is the DOT’s separate economic authority over foreign civil aircraft, covered in its own section below — two different approvals from two different regulators that foreign operators routinely conflate.

Finally, remember that the FAA is only the beginning. A drone that is perfectly legal to fly under Part 107 can still be illegal to sell because its transmitter lacks an FCC equipment authorization, illegal to import because of a forced-labor finding, or illegal to demonstrate to a foreign customer because of export controls. Each of those regimes is covered below.

Part 89 Remote Identification: The Market Gatekeeper for Manufacturers

If you manufacture drones for the U.S. market, 14 CFR Part 89 — the Remote Identification rule — is effectively a market-access gate. The FAA describes Remote ID as a “digital license plate” for unmanned aircraft: the aircraft must broadcast identifying information (serial number or session ID, position, velocity, control station location, emergency status, and a time mark) over unlicensed spectrum receivable by ordinary personal wireless devices.

The rule has two halves. The operational half requires nearly all registered unmanned aircraft flying in the United States to remotely identify, with four paths to compliance: fly a Standard Remote ID aircraft, attach a Remote ID broadcast module (visual-line-of-sight only), fly inside an FAA-Recognized Identification Area (FRIA), or obtain an authorization or exemption not to broadcast. The production half is what foreign manufacturers must internalize: aircraft produced for operation in the United States must be designed and produced as Standard Remote ID aircraft in accordance with an FAA-accepted means of compliance, and the manufacturer must submit a declaration of compliance (DOC) that the FAA accepts and lists publicly at the FAA’s DOC database. The performance requirements include tamper resistance — the operator must not be able to disable the broadcast — and a self-test that prevents takeoff if Remote ID is not functioning.

Foreign manufacturers should study what happened with DJI’s rescinded declaration of compliance. In 2023, the FAA rescinded a DOC in the Federal Register after DJI reported that a DOC application apparently filed under its name covered products that did not actually comply with Part 89’s performance requirements. The lesson is twofold: the FAA polices this list, and your internal controls over who submits regulatory filings in your company’s name matter enormously. A rescinded DOC means the affected serial numbers are no longer compliant aircraft — a direct hit to your customers and your brand.

Remote ID also interlocks with the other regimes in this article. The broadcast requirement is implemented through radio transmitters, which must themselves be authorized by the FCC — and as discussed in the FCC section below, foreign-made drones and critical components now face Covered List restrictions on new equipment authorizations. And if your aircraft is registered in a foreign country, the notice-of-identification filing mentioned above applies before U.S. operations. For the complete treatment — including FRIAs, exemptions from broadcasting, the compliance timeline, and how to verify whether a given aircraft has a valid DOC — see my full article on Part 89 Remote Identification.

Department of Transportation: Economic Authority and Hazardous Materials

Foreign companies routinely assume that the FAA and the DOT are the same thing. Organizationally the FAA sits inside the DOT, but legally they exercise two distinct kinds of authority, and you may need approvals from both. The FAA administers safety: pilot certificates, airworthiness, operating rules. The Office of the Secretary of Transportation administers economics: the licenses and permits that allow a person to engage in air commerce for compensation, and the citizenship rules that decide who counts as a U.S. air carrier at all.

This distinction bites foreign drone companies in a specific place: 49 U.S.C. subtitle VII reserves “air carrier” economic authority to citizens of the United States, and the citizenship definition in 49 U.S.C. § 40102(a)(15) requires, among other things, that the company be under the actual control of U.S. citizens, that the president and at least two-thirds of the board be U.S. citizens, and that at least 75 percent of the voting interest be owned or controlled by U.S. citizens. A foreign-owned entity that wants to run drone package delivery for compensation — which requires Part 135 certification and DOT economic authority — has a structural corporate problem to solve long before the first flight, not merely a paperwork problem.

For foreign operators bringing foreign civil aircraft into the United States for commercial purposes such as demonstrations, aerial work, or surveys, DOT maintains the foreign civil aircraft permit regime under 14 CFR Part 375. Part 375 governs what foreign civil aircraft may do in U.S. airspace as a matter of economic policy — separate from, and in addition to, everything the FAA requires as a matter of safety. If you are a foreign manufacturer planning a U.S. demonstration tour for a foreign-registered aircraft, you should be analyzing Part 375, the FAA operating rules, the Part 89 notice of identification, and — because demonstrations expose technical data to observers — the export control rules discussed below, all together as one package.

The DOT side of the house also administers the hazardous materials transportation regulations with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) in 49 CFR parts 171–180. This matters more than most drone companies expect. Lithium batteries are regulated hazardous materials in transportation, which affects how you ship your products and spare batteries into and around the United States. And on the operational side, 14 CFR § 107.36 flatly prohibits carriage of hazardous materials under Part 107 — a serious constraint for anyone marketing drone delivery of medical or industrial payloads, and one of the reasons those operations end up in the exemption world described in the heavy-drone section below.

Importing Drones into the United States

Everything your company physically ships into the United States passes through the jurisdiction of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and as the importer of record you are held to a “reasonable care” standard across a startling range of obligations. My full article on Drone Import Laws, authored with customs attorney Jennifer Diaz, covers this in depth; here is what foreign sellers most need to understand.

Classification. Every imported product must be correctly classified under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States. Drones finally received their own tariff lines when a December 2021 presidential proclamation adopted new HTSUS codes specific to unmanned aircraft. Misclassification is not a clerical foot-fault: CBP can assess penalties scaled to negligence, gross negligence, or fraud.

Duties and country of origin. The declared country of origin drives duty rates, trade-program eligibility, and sanctions exposure. Chinese-origin unmanned aircraft carry an additional 25 percent duty under Section 301 of the Trade Act on top of standard rates, and members of Congress have repeatedly pushed for higher rates and new restrictions. Foreign companies attempting to manage this through third-country assembly need to understand the substantial transformation rules before they build the supply chain, not after CBP issues a penalty notice.

Forced labor. Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1307) bars importation of goods made wholly or in part with forced labor, and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act creates a rebuttable presumption against goods with a nexus to the Xinjiang region or to listed entities — rebuttable only by clear and convincing evidence. CBP has already held up drone imports from a major Chinese manufacturer on forced labor grounds. You are expected to know your supply chain from raw materials to finished goods.

Intellectual property. CBP enforces trademarks and copyrights at the border and will detain, seize, or destroy infringing goods. If you own U.S.-registered marks, record them with CBP’s e-recordation program so the border works for you rather than against you.

The ICTS supply-chain rulemaking. In January 2025, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on securing the information and communications technology and services supply chain for unmanned aircraft systems — a signal that transaction-level restrictions on foreign drone technology, above and beyond tariffs, are on the trajectory. Combined with the FCC Covered List developments discussed below, the import picture for foreign-made drones is tightening from multiple directions at once, and import planning now has to be done alongside FCC equipment authorization planning rather than in isolation.

Export Controls: EAR and ITAR Reach Foreign Companies Operating Inside the U.S.

Here is the counterintuitive rule that catches more foreign drone companies than any other: United States export control law applies to your U.S. operations even if you never ship anything out of the country. The two regimes are the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), administered by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), administered by the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. My comprehensive article on drone export control laws covers who must comply, what is controlled, and the enforcement landscape; the essentials for foreign companies follow.

Deemed exports. Under 15 CFR § 734.13, releasing controlled technology or source code to a foreign national inside the United States is “deemed” an export to that person’s home country. A foreign-owned drone company with engineers, technicians, or even visiting executives from the home office can commit an export violation in its own U.S. conference room. If your U.S. subsidiary holds controlled technical data — flight controller source code, performance data on long-endurance aircraft, spray system specifications — access by your own foreign-national employees may require a license.

Commercial drones are controlled more often than you think. Dual-use classifications sweep in ordinary commercial products: ECCN 9A012 reaches unmanned aircraft designed for controlled flight beyond the operator’s natural vision with endurance of 30 minutes or more in 25-knot wind gusts (or 60 minutes or more regardless), ECCN 9A120 reaches spray drones with aerosol dispensing capacity above 20 liters, and ITAR Category VIII(h)(12) in 22 CFR § 121.1 reaches true swarming flight control systems that adapt in real time to operational or threat environments. Long-endurance heavy-lift aircraft — the same ones discussed in the 55-pound section below — are especially likely to trip these thresholds.

Penalties are severe and enforcement is active. Violations run from thousands of dollars in civil fines to twenty years’ imprisonment per violation. The Justice Department and BIS operate the Disruptive Technology Strike Force targeting illicit technology transfers, and prosecutions involving UAV components funneled to Russia and Iran are a stated priority, as the State Department’s industry guidance on Iran’s UAV activities makes clear.

Do not “fix” export compliance with citizenship-based hiring. Companies that respond to ITAR anxiety by refusing to hire non-citizens violate the Immigration and Nationality Act’s anti-discrimination provision. The Justice Department has settled with a major law firm over exactly this misunderstanding and has sued other prominent companies on the same theory. ITAR limits access to certain data to U.S. persons as defined in the regulations — which includes lawful permanent residents, asylees, and refugees — and it does not authorize citizens-only hiring.

Export classification also feeds back into your FAA work: when you submit manuals and technical data to the FAA for an exemption or a Section 44807 determination, export-controlled material must be submitted in a compliant manner, a point I address in the heavy-drone section next-to-last below and in the large drone guide.

FCC Equipment Authorization and the Covered List

Every drone and every controller contains radio transmitters, and in the United States a wireless transmitter generally cannot be marketed or sold without an FCC equipment authorization. The FCC has fined drone sellers heavily for marketing non-compliant transmitters — including a $2.8 million proposed penalty against HobbyKing — so this was already a compliance area foreign sellers could not ignore. It has now become something much bigger.

As part of the equipment authorization application, the applicant certifies under 47 CFR § 2.911 that it is not an entity producing “covered” equipment on the FCC’s Covered List, created under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act. The FCC will not issue an equipment authorization for covered equipment. In December 2025, following a national security determination by an Executive Branch interagency body, the FCC announced the addition of foreign-produced unmanned aircraft systems and UAS “critical components” — flight controllers, data transmission devices, ground control stations, navigation systems, sensors and cameras, batteries and battery management systems, motors, and associated software — to the Covered List. This is the first time an entire category of equipment, rather than named entities’ products, has been added. Temporary carve-outs exist (notably for Blue UAS Cleared List items until January 1, 2027, and for components qualifying as domestic end products), and affected companies can seek a one-year Conditional Approval, which requires, among other things, an onshoring plan for manufacturing UAS critical components.

The practical consequence for foreign manufacturers is stark: existing equipment authorizations remain valid for now, so previously authorized models can still be imported, sold, and used — but new foreign-made drone models and critical components face a closed door at the FCC absent a Conditional Approval or exemption. Because a Standard Remote ID drone is, by definition, a broadcasting device, this FCC development sits directly upstream of your Part 89 compliance and your entire U.S. product roadmap. I walk through the definitions, the exemptions, the Conditional Approval process, and the frequently asked questions in my dedicated article on the FCC’s addition of foreign drones and critical components to the Covered List, and the related statutory background in my NDAA 2025 article.

Drones 55 Pounds and Heavier: A Different Regulatory Universe

Part 107 — the relatively streamlined commercial drone rule — only reaches unmanned aircraft weighing less than 55 pounds. The moment your aircraft weighs 55 pounds or more at takeoff, you leave Part 107 entirely and enter the world of Part 91 operating rules, Part 47 N-number registration, Section 44807 airworthiness determinations, and petitions for exemption. Foreign heavy-lift and agricultural drone manufacturers targeting the U.S. market need to plan for this from day one, because the approvals attach to specific aircraft, specific operators, and specific operations. My Ultimate Guide to Large Drones (55 lbs and Heavier) covers this ecosystem end to end; here is the shape of it.

The core problem is airworthiness: 14 CFR § 91.7 requires civil aircraft to be airworthy, and most drone manufacturers have no type certificate or airworthiness certificate. Congress solved this with 49 U.S.C. § 44807, which lets the FAA determine that certain unmanned aircraft do not need an airworthiness certificate. A 44807 determination applies to the make and model — once granted, it benefits every customer flying that aircraft — which makes it extraordinarily valuable to a manufacturer. The determination is almost always paired with a petition for exemption from the operating regulations the operator cannot practically satisfy, and the exemptions come with a “blanket” certificate of authorization defining where flights may occur relative to airports.

Stacked on top: each aircraft needs a Part 47 N-number registration (with the foreign-ownership citizenship issues discussed in the FAA section above applying in full force), each pilot needs a remote pilot certificate, some exemptions require medical certificates, spraying operations trigger the Part 137 agricultural aircraft rules, and carrying another person’s property for compensation triggers Part 135 — which brings back the DOT economic-authority and citizenship problems from the DOT section. And because heavy drones carry large battery banks and achieve long endurance, they are exactly the aircraft most likely to be export-controlled under ECCN 9A012 or, for large spray drones, ECCN 9A120 — meaning the manuals and technical data you submit to the FAA and share with U.S. partners must be handled under the export rules covered above. A foreign manufacturer that coordinates its 44807 petition, its export classification, its FCC authorizations, and its import planning as one program will beat competitors who discover each problem sequentially.

Other Traps: Accident Reporting, State Laws, and Procurement Restrictions

A few additional regimes deserve brief mention because they routinely surprise foreign entrants.

NTSB accident reporting. The National Transportation Safety Board’s regulations at 49 CFR Part 830 require immediate notification for certain unmanned aircraft accidents. If your U.S. demonstration or customer flight goes wrong, there may be a federal reporting obligation on a very short clock — and a botched response compounds the problem.

State and local law. Beyond the federal layer, all 50 states have drone-related laws, and counties and cities add more. I maintain a directory of state drone laws. For foreign sellers, the most commercially significant state development is procurement restrictions: a growing number of states restrict or prohibit their agencies from purchasing or using drones manufactured in certain foreign countries, which shrinks the addressable government market for affected manufacturers regardless of anything the FAA or FCC does.

The NDAA layer. Federal statutes such as Section 848 of the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act and Section 1709 of the FY2025 NDAA restrict federal procurement and operation of certain foreign-made drones and drove the FCC Covered List expansion discussed above. If federal, state, or critical-infrastructure customers are part of your U.S. strategy, the country-of-origin analysis belongs at the front of your market-entry plan, not the end.

Doing Business in the U.S.: Entities, Contracts, and Liability

Beyond the agency-by-agency requirements, foreign drone companies need to make several structural business decisions that interact with everything above.

Entity selection is a regulatory decision, not just a tax decision. As discussed in the FAA and DOT sections, aircraft registration eligibility under 49 U.S.C. § 44102 and air carrier citizenship under 49 U.S.C. § 40102(a)(15) turn on how your U.S. entity is organized, who sits on its board, who its officers are, and who actually controls it. Corporate counsel who form a standard Delaware subsidiary without knowing these aviation rules can unknowingly foreclose business lines the company planned to pursue. The time to run this analysis is at formation.

Distribution and dealer agreements should allocate regulatory risk explicitly. Who is the importer of record, and therefore who bears the reasonable-care obligations and penalty exposure at the border? Who is responsible for maintaining the FCC equipment authorizations and the Part 89 declarations of compliance for the products being sold? Who bears the loss if a declaration of compliance is rescinded or an equipment authorization becomes unavailable for a new model? What happens to inventory and minimum purchase commitments if a Covered List development, tariff change, or forced-labor detention makes a product line unsellable? These are now foreseeable events in the drone industry, and contracts drafted with generic templates handle none of them.

Product liability and insurance. Selling into the United States exposes foreign manufacturers to American product liability litigation, and operating here exposes service companies to aviation liability. Aviation-specific insurance for unmanned aircraft is a developed market, but underwriters will ask about your regulatory posture: whether the aircraft have valid declarations of compliance, whether operations are conducted under proper certificates, waivers, or exemptions, and whether the operating limitations in an exemption or certificate of authorization were being honored at the time of the loss. Noncompliance with the regimes in this article does not just create government enforcement risk — it can undermine your insurance coverage and hand plaintiffs a negligence-per-se theory in litigation.

Recordkeeping wins cases. Across all of these areas — customs reasonable care, export compliance, FAA exemption conditions, FCC attestations — the common thread is documentation. When an agency comes asking, the difference between a warning letter and a penalty case is usually whether the company can produce contemporaneous records showing a functioning compliance program.

How the Regimes Interact: Three Real-World Scenarios

Because the agencies above do not coordinate their requirements with each other, the best way to see the interactions is through the kinds of fact patterns that actually walk through my door.

Scenario one: an Asian manufacturer launching a new small drone model in the U.S. The aircraft flies beautifully and the company assumes the hard part is done. In reality, the launch depends on a chain of approvals: the new model’s transmitters need FCC equipment authorizations, which now run headlong into the Covered List restrictions on foreign-produced UAS and critical components unless an exemption or Conditional Approval applies; the aircraft must be produced as a Standard Remote ID aircraft under an FAA-accepted means of compliance with an accepted declaration of compliance; the shipments must clear CBP with correct HTSUS classification, Section 301 duty payment, and a defensible UFLPA supply-chain file; and the U.S. subsidiary’s foreign-national engineers may need export licenses before they can even access certain flight-controller technical data. Any one of those four workstreams can delay or kill the launch date. The FCC piece alone can now be dispositive for a foreign-made model.

Scenario two: a European heavy-lift spray drone manufacturer. The aircraft weighs well over 55 pounds, so Part 107 is unavailable. The company needs a Section 44807 determination for the make and model, exemptions for its customers, Part 47 N-number registrations, and its customers doing agricultural work need Part 137 operating certificates. Because it is a long-endurance spray platform with more than 20 liters of dispensing capacity, it is very likely export-controlled under ECCN 9A120 — so the user and maintenance manuals submitted to the FAA, and the training given to U.S. dealers, must be handled under the EAR. Registration in the customers’ names raises the 49 U.S.C. § 44102 citizenship analysis for any customers that are themselves foreign-owned. Done in the right order, this is roughly a one-year program; done in the wrong order, each discovery restarts the clock.

Scenario three: a foreign drone services company winning U.S. inspection contracts. No aircraft are being sold at all, yet nearly every regime still applies. The pilots need Part 107 remote pilot certificates (available to foreign nationals, with TSA vetting). The aircraft need U.S. registration — raising the foreign-ownership registration issues — or, if foreign-registered, a Part 89 notice of identification plus the DOT’s Part 375 foreign civil aircraft analysis. If the business model grows into carrying customers’ property for compensation, the Part 135 and DOT economic citizenship problems arrive. And if the company’s fleet is foreign-made, its state and federal government customers may be barred from hiring it under procurement restrictions regardless of its FAA paperwork.

A Compliance Roadmap for Foreign Companies Entering the U.S. Drone Market

Sequencing matters. Based on the interlocking requirements above, here is the order in which I recommend foreign companies work the problem:

1. Classify your products under the export regulations first. Determine whether your aircraft, components, software, and technical data are EAR- or ITAR-controlled before you hire U.S. staff, open a U.S. office, or send technical data across the border — because deemed export exposure begins the moment controlled data is accessible to the wrong person.
2. Resolve the FCC question early. Confirm whether your products can obtain (or already hold) equipment authorizations in light of the Covered List developments, and evaluate Conditional Approval or restructured sourcing if they cannot.
3. Build the import compliance file. HTSUS classification, country-of-origin and Section 301 analysis, UFLPA supply-chain tracing, and IP recordation, per the import article.
4. Structure the U.S. entity with aviation citizenship rules in mind. Registration eligibility under 49 U.S.C. § 44102 and, if you will operate commercially, the DOT citizenship and Part 375 issues, should shape your corporate formation documents.
5. Obtain the FAA approvals your products and operations need. Remote ID means of compliance and declarations of compliance for manufacturers; Part 107 certificates, waivers, or 44807 determinations and exemptions for operations, including heavy aircraft.
6. Stand up ongoing compliance. Monitor DOC status, equipment authorization developments, tariff changes, state procurement legislation, and NDAA amendments — this landscape has changed materially every single year, and the pace is accelerating.

Frequently Asked Questions from Foreign Companies

Can a foreign citizen get an FAA remote pilot certificate?

Yes. Part 107 has no citizenship requirement. The applicant must be at least 16, be able to read, speak, write, and understand English, pass the knowledge test, and clear TSA security vetting. What foreign companies should watch instead is what technical data those pilots and their colleagues can access — that is an export control question, not a pilot certification question.

Can our foreign parent company register drones in the United States?

Generally not directly. Registration eligibility under 49 U.S.C. § 44102 is limited to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and U.S.-organized corporations, with the non-citizen corporation route in 14 CFR § 47.9 requiring the aircraft to be based and primarily used in the United States. Most foreign companies solve this with a properly structured U.S. subsidiary. For small drones under Part 48, there is a separate mechanism recognizing foreign ownership. Get the corporate structure right before you buy or ship the fleet.

We already sell drones in the U.S. Does the FCC Covered List action shut us down?

Not immediately for existing models. The FCC has stated that the Covered List update does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of device models it previously authorized. The problem is prospective: new foreign-made UAS and critical components are barred from receiving new equipment authorizations absent an exemption or a Conditional Approval, and the FCC has asserted independent authority to revisit existing authorizations. Your product roadmap — every new model, and every hardware revision requiring a new authorization — is where the exposure sits. See my full analysis of the Covered List action.

We only sell components, not complete drones. Are we affected?

Very possibly more than complete-aircraft sellers. The Covered List action reaches UAS “critical components” — flight controllers, data transmission devices, ground control stations, navigation systems, sensors and cameras, batteries and battery management systems, motors, and associated software. On the export side, individual components and technical data carry their own classifications independent of any aircraft. And on the import side, classification, origin, and forced labor obligations apply at the component level too.

Do we need a lawyer in every one of these areas?

You need a coordinated plan more than you need six disconnected specialists. The expensive failures I see are almost never caused by a hard legal question — they are caused by sequencing: a company that built its U.S. entity before checking registration citizenship rules, or signed a distribution agreement before checking whether the product could get an equipment authorization, or hired its U.S. engineering team before classifying its technical data. Whoever leads your U.S. market entry should be responsible for the whole map in this article, and should bring in customs, export, and aviation counsel at the points where your facts demand it.

Conclusion

The United States remains one of the largest and most lucrative drone markets in the world, but it is not a market you can enter with a good product and a shipping account. FAA, DOT, CBP, Commerce, State, and FCC each hold a veto over some part of your business, and the interactions between their regimes — Remote ID and FCC authorization, heavy aircraft and export control, imports and the Covered List, corporate structure and aircraft registration — are where foreign companies most often stumble. The companies that succeed treat U.S. regulatory strategy as a single integrated program from the beginning.

If your company is planning to sell drones, components, or drone services into the United States — or is already here and wants to pressure-test its compliance posture — contact me and we can work through your situation together.

Jonathan Rupprecht

Aviation Attorney. FAA Certificated Commercial Pilot and Flight Instructor (CFI/CFII). Contributor at Forbes.com for Aerospace and Defense.