Chinese government expected to announce stricter export controls drones made in China in early 2025. The country’s manufacturers are already rolling back or stopping sales to the United States and Europe, including Ukraine, according to a new report. report published Monday.
Chinese companies making batteries, motors and flight controllers for drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have either imposed shipping caps or will no longer ship to the United States or Europe, according to several anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg. The report, however, does not specify which drone parts companies already apply these restrictions. But it could have a big impact since China controls around 80% of the current drone market. according to at the nonprofit American Center for Strategic and International Studies.
News of the withdrawal and rules on inbound exports comes just days after China. sanctioned 13 other US companies – primarily drone companies including Shield AI and BRINC Drones – regarding US plans to sell weapons to Taiwan. In October, China sanctioned American drone manufacturer Skydio, which supplies drones to the Ukrainian military, apparently because it supplied drones to Taiwan’s firefighters.
Ukraine recently used drones to combat the ongoing Russian invasion. make your own long-range missile-launching drones. New restrictions from China could cause problems if Ukraine uses Chinese suppliers or other companies that source parts from China. Ukrainian army used drones to detonate Starlink Russian dishes earlier this year and were also build AI-powered drone fleets which use machine vision to potentially control up to “hundreds” at a time while resisting more traditional signal interception efforts (the US is also using AI to develop anti-drone technology as well).
In recent months, several intelligence officials to have said that there is a factory in China manufacturing military drones for Russia despite previous statements by the Chinese government that China seek peace in the conflict. The acting head of the US State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, Tom West, said on Monday, according to Bloomberg, that China “fuels Russia’s wanton destruction of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and its endless attacks against innocent Ukrainian civilians.
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However, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied providing lethal weapons to both sides of the war, with Bloomberg quoting a Chinese official in July and Newsweek quoting a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson last month who said: “We have never supplied lethal weapons to any party to the conflict and strictly control the export of military and dual-use drones in accordance with laws and regulations.”
This year, geopolitical tensions have had a growing impact on the drone industry, whose products can range from portable recreational drones to military-grade missile drones depending on the manufacturer. United States added Chinese drone and handheld camera accessories company DJI has been added to its list of “Chinese military companies,” sparking a lawsuit from DJI, and has retained its imports at the border. Since then, DJI has released nearly half a dozen blog posts touting its drones as beneficial to U.S. agriculture, police departments and search and rescue teams. But the United States has had a strained relationship with DJI for years, as its military stopped using DJI drones in 2017 and the federal government stopped using DJI drones. rod any US investment in DJI in 2021.
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About Kate Irwin
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