Army Buys Artificial Intelligence-Infused Folding Quadcopters For Battlefield Use

Those requirements could have played a part in the selection process for the Army's SRR program, as the service has previously had to halt the use of foreign-made drones. In 2017, the U.S. Army banned the use of all drones made by Chinese drone manufacturer DaJiang Innovations, or DJI, which supplies over half of all drones sold in the U.S. The company eventually created a U.S. government model in an attempt to allay these concerns. Still, in January 2021, the White House signed an Executive Order that instructed executive branch departments and agencies to examine all of their current drone technologies for potential threats and banned drones and drone subsystems from adversary countries defined as Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. The Associated Press later reported in June 2021 that Pentagon had cleared some Chinese-made DJI drones for government use, but that report was quickly deemed inaccurate by the Department of Defense (DOD). "This report was inaccurate and uncoordinated, and its unauthorized release is currently under review by the department," the DOD said in a statement in response to the AP report.