DJI paid for a safety audit of its personal drones, and here is what it discovered

DJI has launched the findings of essentially the most intensive impartial safety evaluation ever carried out on its drone programs, and the headline end result: It appears there are zero vital, excessive, or medium-risk safety findings throughout 5 months of adversarial testing by a U.S. cybersecurity agency.

The findings are related to anybody following the FCC’s December 2025 international drone ban — and to anybody who has been flying DJI {hardware} and questioning whether or not the safety issues underpinning the ban have any technical foundation.

The evaluation was carried out by a safety agency known as OnDefend, which examined the next drones: the DJI Air 3S with RC 2 controller and the DJI Matrice 4E with RC Plus 2 Enterprise controller. Testing ran from October 2025 by way of March 2026. Client items have been bought straight from stores with out pre-notification to DJI; enterprise items got here from current seller inventory. Normal U.S. market distribution merchandise, not specifically ready samples. OnDefend additionally used the examine to explicitly suggest ongoing steady testing as firmware updates are launched.

“That is essentially the most complete impartial safety evaluation ever undertaken on our merchandise,” stated Adam Welsh, DJI’s Head of World Coverage.

Now to be clear, DJI itself commissioned and paid for this evaluation, so it ought to met with some extent of skepticism. OnDefend carried out their examine independently — and the retail buy methodology theoretically presents a safeguard towards DJI making ready particular clear items for testing.

Nonetheless, the basic dynamic of an organization funding its personal safety audit is value holding onto. In any case, firms don’t fee audits they anticipate to fail.

Why the audit was obligatory

The anti-DJI case has additionally by no means been significantly grounded in documented technical proof, and that issues too.

The FCC added DJI to the Lined Listing in December 2025 with out figuring out a single particular safety vulnerability. The designation was purely primarily based on categorical issues about Chinese language-manufactured know-how, reasonably than any documented exploit, backdoor, or information exfiltration incident. DJI has been asking for an evidence-based technical evaluate because the ban was introduced, but the FCC hasn’t produced one.

So far as real-world impacts of the ban go, it’s been bleak for drone pilots (and taxpayers or clients who not directly profit from drones). Greater than 80% of the 1,800-plus state and native regulation enforcement businesses that use drones stated they depend on DJI drones particularly for search and rescue, accident reconstruction, and tactical overwatch. A Pilot Institute survey discovered 43% of drone enterprise customers imagine they might face extraordinarily destructive or business-ending penalties from DJI restrictions.

So far as the place we’re immediately, DJI’s lawsuit towards the FCC is ongoing. The FCC reconsideration course of — which obtained over 3,000 public feedback — remains to be pending. The Drone Advocacy Alliance celebrated the latest software program replace waiver extension to 2029 as a partial win whereas acknowledging the core ban stays in place.

This safety evaluation commissioned by DJI lands at a second when the FCC is actively reconsidering its place. And with this, a clear audit from credible testers — even a company-funded one — makes it more durable for the FCC to take care of that its Lined Listing designation is grounded in documented technical danger.

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