FCC Bans Legacy Huawei and Hikvision Gear — Exposing the Fragility of DJI's 'Grandfather' Protections

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 26, 2026 issued an order barring the continued import and marketing of previously authorized equipment from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua, closing a loophole that had allowed legacy products from Covered List companies to remain legally available in the United States for nearly four years.

The ruling does not directly affect drones. DJI and Autel Robotics hardware remain unchanged in status: new models are banned, while previously authorized models may still be legally purchased and flown. Nevertheless, the significance of this order for drone operators extends well beyond its surface-level telecom implications — the legal mechanism the FCC invoked for the first time here is precisely the same one hanging over every grandfathered DJI drone currently operating in the United States.

FCC Closes the Legacy Equipment Loophole — Nearly Four Years After It Opened

The June 26 notice bars the import and marketing of communications equipment that received FCC authorization before 2022 and was added to the Covered List in 2024 or earlier. The affected hardware includes telecom and surveillance equipment from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua.

The loophole dated back to November 2022, when the FCC stopped issuing new authorizations to those five companies while preserving the validity of existing ones. Equipment approved before the cutoff could still enter the United States and be sold. For years, cybersecurity researchers flagged that these legacy devices shared the same vulnerabilities as their banned successors — including hardcoded credentials and insecure update mechanisms. The June 26 order closes that channel.

According to Reuters, the expanded ban takes effect in July. Devices already installed in U.S. homes and networks may continue to operate; the FCC has not required anyone to remove deployed hardware. Per GBHackers, products loaded with Kaspersky software that were added to the Covered List in July 2024 also fall within the scope of this ban.

October 2025 Rules Provided the Legal Basis

The legal instrument underlying this ruling traces back to FCC equipment authorization rules adopted in October 2025, which allow the Commission to restrict already-issued authorizations so that devices can no longer be imported or marketed — while leaving the underlying authorization intact and permitting continued use by existing owners in the United States.

The FCC's compliance guidance explicitly describes this authority: the Commission may "prohibit the future importation and marketing of such equipment without revoking the underlying authorization." The procedural threshold under 47 C.F.R. § 2.939(e) is low: a public notice, a comment period of at least 30 days, and a public interest determination.

The timeline for the Huawei ruling illustrates how quickly this can move: the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau initiated the proceeding on March 27, 2026 with Public Notice DA 26-294; the comment deadline was May 6; the ban took effect June 26. Start to finish: three months.

Drones Escape — for Now — Due to Timing

DJI, Autel Robotics, and all other foreign drone manufacturers are unaffected by this order for one reason only: the FCC scoped this action to equipment added to the Covered List in 2024 or earlier, and foreign-made drones were not added to the list until December 22, 2025.

The same timing also shielded TP-Link and other foreign-made consumer routers added to the Covered List on March 23, 2026. When the FCC placed all foreign-made drones on the Covered List in December 2025, it assured operators that previously authorized models could continue to be imported and sold, and that drones already in service would not be affected. That assurance currently remains in place. Since then, the FCC has also introduced a series of mitigating measures: a firmware update exemption extended to January 2029, a limited exemption for toy-class drones, and a conditional approval pathway — through which eleven manufacturers had received approvals as of early June, with no Chinese companies among them.

However, the March notice initiating the legacy device proceeding contained a qualifier worth re-reading: it explicitly stated that the ban does "not currently" apply to equipment added to the Covered List after 2024. Communications attorneys at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman flagged that word in a client alert. A boundary drawn with the word "currently" is a boundary that can be moved.

DroneXL Analysis

Two days after the drone ban was announced, this publication noted that the FCC could close the grandfather loophole for specific device categories at any time. Six months later, the FCC executed precisely that playbook against Huawei and Hikvision. Technology media treated June 26 as a telecom story. This publication reads it as a live-fire drill — a demonstration of the tool that will determine whether Americans can continue buying the drones they depend on.

Nothing in the current rules locks in "2024 or earlier" as a permanent line. It is a scope choice, and scope choices can change. Extending the cutoff to capture the December 2025 drone additions requires one public notice and a 30-day comment period — nothing more. That is the entire distance between the assurance that exists today and a world in which retailers cannot restock the DJI Air 3S or Mini 5 Pro. Anyone who believes the current grandfather protection is permanent is betting on restraint from an agency that bypassed a full year of Congressional review to ban new DJI models in the first place.

This publication's position since December has not changed: the regulatory framework harms American operators far more than the Chinese manufacturers it targets. Huawei can absorb losing the U.S. market for legacy telecom gear. A volunteer search-and-rescue team flying a five-year-old Mavic cannot absorb a battery supply disruption with anything close to the same resilience. Protectionism enacted in the name of national security consistently causes the most harm to the very people it claims to protect.

Watch the end of 2026 closely. The eleven conditional drone approvals issued before early June all expire on December 31, 2026. The Blue UAS exemption lapses the following day. DJI's appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Case No. 26-1029) remains pending. Those expiration dates are the moment at which the FCC will signal whether the Covered List framework is moving toward a stable, durable system or continuing to tighten. June 26 already told you which direction this agency prefers to turn the ratchet.

As this publication said in December and repeats now: stock up on spare batteries while you still can.

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Sources: Federal Communications Commission; Cybersecurity News; Reuters via TechStory; Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

DroneXL uses automated tools to assist with research and data retrieval. All reporting and editorial commentary is written by Haye Kesteloo.

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