Drone News: ICE Notam Updated, Pentagon Vs. DJI, FAA Clears Anti-Drone Lasers, New DJI Drone!

Welcome to your weekly UAS News Update, we have three stories for you this week, the Pentagon cites classified intelligence to oppose DJI's FCC petition, the FAA clears the military to use anti-drone lasers in U.S. airspace, and DJI officially teases the new Lito drone launch. Let's get to it.

First up this week, the Department of Defense has officially filed a memo with the FCC opposing DJI's petition to be removed from the agency's Covered List. The Pentagon stated that their national security decision wasn't just based on public supply chain concerns, but actually relied on both classified and unclassified intelligence. They even submitted a classified document to Congress on April 3rd. DJI has been fighting this on three different legal fronts, including a Ninth Circuit petition and a D.C. Circuit appeal. But this classified intelligence creates a massive hurdle. How do you defend yourself against evidence you aren't allowed to see? Meanwhile, the FCC is pushing forward with new rules to support domestic drone manufacturing under the "Unleashing American Drone Dominance" initiative. They recently gave conditional approvals to four non-Chinese drone systems; all enterprise models. Next up, the FAA has officially given the U.S. military clearance to use high-energy anti-drone lasers in U.S. airspace. This comes after a tense two-month standoff that actually shut down commercial flights over the Texas-Mexico border twice. Back in February, Customs and Border Protection used a Pentagon-owned laser to target what turned out to be metallic balloons. The FAA immediately closed all airspace within a 10-nautical-mile radius of El Paso from the surface up to 18,000 feet. The White House eventually had to step in to lift the shutdown. Then, in a crazy friendly-fire incident on February 26th, soldiers used the same laser to shoot down a drone over Texas. It turns out, the drone belonged to CBP, and it reportedly cost about 30 million dollars! After these incidents, the FAA and Pentagon ran a live test at the White Sands Missile Range. During the test, a commercial aircraft drifted into the laser's tracking angle, and the system's automatic safety shutoff immediately powered the laser down before it could fire. Because of that successful safety feature, the FAA determined the lasers do not present an increased risk to the flying public. If you are flying manned or unmanned aircraft near the southern border, pay attention, because the FAA will be issuing an advisory about increased anti-drone laser activity. And finally this week, after months of leaks, DJI has officially teased a new drone launch for April 23rd. The teaser uses the tagline "Just Fly" and confirms the Lito name with hashtags for the DJI Lito and Lito X1. Now let's talk about the rumored specs. We are reportedly expecting two models, and we’re thinking this will replace the Mini series as the entry level drone. The entry-level Lito 1 is reported to be a sub-250-gram drone with 22 gigabytes of internal storage and a price tag around $330. The higher-end Lito X1 is rumored to have 42 gigabytes of storage and cost around $759. Both drones are expected to feature multi-band connectivity across 2.4, 5.2, and 5.8 gigahertz, along with Wi-Fi 6. Flight times are rumored to be around 30 minutes on the standard battery, pushing up to 50 minutes with a heavier plus battery that will put you over that 250-gram limit. The Lito X1's FCC filing also mentions an "SDR Transmission 2 Transceiver," which has people speculating about O5-class transmission performance. Alright, that’s it for this week, no Post Flight or Live, but if you’re in the Lakeland Florida area, be sure to stop by Sun N Fun to meet the team on Saturday or Sunday! `https://dronexl.co/2026/04/11/faa-clears-military-use-anti-drone-lasers/https://dronexl.co/2026/04/11/pentagon-dod-classified-intelligence-dji-fcc-covered-list-opposition/https://dronexl.co/2026/04/14/dji-teases-lito-drone-launch-for-april-23/