Drone News: Senators Against Ban, UAS Nexus Syndicate, IFT & Ascend's Partnership, M30T Shot Down

Welcome to your weekly UAS News Update. We have four stories for you this week: some GOP senators are pushing back against a potential DJI ban, UAS Nexus is launching a marketplace to solve the Blue UAS component shortage, Inspired Flight and Ascend Engineering are expanding their partnership to boost software for American-made drones, and an M30T Shoot down in Ohio. Let's get to it.

First up, the push to ban DJI in the U.S. is facing some unexpected resistance from within the Republican party. According to a report from Politico, a provision to restrict DJI, which was included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, was left out of the Senate's version. Senators from agricultural and energy states are raising major concerns. Senator John Boozman of Arkansas pointed out, “They are the primary drone maker in the United States at a reasonable price. This technology is being used more and more… That’s the crux of the problem.”This all comes as a critical deadline approaches on December 23rd. Under last year's NDAA, a federal security agency is supposed to determine if DJI poses a national security risk. If no agency conducts that audit by the deadline, DJI automatically gets added to the FCC’s Covered List, which would ban new products from entering the U.S. market. The problem is, no agency has stepped up to actually do the audit. Next up, a Salt Lake City engineering firm called UAS Nexus is launching a new venture to tackle a huge problem: the Blue UAS supply chain. The company just launched the Drone Syndicate Store, which is a curated marketplace for NDAA and Blue UAS-compliant components. This is a big deal because while everyone talks about building American drones, finding all the individual, compliant parts, from motors to radios, is a massive headache for manufacturers. Next, Inspired Flight Technologies, or IFT, is expanding its partnership with a software firm called Ascend Engineering. IFT is a U.S. manufacturer of NDAA-compliant and Blue UAS-listed drones, and this partnership is all about beefing up their software capabilities. Ascend Engineering specializes in UAV software, and they’ve been working with IFT for two years on their Inspired Ground Control, or IGC, platform. IGC is the central hub for mission planning, in-flight management, and payload integration.Together, they’ve already pushed out several updates to the IGC software, improved the NTRIP framework for better connectivity, and added advanced payload features. According to IFT, this partnership accelerates their "software-enabled hardware strategy." This is so important because a drone is more than just its hardware. The software that runs it has to be secure, intuitive, and powerful. By focusing on building out their own software suite with a dedicated partner, IFT is working to create a complete, mission-ready system that is fully made in America. Last up, an M30T was shot down this week in Ohio. While flying, he experienced what he thought was a fly away, and called the police to notify them that the drone was flying away. Shortly after, the police returned his call to say someone reported finding a drone. The pilot met up with the reporting party, who said “I shot it down”. Be sure to check out our Black Friday deals and we’ll see you on Post Flight, our Premium community show where we share our uncensored opinions that aren’t always suitable for YouTube! https://dronexl.co/2025/11/26/gop-senators-break-with-dji-hawks-december-ban/https://www.inspiredflight.com/news/ift-partnership-ascend-engineering.phphttps://dronexl.co/2025/11/20/uas-nexus-drone-syndicate-solve-blue-uas-supply-chaos/#google_vignettehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/commercialdronepilot/permalink/1751858248823888/