If certain politicians in Australia are as intent as they appear to obtain permanent bans on all DJI drones used by government and police agencies, a new audit indicates they’ll be aided by a considerably smaller fleet of targeted UAVs involved than their anti-China peers in the US.
As DroneDJ reported last month, members of Australia’s political class have snatched up the example of US lawmakers in pushing to prohibit government agencies from using DJI drones. The conception and production of those UAVs in China, detractors in both nations contend, raise concerns the data they collect can be secretly leaked back to servers in Beijing and used for nefarious purposes by the nation’s government.
DJI has repeatedly and flatly responded to all data security allegations or claims of its proximity to leaders in Beijing as entirely false.
Read more: Et tu, Oz? After the US, anti-DJI drone campaign builds in Australia
Led by opposition Liberal Party legislator and shadow home affairs spokesman James Paterson, the campaign against DJI drones in Australia has largely echoed the thus far unsubstantiated accusations motivating US federal and state blacklists. Under similar lobbying, certain state agencies in Oz, too, have grounded those craft, including the nation’s the Defense Force and Border Patrol.
Meanwhile, a new audit Paterson has produced indicates the drive Down Under may stand a better chance in numerical terms of obtaining its objective than the full ground campaign in the US does.
Results of voluntary tabulations Paterson requested from 38 Australian government departments returned results of just 3,114 DJI craft on the books. Though there are no similar numbers available for US federal fleets, a recent article by Forbes found police departments in just three US states alone owned 2,401 of the company’s drones.
The tally of DJI UAVs used by US federal agencies; state, county, and municipal police forces; and first responders like firefighters certainly reaches the high tens of, if not hundreds of thousands. Prevailing anti-China sentiments notwithstanding, successful banning all those craft is nearly unthinkable – even less so were backdoor prohibitions to extend to private enterprise and consumer drones.
Still, despite the Herculean aims of anti-DJI politicians in the US, initially limited federal blacklists have multiplied over time, and been more recently replicated by states like Arkansas and Florida.
Florida – which accounted for the largest number of the craft in the Forbes count – banned their official use. But the resulting cost of replacing those UAVs with more expensive alternatives on the market was budgeted at $25 million, and is almost certain to be higher before the effort is over.
Back-of-envelop extrapolation of those various figures offers a hazy, admittedly speculative notion of the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, swapping all DJI drones for official functions in the US would cost – undermining its prospects of full success amid tax-hating voters.
Despite the limited number of Australian agencies having downed their DJI drones in response to his push, meanwhile, Paterson’s effort to fulfill his goal be no cakewalk either.
Read more: Report reveals vast impact if US blacklisting of DJI drones spreads
Indeed, as he notes, not all government and police agencies solicited responded to his audit request – meaning the actual number of DJI drones officially owned or operated in Australia may be significantly higher than his total.
Meanwhile, despite the smaller total fleet in the nation, the per capita figure applied to Australia’s population of 26.2 million people may not wind up working out being all that much lower to the 335 million in the US. Meaning it will be a proportionally hard task, and tough sell, in both countries.
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