The FCC proposed $25,000 fines on eight companies suspected of dodging the foreign drone ban through rebrands, and signaled deauthorization of SGS CTST, the China based lab that cleared their gear.
The Federal Communications Commission proposed roughly $200,000 in total fines on Friday against eight companies it suspects of being front operations for DJI, the Chinese drone maker the US has effectively cut off from new equipment authorizations. The fines are the smaller half of the move. The larger half is a parallel regulatory strike at SGS-CTST, the China-based testing lab whose authorizations underpin those companies' access to the US market.
The eight companies named in the FCC's July 10 announcement are Cogito Tech, Fixaxo Technology, Lyno Dynamics, Skyhigh Tech, Spatial Hover, SZ Knowact (operator of the Skyrover brand), WaveGo Tech, and Xtra Technology. Each faces a $25,000 proposed penalty for failing to respond to FCC investigative letters sent earlier this year. Each has until Monday, July 20, 2026 (ten calendar days) to answer or face further escalation. Aggregate exposure across the eight runs about $200,000, a figure Law360 framed as a covered-list enforcement pattern rather than a one-off probe, and the FCC's enforcement orders index lists the action against the eight entities on July 10.
The structural hit lives in document DA-26-461A1, where the FCC proposes deauthorizing SGS-CTST, a third-party testing laboratory in China that the suspect companies relied on for radio-frequency certifications. Disqualifying a single lab severs the legal authorization chain for every device that passed through it, sidestepping the need to litigate the DJI relationship one front company at a time. The agency appears to be crediting The Verge's prior investigation, which tested the Xtra camera against a comparable DJI product and found the hardware indistinguishable.
The shell-company rebranding pattern has been visible for months. Drone industry watcher Konrad Iturbe coined the phrase "DJI front companies" last year and has tracked the alleged network since. DroneXL reported in April 2026 that Skyrover was pledging to stay in the US while questions about its DJI ownership remained unresolved, and UAVCoach has documented a broader surge in apparent DJI shells ahead of the December ban. None of the eight entities named Friday has publicly responded to the FCC's investigative letters, and DJI itself declined last year to confirm or deny whether Xtra and Skyrover are DJI products in disguise.
The action sits inside a December 22, 2025 Covered List addition that blocks new radio authorizations for foreign drone companies on national security grounds, plus a follow-on rule that lets the FCC retroactively ban products whose authorizations were already issued if those products contain components from a covered company. Together those moves closed the back door that DJI-aligned shell operations had been using to keep US sales flowing.
DJI itself is fighting the broader ban in court. The company sued the FCC in February 2026 on constitutional and procedural grounds, arguing the agency never gave it a fair chance to address the underlying national security concerns. A PCMag write-up of the suit quoted DJI's long-standing call for "independent, objective review of its products." DJI has projected roughly $1.56 billion in losses tied to the ban, and a separate DJI response piece on No Film School shows the company publicly thanking US customers and promising new paths forward. None of that litigation shields the eight named shell entities from the FCC's current action.
The next checkpoint is Monday, July 20. If the eight companies stay silent or fail to make the case that their equipment is not subject to the Covered List, the FCC moves to formal forfeitures, and the SGS-CTST disqualification proceeds in parallel. Either outcome narrows the path that suspected DJI hardware has used to reach US shelves, importers, and shipping containers. The fines are the notice. The lab disqualification is the part that actually strands the gear.