ROBNEWS
Odyssey Robot told the FCC its drone was California designed and Texas assembled by eTak Worldwide, which told the agency it has no relationship with the company and is an electronics recycler.
The Federal Communications Commission has opened its first-ever case to revoke a drone company's U.S. equipment authorization, the radio-license approval every wireless device needs to be sold in the country. The agency accuses Odyssey Robot of fabricating the supply chain it used to win that authorization in the first place.
The FCC's Enforcement Bureau made the move in a formal Order to Show Cause, the document the agency uses to explain why it is moving to revoke an approval, filed July 22 under docket ET 26-186. The order alleges that Odyssey told the agency its drone and remote controller were designed, developed, and manufactured in California and assembled in Texas by eTak Worldwide Corporation. When FCC investigators contacted eTak directly, eTak said it had no business, contractual, ownership, or affiliation relationship with Odyssey, had never assembled products for the company, and had no customer records for them. eTak, the order notes, is an electronics recycling company, not a drone assembler.
The case did not start at the agency. The FCC had already cleared Odyssey's drone and remote controller for U.S. sale on the strength of the company's equipment-authorization filings. Independent security researcher Konrad Iturbe then published his supply-chain analysis on June 5, 2026, arguing that Odyssey was structured to look U.S.-rooted on paper while routing around the FCC's restrictions on new authorizations for foreign-made drones on its Covered List, including DJI, the dominant Chinese consumer and commercial drone maker. The Enforcement Bureau opened its investigation that month, sent Odyssey an initial Letter of Inquiry, a formal demand for documents and written answers, then a follow-up deficiency notice when Odyssey's first response was incomplete. Odyssey did not respond to either letter.
The FCC's order does not name DJI. It treats the alleged DJI tie as the premise of Iturbe's underlying complaint and the company's alleged misrepresentations, and the actual misconduct, on the record, is false U.S.-manufacturing claims. The DJI-front allegation is Iturbe's research, not an agency finding.
This is the first time the FCC has moved to revoke a drone company's authorization under the expanded national-security rules it has used since late 2024 to deny new authorizations for Covered List companies. The Odyssey case is the first test of whether the agency can unwind an approval it already granted, and Chairman Carr's enforcement announcement calls it explicitly a precedent for future Covered List evasion attempts.
Odyssey now has a formal opportunity to respond and had not publicly done so as of July 22. If the company still fails to answer or cannot rebut eTak's denial, the Order to Show Cause converts into a final revocation, and the drone and remote controller lose their U.S. authorization to be sold or operated. A revocation here would not, by itself, broaden the FCC's authority. It would give the agency a tested playbook for the next front-company attempt: pair the original equipment-authorization filing with an independent verification of the named U.S. supply chain, and treat a non-response as evidence. Specialist trade press has described the action the same way.
The wider drone-supply-chain context, including the FCC's separate push to ban new authorizations for foreign military-grade drones, sets the political backdrop. The Odyssey case tests whether the agency can act on the paperwork it has already approved. If the order holds, the answer is yes.