AIBRIEF
The regulator rejected the Chinese drone maker's argument that selling a vlogging camera and an optional flight kit as separate products let it skip the US ban on foreign made drones.
The Federal Communications Commission has publicly revoked the certification it granted HoverAir's Versa drone days earlier, telling the Chinese maker that selling the device in the United States is "a violation of US law."
HoverAir, an imprint of Beijing-based Zero Zero Robotics, argued that splitting the product into two pieces let it avoid a second radio review. The Versa is sold as a handheld gimbal-stabilized vlogging camera; the Flight Kit is an optional accessory that turns it into a drone. Because the kit "contains no RF transmitters," the company told backers that "HoverAir Versa has received the required FCC certification for sale in the USA."
The FCC rejected that reading. The Versa camera "alone is a prohibited UAS critical component produced in a foreign country and, when the Flight Kit is included, the device falls under the ban on UAS produced in a foreign country," the agency said in a statement to PCMag. The certification "was granted erroneously and has been set aside by the FCC and removed from our public database."
The regulator is "considering further action against HoverAir for apparently willfully violating the FCC's Covered List rules" and is sending fresh screening guidance to every Telecommunications Certification Body. The action sits inside the Covered List for UAS and a December 2025 order that added foreign-made drones and their critical components to the gear barred from US sale. HoverAir's earlier Aqua drone was blocked under the same rule; The Verge and DroneXL have tracked both the modular split and the broader crackdown.