DJI (Da-Jiang Innovations) filed its Opposition Brief in Ninth Circuit Case 26-1029 on Wednesday 22 April, putting $1.56 billion of 2026 losses on the record: $700 million from fourteen existing products whose Federal Communications Commission (the US radio-spectrum regulator, FCC) authorisations have been set aside, and $860 million from twenty-five new products it cannot launch in the United States this year1. Each month the abeyance runs is roughly $130 million in foregone DJI revenue, which means the addressable market for Skydio, Autel Robotics' litigation-blocked replacements, and any domestic enterprise drone maker that can certify by year-end keeps growing. The brief asks the court not to rule on the merits but to deny the FCC's motion to dismiss, hold the case in abeyance for six months, and require a status report in November 2026.
The number puts a dollar figure on the gap that Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) clause 52.240-1, which bars Chinese-manufactured drones from federal contracts, opened in March, and that the Department of Defense classified annex widened on 3 April. DJI cannot contest the classified evidence used to justify its exclusion; that procedural reality is why the brief asks for time rather than judgment.
DJI is deliberately stretching the litigation calendar past the FY2027 appropriations cycle and into the post-election political window. The November 2026 status report aligns with the appropriations timeline for the FY2027 NDAA, which is when any DJI-favourable carve-out would have to land. DJI is preserving optionality on a future administration's regulatory posture rather than betting on judicial reversal in the Ninth Circuit, where the procedural deck favours the FCC's classified-evidence shield.
The six-month abeyance freezes the US regulatory situation through October, structurally protecting Skydio, Autel's parallel litigation, and any domestic enterprise drone maker now sized against the $1.56 billion commercial vacuum the Pentagon's positive number is helping to fill. Autel's parallel Ninth Circuit case will inherit the DJI procedural template. Sceptics will note that DJI's $1.56 billion estimate is a self-asserted figure in a court filing rather than independently audited; the underlying product-level revenue figures are not separately disclosed, and a litigation pause is not the same as a regulatory reprieve.
