With the gradual development of the function of drones, drones now play an important role in the field of disaster relief in various countries. Especially for the United States, where wildfires are frequent, relying on monitoring facilities and special fire extinguishing facilities carried by drones can contain some sudden wildfires at a smaller stage. In the field of drones, products made in China have received unanimous praise among customers around the world. But today's federal government ban on Chinese products makes it particularly difficult for U.S. fire departments to perform firefighting tasks.
Wildfires that erupted in California in August 2021 spread to nearby residential areas
The ban was announced by the U.S. Department of the Interior in October 2019 for cybersecurity issues. The fire agencies under the jurisdiction of the US federal government and the state government naturally cannot avoid being affected by the ban and began to replace the drones used, but this change has changed the big thing.
Since it is impossible to use drones from Chinese manufacturers, the first thing these U.S. fire and disaster relief departments think about is, of course, to purchase drones from U.S. companies. But most UAV manufacturers in the United States are embarrassed to say that these drones can't be used when they buy them! Because these products are actually made in China, they are only marked with the trademarks of American companies. There are also some real American drone manufacturers who say that none of the parts of the drones ordered by U.S. government agencies are required to come from China, and local manufacturers cannot fully meet such standards.
In fact, this situation is also very normal. China is the world's main producer of industrial products, and the relocation of manufacturing in the United States is not something that has happened in the last year or two. Even private companies in the United States are not so strictly restricted in the use of drones, but these institutions under the U.S. government system have been unlucky.
"Professional" drones produced by American companies
In March this year, the U.S. fire agency received the first batch of U.S. companies to customize the production of drones that fully meet the standards of the U.S. ban. No wonder that in the past 2020, the Mountain Fire in the United States has been so badly burned, but the Fire Department of the United States has been helpless. It turned out that throughout 2020, the U.S. fire and fire departments simply didn't have a drone on hand that could be used to monitor the state of forests in the United States.
Drones used by the U.S. fire department have been shown in U.S. news
However, when these new drones were tested, the Americans felt cold. All U.S.-made models of drones with the same design parameters are 40% higher than the chinese products they have purchased in the past, and they have frequent failures. These drones are not only procedurally difficult to use, but also have serious compatibility problems with the various devices used by the U.S. fire department. In terms of performance, it has shrunk significantly. U.S. manufacturers responded to performance issues by saying that the plane's flight data was for informational purposes only and said special customizations could be made for U.S. fire departments. However, the offer was completely unacceptable to the US fire department, which was already on a tight budget.
Pentagon's "dedicated drone" ordered by U.S. federal law enforcement
The U.S. Fire Department is just one of the "victims" of this ban. At present, the government departments that use drones in the United States include law enforcement, traffic safety, and environmental monitoring, and they have encountered the problem that drones are expensive and difficult to use. The New York State Police even said that the drones they used in the past can easily help local police departments understand the scene dynamics for the first time, and many times they do not need to be on the ground to solve the problem. Now in the local police stations, not only is it difficult to use drones and the number of drones is not enough, which leads to the shortage of manpower in the police stations is becoming more and more serious.
NYPD is equipped with a drone produced by a Chinese company
After all, law enforcement agencies around the United States, unlike the US military, are not as rich as the US military, and it is impossible to spend huge sums of money to order those special drones that are highly specialized. If the drone problem is not solved, then the American people will have to endure the shrinking capacity of these government functions. And whether this will have a butterfly effect on the midterm congressional elections that will be held in the United States in 2022 and the US election in 2024 will take time to verify.
Author/PTX
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