Review - S 473 Introduced – Drone Security

Last month, Sen Scott (R,FL) introduced S 473, the American Security Drone Act of 2023. The bill includes various measures to reduce the use of drones made in certain countries (primarily China) from being bought, used, or operated by agencies of the Federal government. It also outlines a ‘government-wide’ policy on drone acquisition, which includes cybersecurity language. No spending is authorized by this bill.

Moving Forward

Scott and two of his six cosponsors {Sen Blumenthal (D,CT) and Sen Hawley (R,MO)} are members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This should mean that there is sufficient influence to see this bill considered in Committee.

The main problem facing this bill is the fact that the government is finding more and more uses for non-military unmanned aircraft and the largest manufacturer of these craft is a Chinese company. Finding the requisite unmanned aircraft from non-Chinese manufacturers is currently difficult. A bill like this is needed to provide domestic manufacturers a much-needed edge to favorably compete with the Chinese, but it will take time to build up the requisite capacity.

It will be interesting to see how this bill works its way through the Committee backrooms.

 

For more details about the provisions of the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-473-introduced - subscription required.