Blue UAS 2.0 Cleared List: Buyers, Verification, and Waivers

The Blue UAS Cleared List is the Department of Defense’s official catalog of commercial drones and drone components that have been vetted for supply chain and cybersecurity compliance and approved for federal purchase and operation. As of December 2025, the list is maintained by the Defense Contract Management Agency at bluelist.dcma.mil, not by the Defense Innovation Unit, where the program was originally built.¹ If you buy, operate, or sell drones under a federal contract or with federal funds, this is the list you check.

Where the List Lives Now

In July 2025, a memo from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth titled “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” directed the transfer of the Blue List from DIU to DCMA by January 1, 2026. DCMA’s Special Programs Unmanned Systems-Experimental division (US-X) stood up the new site at bluelist.dcma.mil in December 2025.¹ The former DIU pages now redirect. Update any bookmarks, internal procurement guides, or contract templates that still point to the old URLs.

The vetting standards did not change with the move. What changed is the scale and the plan: DCMA is turning what DIU ran as a prototype into a continuously updated platform with vendor tracking and search built in. The list you consult today is the same list, at a new home.²

Who Has to Buy From the List

The mandatory-use rules have widened over the past two years, and they now reach well beyond the military.

All Department of Defense small drone purchases must come from the Blue UAS Cleared List or be separately approved through the Section 848 process. Government purchase cards can only be used for drones that are on the list or have gone through that separate approval.³

Since December 22, 2025, the prohibition extends to every executive agency. No federal agency may use federal funds to procure or operate a drone manufactured or assembled by a foreign entity on the Federal Acquisition Security Council’s prohibited list.⁴ Federal contractors are bound by the same restrictions through a mandatory FAR clause in their contracts.⁵

State and local agencies spending their own money are not directly bound by these federal rules. When they spend federal grant dollars, they usually are, because grant terms typically incorporate the same National Defense Authorization Act and American Security Drone Act prohibitions. The same is true of universities running federally funded research. If federal money touches the purchase or the operation, assume the list applies and verify.

What Counts as a Covered Drone

The Blue List exists because federal law prohibits buying or operating drones and drone parts tied to certain countries and companies. Three statutes stack on top of each other:

Section 848 of the FY2020 NDAA created the underlying DoD prohibition and required a vetting process for approved commercial systems.⁶
Section 817 of the FY2023 NDAA expanded the covered countries to include China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, named DJI (Da-Jiang Innovations) and its subsidiaries as a covered company, and barred DoD from contracting with entities that operate covered drones. The contractor prohibition took effect October 1, 2024.⁷
The American Security Drone Act, enacted in the FY2024 NDAA, pushed the ban across all executive agencies and their contractors on the December 22, 2025 timeline.⁴

The prohibition reaches any drone company domiciled in a covered country, subject to unmitigated foreign ownership or control from one, or listed on the Department of Commerce’s Consolidated Screening List.

Importantly, the law does not stop at finished aircraft. A drone assembled in the United States can still be non-compliant if it contains a restricted-origin part. The component categories under scrutiny include:

Flight controllers, the onboard computer that stabilizes the aircraft and executes commands
Radios and data-transmission devices between the drone and its operator
Cameras and gimbals
Ground control systems and their operating software
Network connectivity modules (cellular, Wi-Fi, satellite)
Onboard data storage for flight logs, imagery, and mission data

Manufacturers seeking Blue approval must document their full supply chain across these categories. A single chip from a prohibited source can disqualify an otherwise clean system, which is why buyers cannot judge compliance by the label on the outside of the box.

Cleared List Versus Framework

The Blue UAS program actually maintains two related catalogs, and buyers should know which one they are pulling from.

The Blue UAS Cleared List contains complete, ready-to-fly drones that have received an Authority to Operate after passing both supply chain verification and cybersecurity review. An ATO is the formal certification that the system is approved for federal networks and operations, and Blue UAS ATOs are globally applicable, so a cleared system can be flown anywhere without location-specific re-approval.⁶ Cleared platforms include the Neros Archer, Hoverfly Spectre, and Zone 5 Paladin, among others. Additional systems from Skydio, Parrot, Teal Drones, and ModalAI have been selected to enter the verification pipeline, but “selected for verification” is not the same as cleared. A drone in the pipeline cannot be purchased as Blue-compliant until its ATO issues.

The Blue UAS Framework is a separate catalog of individually vetted components and software for building custom systems. Framework parts include flight controllers from ARK Electronics, GPS receivers from Locus Lock, radios from Mobilicom, electronic speed controllers from Vertiq, cameras from RPX Technologies, AI vision from Athena, Wi-Fi transceivers from Doodle Labs, and satellite modules from TILT Autonomy. Any Framework component can be combined with any other Framework component or any Cleared List platform without a separate ATO for the resulting build.⁶

To date the program has processed more than 80 unique companies, though not all remain active on the list at any given moment.² Systems age off as ATOs expire or manufacturers fail re-certification.

How to Verify a Specific Drone

Check the current list at bluelist.dcma.mil.¹ Do not rely on cached pages, vendor marketing, third-party summaries, or the old DIU URLs.

When you look up a specific aircraft, verify three things:

The exact model and configuration
The firmware or software version currently installed on the unit
Whether the ATO is still active and has not expired

ATOs are not permanent. Software updates, firmware pushes, and hardware revisions can all trigger a fresh review, and a drone that was compliant last quarter can lose its status if the manufacturer pushed an update that has not been re-vetted. The hardware on your shelf might be cleared while the software running on it is not. Build verification into your standing purchasing workflow rather than treating it as a one-time gate at contract award.

Waivers Exist, but Narrowly

The American Security Drone Act allows case-by-case exceptions under Sections 1823 through 1825 and Section 1832. A contract has to specifically indicate that such a determination has been made before the prohibition is lifted for that acquisition.⁵ For manufacturers of covered systems seeking to re-enter the federal market, DoD and DHS evaluate individual “Conditional Approval” requests, and applicants must establish an onshoring plan for all critical components, including parts that do not otherwise require FCC authorization. A prohibited manufacturer cannot get a waiver to keep selling an unchanged product; it must show a concrete plan to move production out of covered countries.

What Non-Compliance Costs

The immediate risk for a federal contractor is losing the contract. The FAR clause on covered drones is a mandatory inclusion in relevant contracts, so operating a prohibited system is a straightforward breach.⁵

The exposure runs further than that. Boeing subsidiary Insitu Inc. agreed to pay $25 million to settle False Claims Act allegations that it proposed costs for new parts on drone contracts with U.S. Special Operations Command and the Navy while actually using recycled and refurbished components between 2009 and 2017.⁸ The parts issue in that case was different from Blue UAS compliance, but the legal mechanism is the same: a contractor that certifies compliance while knowingly using prohibited components is making a false claim. The False Claims Act allows treble damages and per-claim penalties, and its whistleblower provisions give employees a financial incentive to report. For federal agencies and grant recipients, the parallel risk is losing funding and triggering administrative consequences across the program.

The practical takeaway sits in one place: bluelist.dcma.mil. Check it before you buy, check it again before you fly, and check the firmware version, not just the model name.

1
Defense Contract Management Agency. US-X Launches Blue List UAS Website
2
Defense Innovation Unit. DIU’s Blue UAS List To Transition to DCMA
3
Department of Defense. Updated Unmanned Aircraft System Governmentwide Commercial Purchase Card Prohibited Purchase Limited Exception to Policy Requirements (GPC 2025-01)
4
Acquisition.gov. FAR 40.202-3 Prohibition
5
Acquisition.gov. FAR 52.240-1 Prohibition on Unmanned Aircraft Systems Manufactured or Assembled by American Security Drone Act-Covered Foreign Entities
6
Defense Innovation Unit. Blue UAS Refresh List, Framework Platforms and Capabilities Selected
7
United States Congress. James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023
8
United States Department of Justice. Boeing Owned Drone Maker to Pay $25 Million to Settle False Claims Act Allegations It Used Recycled Parts on Military Projects