Luis, a couple reasons why we don’t see more U.S. drone manufacturers.
U.S. companies simply can’t export UAV technology. They are severely hamstrung by ITAR regulations. They cannot sell to a world market unless and until they can control the dissemination of the technology from start to end, and. That process has to be documented and federally approved. Since that is absolutely something that can’t be done there’s no reason to address a world or international market at levels lower than governments.
Our government is fully aware that any UAV technology that is exported to an open market will shortly be copied by foreign entities. If that technology opens new doors for those entities in surveillance or weapons capabilities it would expand foreign capabilities that would be used against us.
OTOH, ITAR does not restrict the import of UAv tech, so everything stolen from us and others gets to come back and be sold at cut rate prices by those that stole it to common consumers. It doesn’t matter that the stolen tech is returned in a form considerably degraded from the original, it’s coming in, not going out.
Another issue is open source code that’s liberated for use without fair compensation or in violation of open source agreements. U.S. companies are subject to international court prosecution so they play a fair game, which costs more. When a Chinese company elects to violate the same agreements nothing can be done unless and until the Chinese government allows a legal case to proceed. In effect they protect their companies from international litigation.
Nothing we see coming out of China is “cutting edge” technology. In fact, most of it is old tech that’s been re-packaged for general consumer use. If we were to look back we would see that mapping, LIDAR, thermal, waypoint flight planning, multi spectral, object tracking, and other higher end technology was being used on DIY and custom made drones long before DJI, Yuneec, Autel, or any other Chinese company incorporated any of it. At best, the Chinese have done some great work with miniature security cameras by turning them into 4k products but the fact is we have had vastly better payloads that have been in use for a decade or more, and they are only slightly larger.
All in all, the greatest benefits obtained from Chinese drones is in their “packaging” and pricing.