BRINC Drones CEO Blake Resnick on the DJI ban, being sanctioned by China, and 911-response drone networks

Summary

BRINC Drones is positioning itself as the domestic alternative to DJI at a moment when federal policy has created an opening that may not come again. CEO Blake Resnick — who started his engineering career at McLaren Automotive at 14 and previously worked at DJI — founded BRINC and has since grown it into what he describes as the second-largest quadcopter manufacturer in America and the world's largest public safety drone company. The company has been sanctioned by China twice, and Resnick is personally sanctioned, a consequence of BRINC's deliberate pivot away from Chinese supply chains.

The DJI ban is broader than most investors have tracked. Just before Christmas 2025, the U.S. federal government banned all new foreign drones from entering the country, regardless of buyer or application. The progression was incremental: first, the federal government banned itself from purchasing Chinese drones; then roughly a dozen states, including Florida, banned public safety agencies from acquiring new Chinese systems. The new rule extends to all new foreign drone imports. Existing in-market DJI inventory — such as units sitting on Best Buy shelves — can theoretically continue selling, but Resnick says even those imports are being slowed significantly at the border. DJI controls approximately 90% of the global drone market; its nearest competitor, Autel, holds around 5%, and Autel is also Chinese.

The national security rationale rests on three risk vectors. First, DJI drones stream video, thermal imaging, GPS coordinates, and altitude data back to DJI's cloud infrastructure in China. Second, the Ukraine conflict has demonstrated that drone warfare at scale requires producing hundreds of thousands of units per month — industrial capacity the U.S. currently lacks. Third, autonomous drone networks that can launch from recharging pods introduce physical threat vectors that Resnick argues are being underestimated, referencing what he believes was Operation Spiderweb in Ukraine, where drones launched from positions near an airbase. Banning foreign drones, in his framing, forces domestic manufacturing scale to develop through civilian and commercial demand before it is needed for defense.

BRINC's two core products reflect different phases of this vision. The Lemur is a ruggedized indoor drone built for SWAT teams. It features a tungsten carbide wheel spinning at roughly 30,000 RPM that can breach glass, onboard LiDAR generating approximately 500,000 points per second to map floor plans in real time, 4K and thermal imaging, two-way voice communication, and a self-righting capability if it crashes inverted. Vegas Metro was BRINC's first customer. Today approximately 20% of SWAT teams nationally are actively using the Lemur, with BRINC claiming to have sold to 40 to 50% of the directly addressable market when small, under-resourced departments are excluded.

The second product, the Responder, is a purpose-built 911-response drone that launched roughly a year ago. It deploys autonomously from recharging pods mounted on police and fire station rooftops, integrates directly with computer-aided dispatch software to capture GPS coordinates from incoming 911 calls, identifies the nearest drone with sufficient battery, and launches without human initiation. Each unit covers approximately 20 square miles of jurisdiction. On arrival, the drone can orbit, stream thermal and 4K video to responders, enable two-way communication, or deliver medical payloads including Narcan, defibrillators, or personal flotation devices. A teleoperator can take manual control at any point. The system gives each drone a direct phone number, enabling voice communication with individuals inside structures without requiring a stable data connection.

The addressable market math is material. The U.S. has 20,000 police departments, 30,000 fire departments, and 80,000 police and fire stations. Resnick estimates roughly half of those buildings — 40,000 sites — will eventually carry a drone recharging pod. BRINC charges between $60,000 and $160,000 per site per year. At conservative capture assumptions, the domestic market alone represents approximately $3 billion in annual recurring revenue. Adding international markets — excluding Russia, China, Iran, and allied adversaries — brings the total addressable opportunity to roughly $6 billion. Resnick cites Axon, currently trading at approximately 20x revenue, as the closest public comparable. Contracts are structured as five-year programs that include hardware refreshes at years 2.5 and 5, repair or replacement coverage, unlimited software licenses, data storage, and FAA regulatory support.

Near-term expansion targets private security, industrial automation, and homeland security rather than consumer markets, though Resnick does not rule out consumer products over a longer horizon. A new drone launch is planned for Q1 2026, with Resnick strongly implying Starlink integration for connectivity — a technical gap he identifies as one of the most significant current bottlenecks alongside cellular dead zones at altitude. AI-driven visual-inertial odometry is already embedded in the Lemur for GPS-denied localization indoors and near large structures. On wildfires, Resnick sees near-term value in early detection via solar-powered autonomous drone pods in high-risk zones, logistics support in terrain inaccessible to ground vehicles, and longer-term potential for drone swarms actively fighting fires.