This was the week the squeeze got specific. The World Cup enforcement we've tracked for a month escalated from civil fines to the tournament's first federal criminal charge — and for the first time a particular DJI model is named in the charging document, not just inferred from market share. In Washington, the FCC chose the same week to crack open a re-entry lane for foreign drones and write DJI's name on the bricks around the one door it won't open. And DJI itself? It spent the week shipping a 40-kilometer enterprise relay into the exact industrial segment the ban is premised on, while still refusing to print a price on a vlogging camera it revealed five weeks ago. Two fronts tightening on the consumer side; one deliberate lean into the enterprise. Five stories, in priority order, with our take on each.
1. The first World Cup drone criminal charge lands — and it names a DJI Mini 3 Pro
Last week's seizures were civil. This week the statute's sharp end came out. Federal prosecutors charged Luis Mauricio Flores Ordonez for flying a DJI Mini 3 Pro over Dallas's World Cup stadium during an active temporary flight restriction — booked as operating an unregistered aircraft in restricted airspace. It rode in on a wave of seizures that dwarfed opening weekend: a Federal Air Marshals / FBI-Kansas City / KCPD counter-UAS team seized eight drones and issued two violation notices at the stadium and Fan Festival on June 16; FBI Atlanta reported 26 drones seized by June 18; and North Texas logged 20-plus across its first two matches. The exposure is unchanged and severe: up to $75,000 civil / $100,000 criminal, a year in prison, and permanent seizure.
Our take: Last week we told you to watch for exactly this — the jump from a $75K ticket to the criminal end of the statute — and it took days. Two things make this week a real escalation rather than more of the same. First, scale: dozens of aircraft across three metros in a single week means the counter-UAS net is fully operational and indiscriminate, not a kickoff-day stunt. Second, and bigger for us: a specific DJI model is now a proper noun in a federal charging document. We've spent a month saying the confiscated fleet is "overwhelmingly DJI by arithmetic" at ~80% market share — that inference just became a court record. And the Mini 3 Pro detail is the part to sit with: it's a sub-250g drone, the weight class that normally dodges FAA registration, yet the pilot was still charged with operating an unregistered aircraft — because a stadium TFR overrides the recreational carve-out entirely. Stack that on DJI's 2024 removal of automatic geofencing and the lesson compounds for anyone flying near a host city through July 21: the drone won't stop you, the weight class won't shield you, and the penalty is now demonstrably criminal. The full TFR geometry is in last week's roundup; the regulatory backdrop stays on the US availability hub.
2. The FCC opens a "toy drone" lane for rivals — and excludes DJI by name
In a June 16 order, the FCC created a new low-risk UAS ("toy drone") category that can re-enter the US authorization process, clearing a path for systems from Parrot, Wingtra, AeroVironment, Teledyne FLIR, Neros and others. The qualifying bar is deliberately tiny: a drone must weigh 150g or less, stay within line of sight at 100 meters or less, and have no network or connectivity. And the carve-out comes with an explicit fence — qualifying devices cannot be made by an entity named in Section 1709 of the FY2025 NDAA, which names DJI, Autel, and their subsidiaries. Even DJI's 135g Neo 2 is ineligible by name, not by spec.
Our take: This is the most consequential regulatory move since December's Covered List, and it cuts precisely against DJI. For a month the framing was "the wall is holding." This week the wall changed shape: the FCC started cutting doors in it — and wrote DJI's name on the bricks around the one door it won't open. The mechanism is the tell. The exemption isn't keyed to whether a drone is dangerous; a 135g DJI Neo 2 is functionally interchangeable with hardware that now qualifies, but it's excluded purely because of who built it. That's the Covered List's underlying logic finally made explicit — this was never about the airframe, it's about the manufacturer, and now there's a clean policy instrument that says so out loud. The second tell is the definition itself: no connectivity, line-of-sight only, sub-150g. That isn't a camera drone; that's a toy. So even for the brands being waved through, this reopens the kiddie-pool end of the market, not the Mavic/Air tier anyone actually shoots with. Read it two ways and both hurt: structurally, it hardens DJI's exclusion from a default into named, affirmative policy; practically, it does nothing to put a real consumer camera drone — anyone's — back on a US shelf. The US availability hub tracks the live picture.
3. DJI ships the O4 Ground Station — its real R&D is going enterprise
The week's actual new DJI product landed June 16: the O4 Ground Station, a wide-area transmission relay for DJI's enterprise fleet. It packs a 12-antenna array with automatic band-hopping across sub-2GHz, 2.4, 5.2 and 5.8GHz, and runs in two modes — Gateway (linked to FlightHub 2, extending a Dock 3 to ~30km) and Relay (offline, reaching ~40km with the Matrice 400). Add an integrated RTK module tracking 19 frequencies across five satellite systems, an IP67 rating, a −40°C to 55°C operating range, and 7W standby draw. It shipped alongside June 16 firmware for the M400, Matrice 4D and Dock 3, pitched at public-safety search-and-rescue and 24/7 unattended inspection in network dead zones.
Our take: While the consumer pipeline is frozen, this is where DJI's budget is actually going — and it's the most strategically loaded thing the company did all week. The O4 Ground Station is pure industrial infrastructure: push a drone's reach past dead zones for SAR and persistent inspection. That is exactly the category — government-adjacent, critical-infrastructure, always-on — that the national-security argument behind the ban invokes in the first place. So DJI's move reads as a deliberate doubling-down on the segment where it simultaneously holds the strongest technical moat and the highest political exposure. For US buyers it's mostly academic: enterprise Matrice and Dock gear sits on the same Covered-List wrong side as everything else, and a transmission accessory doesn't move that line. But it tells you where DJI thinks the durable value is — not a $499 pocket cam scrapping for a US shelf it can't reach, but the industrial backbone the rest of the world keeps buying. Hold this against stories four and five and the irony writes itself: DJI will ship a 40km enterprise relay this week, but still can't name a price on a vlogging camera.
4. The 360 staredown runs out the clock — the X6 firms up, the Osmo 360 II stays dark
The June window both flagship 360 cameras were expected to fill is nearly spent, and both remain unannounced. The Insta360 X6's leaks are hardening — a rumored 1-inch sensor, 8K/60fps, 5.7K/120fps single-lens, ~$549–$599 — while the DJI Osmo 360 II still has only its December 9, 2025 FCC grant (a pre-cutoff authorization that makes it US-legal), a 2,150 mAh battery, Wi-Fi 6, and a projected ~$499–$579 price to show. No launch date from either side.
Our take: We've called this a mutual staredown for weeks; it's now a war of attrition both sides are losing, because every day neither launches, the summer 360 window — graduations, travel season, the run-up to fall content cycles — burns down. But put the DJI side next to story two and the absurdity sharpens. The Osmo 360 II is one of the only new 2026 DJI products that is fully US-legal, cleared before the December cutoff. DJI could ship the single piece of new hardware Washington actually permits it to sell here — and it's sitting on it, apparently to avoid handing Insta360 a spec sheet to counter-program against. That's the year in one image: the camera the government would let you buy is the one DJI won't release, while the cameras DJI wants to sell are the ones the government won't allow. We'll keep the 2026 product tracker current as the window shuts.
5. Pocket 4 Pro pricing silence reaches week six
Thirty-nine days after the Cannes reveal, the Osmo Pocket 4 Pro still has no official price, configuration ladder, or ship date. The trade read this week was a familiar one — Notebookcheck again has it "coming very soon" — with the spec story unchanged (dual-camera, 6K/60fps, 3× optical zoom, 10-bit color, ActiveTrack 7.0, 4K/240fps) and pre-launch chatter still clustered at ~$700 / 4,999 RMB. It remains China-first with no FCC authorization, leaving US buyers on gray-market import.
Our take: We'll keep this one short, because nothing changed — and that is the story. Six weeks of "coming very soon" on a flagship camera isn't a launch runway, it's a forfeit. The early-summer creator-upgrade cycle, the exact window a Pocket launch is built to own, has been conceded to the Insta360 and GoPro products that actually showed up. For US buyers it stays an import-only proposition with the usual warranty and firmware-region caveats whenever it lands. It remains "official pricing TBD" on the Pocket 4 hub until DJI prints a real number.
What we're watching next week
Four things on the radar for the week of June 23–29:
- The first conviction or plea. The Dallas charge is the bellwether — watch whether DOJ presses the criminal end or settles for fines, which sets the tone for the rest of the tournament's enforcement through July 21.
- Whether the 360 staredown finally breaks. June is almost gone. First to announce the Osmo 360 II or Insta360 X6 sets the terms for the other.
- FCC follow-through on the toy-drone order. Comment periods, additional model approvals, or any sign of how rigidly the Section 1709 exclusion will be enforced as brands line up.
- An Air 4 FCC filing. Still none. Continued silence confirms the US concession; a surprise filing would reopen a late-2026 path. See the Air 4 hub.
We'll be back next week. For real-time tracking between roundups, the 2026 product tracker and US availability hub stay current.
