US drone manufacturer Skydio recently issued a warning to operators, advising them not to use handheld radios within one foot of their X10 and X10D controllers. While this may seem like a narrow technical recommendation, it highlights a much broader industry issue of radio interference affecting more than a single drone brand. Trusted providers by the DIU have a system blind spot when it comes to survivability in complex electromagnetic environments.
The advisory states that Motorola or Kenwood handheld radios should be kept at least 12 inches away from the drone controller; otherwise, users may experience degraded video quality, link loss, RTH triggers, or even complete shutdown. For firefighters or police, this essentially means treating radios as hazardous devices near the controller. This restriction is not limited to Motorola or Kenwood radios but applies to any radio device transmitting more than 1W of power within one foot.
Small US vendors who repackage commercial radios as “safe” drone controllers often overlook rigorous EMC testing against handheld UHF/VHF devices, since FCC Part 15 or CE tests do not require it. This is not a flaw of a single brand—it reflects a broader vulnerability across devices with weaker RF immunity, making it difficult for drones to operate in environments with ubiquitous radios, repeaters, and jammers.
Public safety radios typically transmit 1-5W power in UHF and 700/800 MHz bands. A 5W handheld device near a drone controller can dump significant RF energy into the controller’s casing, cables, and PCB, overwhelming sensitive front-end electronics. This can cause receiver “blocking” and desensitization (near-far issues) and may even drive mixers, LNAs, or ADCs into compression. In extreme cases, strong UHF energy can couple into power/USB lines and disrupt charging ICs, which is exactly the failure Skydio flagged at 450–500 MHz.
US government standards and test labs have long warned that very strong nearby transmitters can saturate receivers or their front-ends, and out-of-band energy can still cause in-band interference through intermodulation, rectification, and control loop perturbations.
Skydio markets its drones to government buyers and cites Blue UAS/NDAA compliance, which has supply chain and network value. However, blue drones are not guaranteed to survive co-located transmitters or battlefield jammers. Defense buyers will expect strict EMC/EMI performance (e.g., MIL-STD-461G/RS103-level resilience) and predictable link degradation under electronic warfare stress. Current advisories indicate that the Skydio X10 series will require further robustness to survive around handheld radios, let alone deliberate jamming.
Nearly all small UAS controllers package high-gain LNAs, wideband front-ends, and high-speed digital subsystems into plastic shells with exposed I/O. Coexisting with 1–5W portable radios within a few centimeters is an extreme scenario that many consumer designs do not account for. The deeper implication is that similar vulnerabilities likely exist across the industry, especially at the controller level.