Abstract
For over a decade, drone delivery has been heralded as the next frontier of commercial transportation and logistics. However, drone delivery companies have been unable to scale their operations. Part of the problem, from the perspective of the companies invested in drone delivery, were federal regulations that in effect prohibited drones from making deliveries. In 2025, following years of effort by industry and allies in Congress to create new rules governing drones, the second Trump Administration proposed a new set of drone regulations pursuant to the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. These rules are intended to significantly expand the number of drones authorized for flight across the country, including for delivery. Whether that is their effect remains to be seen.
But should drone delivery scale up across the country, significant problems are likely to appear: congestion and nuisances, abuses of economic power and harms to innovation, widespread surveillance, and consequences for workers and the environment. Without attention to these problems, regulators tempted to let drones scale quickly may make a disastrous policy choice, ushering in an era of commercial delivery marked by skies flooded with relatively unrestricted flying objects. Such a situation might not only threaten public safety—it might also lead to widespread backlash, limiting drone delivery’s public acceptance and thus the success of the industry.
This Article offers solutions to these problems—a pathway for how to regulate drone delivery services with attention to the structural problems the technology is likely to pose. Taking insights from the law and policy of networks, platforms, and utilities (NPUs), it recommends the creation of a new, comprehensive licensing system aimed at preventing abuses of economic power, ensuring innovative markets, protecting privacy and property rights, promoting safety, and preventing nuisances. This system would involve federal regulators working in collaboration with local governments to account for the needs and preferences of individual communities. It also suggests that the U.S. Postal Service explores creating a public drone delivery network as a complement to its existing parcel delivery service. These policies, if pursued, may contribute to a healthy, innovative, and socially responsible system of American last-mile delivery.
Recommended Citation
Ramsay Eyre,
Regulating Drone Delivery Networks,
2026
J. L. & MOB.
190
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/jlm/vol2026/iss1/6