DJI Matrice 4T

The DJI Matrice 4T is a 1,420 g folding enterprise drone with three visible-light cameras, a 640 × 512 thermal imager, a laser rangefinder good to 1,800 m, omnidirectional obstacle sensing and 49 minutes of flight time, launched with the Matrice 4E on 8 January 2025. The 4T is the thermal model; the 4E swaps the thermal camera for a 20 MP Four Thirds wide camera for mapping. Together they replaced the Mavic 3 Enterprise series, and the 4T also took over from the Matrice 30T.

It is the drone most American police and fire departments would buy if they could. That sentence is the whole market context, and the rest of this page explains why.

Aircraft Specifications

All figures are DJI’s published specifications. FlightBrief has not flown the aircraft.

Cameras

The rangefinder is the working tool. It gives the operator the coordinates of whatever the camera is pointed at, which is how a search team passes a location to people on the ground and how an inspector logs a fault on a structure. The Matrice 4E, for mapping, carries a 20 MP Four Thirds wide camera in place of the thermal unit and is otherwise the same aircraft.

Transmission and Battery

Use Cases

Public safety: search and rescue, fire scene observation and the drone-as-first-responder programmes that launch an aircraft to a call before officers arrive. Infrastructure and utility inspection where a thermal camera finds the hot connector and the rangefinder records where it is. Any operator who needs a thermal-equipped aircraft that fits in a backpack.

Market Context

The Matrice 4T is the platform the enterprise drone guide uses to describe what American buyers lost. DJI is on the FCC Covered List, and federal agencies and federally funded programmes cannot procure or operate its aircraft; a growing list of states bars their own agencies from buying Chinese-made drones. Departments that already own Matrice 4Ts keep flying them — existing authorisations survive — but replacing or adding to a fleet is where the difficulty starts.

The Section 232 tariffs added a second problem on 3 September 2026. Any imported aircraft carrying a thermal imager draws the 100 percent rate regardless of weight, and the 4T carries one. The guide’s arithmetic before the tariff put the 4T around $7,849; the tariff doubles the import cost, and the FCC’s proposal to bar import and marketing of foreign drones with thermal cameras altogether would remove the option, if it is adopted.

The compliant alternatives are the Skydio X10 at $28,382 on GSA and the Parrot ANAFI USA GOV, both on the Blue UAS Cleared List. Neither matches the 4T’s price, and the guide’s point is that with the tariff the comparison has changed.