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This morning in Las Vegas, the Industrial UAV keynote address was an open conversation with the FAA, moderated by Industrial Drone Alliance Executive Director Lisa Ellman.
At Industrial UAV Expo, the FAA has been present and available: on the booth, in sessions, and on stage. Following the news that the Biden administration has officially nominated FAA veteran Mike Whitaker to the highest position on the agency, FAA representatives Jeffrey Vincent, Executive Director for the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Office in Aviation Safety (AVS), and Brandon Roberts, Executive Director, Office of Rulemaking took the stage to handle the drone industry’s pressing questions.
“It’s a Recent Day” on the FAA
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Jeffrey Vincent, FAA
Jeffrey Vincent responded to an issue concerning the pace of drone integration by recognizing that the agency has struggled to answer the drone industry prior to now. Vincent says that the agency is making major changes, nevertheless, to streamline their processes. “We acknowledge that there definitely have been challenges… nevertheless it’s a brand new day,” he said. “Drones are here to remain, and all of us understand that…. We understand the necessity for a regulatory process, and we’re attempting to get there as fast as we are able to.”
Brandon Roberts agreed, commenting that a everlasting FAA Administrator will help the agency make substantive progress. “We’ve got a team together now, and having a everlasting leader can be an enormous assist in moving things forward. …No one is more frustrated by how long rulemaking takes than I’m,” he said. “…We would like to go quickly, we’ve got the team onboard that wishes to maneuver forward.”
Each representatives agree that the FAA has at times been stymied by a scarcity of interagency agreement, unable to maneuver forward as a consequence of concerns from DOJ and security agencies. “Our security partners highlighted concerns that weren’t addressed [in rulemaking]- and that took us several years,” said Roberts. Now, Roberts says that the agency is coordinated with other government partners and are addressing security and societal concerns up front. Distant ID, Roberts said, is a foundational a part of a security framework.
BVLOS Rule, BVLOS Waivers
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Brandon Roberts, FAA
Roberts explained that the recent authorizations for BVLOS Flight – Phoenix Unmanned, UPS Flight Forward, and uAvionix – were strategically chosen to represent broad use cases. The agency hopes to make use of these waivers to get to a spot of summary grants, where firms can take a look at previous awards and use the constraints and conditions as a template for their very own ConOps. “Determining the constraints is what takes the time. But once we are able to start saying ‘the relief that you simply are seeing looks very much like relief that we’ve already granted’ we are able to [use] summary grants,” said Roberts. “Our goal is collecting data and setting the suitable precendents to be ready for a rule.” Roberts commented that a fourth applicant for BVLOS relief, Zipline drone delivery, will be the first summary grant: based on the UPS Flight Forward authorization.
Nonetheless streamlines, authorizations are still only an interim step to a BVLOS rulemaking. Former FAA Administrator Steve Dickson announced the BVLOS Advisory Rulemaking Committee (ARC) in June of 2021: the committee delivered its recommendations in March of 2022. While a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was anticipated by the tip of last 12 months, the agency now says it’s aiming for implementation of a rule in 2025.
“Part 108 may be very visionary – that’s made it difficult,” said Roberts. “We’re on the lookout for August of 2024 [for an NPRM], after which we’ll have a comment period – we expect there can be a whole lot of comments… That may get us to a 2025 timeline for a rule.”
Unmanned traffic management (UTM) and deconfliction are only two of the concepts that the FAA must consider as a part of routine operations beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). “Two things that I’ve at all times said go hand in hand: ensuring that drones don’t run into drones, and ensuring that drones don’t run into manned aircraft,” says Vincent. “What’s tactical deconfliction going to appear to be? What does actual true separation appear to be? All of those things are being regarded as we take a look at Part 108.”
“Probably from industry’s viewpoint, we’re not moving fast enough… but as we take a look at these challenges, it looks like tomorrow.”
Distant ID: Relief from the September 16 Deadline
Yesterday, the FAA’s David Boulter promised that the industry would see “relief” for the Distant ID deadline of September 16. When asked for clarification, Roberts didn’t provide more guidance on what the relief would appear to be. He explained that while the FAA recognizes the difficulties in complying with the deadline, in addition they don’t need to penalize those manufacturers and ecosystem partners that worked to satisfy it.
“We recognize there have been massive supply chain issues,” Roberts said. “There was also a delay in getting the manufacturing specs, and with the FAA accepting the standards. We recognize that it’s probably appropriate to not shut down operations in per week… But we even have the guarantees that we made to our security partners, who’re inquisitive about keeping momentum going. That’s the needle we’re threading. But we do need to be sure that that compliant operators who simply can’t get modules won’t be punished.”
Throughout the conversation, the FAA stressed that they’re committed to drone integration and to streamlining processes and procedures to assist firms deploy uncrewed systems at scale.
“We see a tremendous potential for drones,” said Roberts. “We would like to enable it.”
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