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SkySafe CEO: Making Distant ID work will take a bunch effort
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
Ensuring that the FAA’s regulation requiring drones to have Distant ID works as intended would require a cooperative effort amongst drone manufacturers, airspace-management entities, drone operators and the FAA itself, the CEO of a drone-detection software company said.
“I feel that there must be some means of accountability to be sure that the drones are literally following these rules,” Grant Jordan, CEO of SkySafe, said in an interview.
The FAA’s Distant ID regulations — requiring drones to be equipped to broadcast identification and placement information to 3rd parties similar to law enforcement agencies – were set to enter effect last September, however the FAA has prolonged the compliance deadline to March 16, 2024.
Under the brand new rule, all drones requiring registration – whether used for recreation, industrial applications or public service work – have to be equipped with internal Distant ID software or have an external broadcast module attached to them. As drone traffic continues to proliferate across the U.S., the regulation is anticipated help federal officials regulate air traffic and help local law enforcement track down the operators of drones not following the foundations of the sky.
Jordan said the promulgation of the Distant ID rule marks just the start of the means of establishing a well-regulated system for managing unmanned vehicle air traffic.
“The primary half of it’s: you’ve got to ensure all of the drones are literally broadcasting their distant ID, that you just’ve got these license plates within the sky. But then the second half is: How is it actually being received? Is anyone actually receiving it? And, who’s sharing that information? Is it being shared? And what tools are there to try this?” he said.
It seems that establishing a regulation requiring drone operators to have Distant ID broadcasting ability was the straightforward part. The actual work lies ahead in establishing the infrastructure of a system for enforcing the brand new rule.
“For the drone manufacturers or the operators, at once it’s one thing if the FAA just says, ‘Hey, everybody’s got a broadcast distant ID.’ However the query is, what happens if people don’t?” Jordan asked.
“What happens if manufacturers don’t actually activate distant ID? What happens if users don’t equip things with transponders? What happens if, for instance, manufacturers implement distant ID mistaken or it doesn’t work? Who’s actually going to note that or hold anybody to account?”
Currently the FAA hasn’t implemented any monitoring program or announced any plans for the way it plans to implement the brand new regulation, he said.
Managing a crowed airspace
Jordan views the situation from the airspace-management side of the equation. His company, SkySafe, creates technological solutions for governments, law-enforcement agencies, airports, corporations and municipal governments to administer their airspace with real-time drone data and analytics.
Over the past yr, as drone manufacturers developed different technologies to bring their products into compliance with the Distant ID regulations, Jordan said SkySafe began noticing problems.
“We found pretty quickly that Distant ID implementations were either incomplete or not present or filled with mistakes and there’s no way for the FAA currently to identify that or to do anything about that. Not one of the manufacturers are being held accountable in any strategy to actually follow the foundations,” he said.
The basic query facing the drone industry regarding Distant ID is: who’s going to be accountable for enforcing the foundations and holding the responsible party accountable when the foundations aren’t followed?
Jordan said he doesn’t blame the FAA for rolling out the Distant ID regulations before a completely developed enforcement regime was in place.
“I don’t know that I might say they rushed it. I feel it’s more that they focused way more heavily on the challenge to make it standard. How do you get all the drones to be transmitting something, right?” he said. “You’ve to resolve all these problems and you might have to start out somewhere.”
He called on all parties serious about establishing a well-regulated air management system for UAVs to work together to develop an accountability process to be sure that the drone manufacturers, operators and other stakeholders are following the identical algorithm.
There are a large number of challenges to developing such a system. On the drone operator side of the equation, these range from rouge drone pilots flying their aircraft for nefarious purposes similar to carrying illegal drugs or other contraband, to operators who are only unaware of the foundations flying their aircraft over crowded football stadiums.
“I feel we see instances of all of this. We see drones smuggling stuff into prisons. We see drones flying unsafely near airports. But I feel one in all the challenges here is that if, even should you’re a drone pilot who’s attempting to follow the foundations completely, one query could be if that drone pilot buys a drone off the shelf, how do they know that it’s broadcasting distant ID?” he said.
System must hold drone makers to account
He noted that, because the developer of sensor networks that track the airspace around critical infrastructure, similar to airports, SkySafe is prone to be on the primary line of defense in spotting drones that aren’t complying with the Distant ID rule.
“If we’re providing coverage for an airport, we’re showing all the drones which might be around that airport which might be reporting their Distant ID,” Jordan said. If the system shows a drone that’s within the airspace but that isn’t identifying itself using Distant ID technology, “is that on us because the airspace data provider or is that on the operator? Or is that on the manufacturer?”
Jordan thinks that much of the blame for UAVs failing to follow the Distant ID rule could be placed on the drone manufacturers themselves.
“We’ve seen examples where drone corporations have rolled out Distant ID support. They checked the box, they said, ‘Yeah, we’re doing Distant ID,’ and it’s not totally true,” he said. “Either it didn’t actually work as intended, or it was implemented mistaken, or, in some cases we’ve seen drone manufacturers where they rolled back Distant ID support after the enforcement deadline was prolonged.”
Jordan said the team at SkySafe has put numerous thought into how corporations similar to his may help the FAA and the industry validate that everyone seems to be playing by all the identical rules.
“We could be form of a confirmatory step, showing that a specific drone manufacturer or transponder manufacturer’s implementation of distant ID does follow the usual,” he said.
“If it doesn’t, we could actually help to offer that feedback to say, ‘Oh hey, this doesn’t follow it in this fashion, and here’s what it could take do to follow the usual.’ But I feel there must be some form of collaboration between industry and government on doing that, in order that we are able to form of close the loop.”
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