Industrial UAV Expo kicked off in Las Vegas this week. Today, the standard keynote featured industry leaders addressing a few of crucial questions of the day: including what the FAA plans for drone integration – and what’s going to occur with the Distant ID for Drones rule, scheduled to be implemented for operators on September 16, 2023.
The keynote, moderated by Industrial Drone Alliance Execuitve Director and Hogan Lovells Partner and Leader of the Global UAS Practice Lisa Ellman, featured the FAA’s David Boulter, Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety.
How Will the FAA Enable the Next Generation of Flight?
Ellman began the keynote by acknowledging industry frustration with FAA processes and rulemaking, which has appeared to stall around issues corresponding to flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and sort certification.
“All of us are here because we share a typical goal,” said Ellman. “…The advancement of drone technology advantages all Americans.”
“While the technology has hurried forward, regulations… have lagged behind,” Ellman said. “The FAA continues to view FAA integration as a ‘long road ahead,’…America is falling behind our global competitors.”
Ellman outlined some critical steps that the federal government can absorb the following few months:
- Promote an FAA Reauthorization Bill that can move our industry forward
- The Executive Branch should establish that it’s the policy of the US to guide the world in uncrewed technology
- The FAA must streamline its processes to enable UAS integration
While expressing the sentiment of the industry, Ellman did bring a note of optimism to her address, saying that the agency has been taking significant motion in recent months to satisfy those goals. “I can assure you that there may be numerous progress happening behind the scenes on the FAA,.. that’s encouraging.”
The FAA on Moving Forward on Drone Integration
David Boulter is open to drone technology, and he acknowledges the needs of the industry. “It is a collaborative process,” Boulter said. “We all know we’ve been moving too slow on this space.”
While the FAA motto is to run the safest, best airspace on the earth: Boulter notes that for enabling latest technology: “Our goal is to search out the balance between the protection and efficiency.”
“We want to adopt risk-based decision making – and things which might be low risk, we’d like to do as a lot of those operations as we will,” says Boulter.
To that end, Boulter outlines the priorities for drone integration:
- Make clear Agency Policies. “We want to be sure that that the agency has a policy, we’d like an agency approach,” Boulter said. With disparate teams in type certification, flight permissions, and more, Boulter says that every one facets of integration should be checked out as a package.
- Develop an “All of presidency” approach. As progress might be halted when different government agencies have different priorities, Boulter said that a unified “all of presidency” approach to problems with drone integration would help move policies forward.
- Provide Answers. “We’re public servants – we owe you a solution,” said Boulter. “We don’t owe you a solution that you just want, but we owe you a solution so you can make business decisions and move on.”
- Gather more data. “The unknown is high risk,” Boulter points out. “We want data for effective rulemaking.”
“The more we all know, the higher we’re,” said Boulter. “We have a look at modern safety systems as a relationship, based on trust and transparency: that transparency is data,”
Distant ID: Relief is in Sight
One of the vital critical questions for the FAA this week concerns Distant ID. The deadline for operators is September 16, 2023: by which date operators must equip their aircraft with an external distant ID module, or fly a distant ID certified aircraft. As the information approaches, nonetheless, many business operators have found that external modules are unavailable for shipping, and firmware updates for his or her existing fleet usually are not yet ready. Technical considerations, corresponding to the power to show off the potential for sensitive public safety or government operations, haven’t been addressed.
Boulter says that the FAA is cognizant of the problems, and is working on delivering a message to handle them. “You’re going to get relief – we just don’t know what that relief looks like yet,” said Boulter. “I understand it’s late in the sport, but we can have relief.”
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