House and Senate conferees last Saturday evening reached agreement on a bipartisan, long-term reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that includes legislation allowing the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to counter threats posed by drones in limited circumstances.
The counter unmanned aircraft system (UAS) legislation also allows DHS to research, develop and test technologies for mitigating the drone threats, which is beyond the current testing that is done for passively detecting, tracking and identifying UAS systems that may pose a threat to infrastructure and people. It is currently illegal to interfere with drone operations in the national airspace.
The House is expected to begin consideration of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 (H.R. 302) on Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday the Senate will take up the bill “soon.” The counter drone measure that is included in the FAA bill as an amendment enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, and from the White House and relevant federal agencies.
“There are so many benefits to commercial drones but policymaking has lagged behind technology, particularly around drone security issues,” Lisa Ellman, co-executive director of the Commercial Drone Alliance, said in a statement for Defense Daily. “As part of the federal government’s overall effort to integrate drones into our National Airspace System, the Commercial Drone Alliance supports the spirit of legislation designed to enable DHS and DoJ to mitigate drone threats.”
The Departments of Defense and Energy already have authorities to defeat potential threats from drones at certain domestic installations. As of July, DoD had deployed counter UAS capabilities to two locations domestically (Defense Daily, July 11).
An FAA official in July told a House panel that the work being done by DoD to mitigate drone threats in the U.S. is creating a framework for DHS and the DoJ to do likewise, should the civilian agencies be given similar authorities.
The Secret Service, which is part of DHS, also has limited counter UAS authorities and capabilities.
The counter drone bill was approved in June by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018 (S. 2836) only applies to DHS and the DoJ and allows threatening drones near “covered assets” to be disrupted or disabled.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Senate committee and a key backer of the counter UAS measure, said in June that the bill is just a start to begin addressing threats from small UAS in the national airspace, and noted that it doesn’t apply to state and local law enforcement authorities who may need similar capabilities to down UAS systems.
Government officials have said that drones are being used to conduct surveillance against critical infrastructure and smuggle drugs across U.S. borders. They have also pointed to the use of small UAS by the Islamic State to drop small bombs with precision and are worried that it is only a matter of time before terrorists in the U.S. do the same.
The FAA for several years has been testing technologies to detect and track small UAS near airports but is prohibited from testing that involves mitigating or defeating drone systems.
Anh Duong, the program executive officer for UAS at the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, told Defense Daily in June that there is a lack of research, development and testing of counter UAS systems in various environments, particularly urban.
While there are large number of commercial-off-the-shelf counter UAS systems that have been developed, Duong said most of these haven’t been tested on homeland security settings, noting there is limited data here. Even in the case of research done on detecting and tracking small drones in urban settings, there is “very little quantifiable data at this point,” she said.
DHS S&T has worked with other government agencies with configuring and deploying counter UAS systems for critical infrastructure protection and select National Special Security Events, Duong said. She also said that S&T has developed computer models and tools for the proper deployment of counter UAS systems.
The FAA bill also features language on the integration of small UAS into the national airspace and seeks an update on the agency’s progress here. It also directs the Department of Transportation to work with federal agencies and international partners to “designate permanent areas in the Arctic where small unmanned aircraft may operate 24 hours per day for research and commercial purposes.”