The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Nov. 7 released its first unmanned aerial systems (UAS) roadmap, a major milestone toward its congressionally-mandated goal of safe UAS integration into the national airspace system.
The roadmap addresses the policies, regulations, technologies and procedures needed to successfully integrate unmanned aircraft on a routine basis, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said on Nov. 7 during a presentation hosted by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) trade group in downtown Washington. Huerta said almost all of the unmanned aircraft operations the FAA approves for public use and research purposes are done on a case-by-case basis, including the most recent flight of a commercial unmanned aircraft above the Arctic Circle in September. Huerta said this is the only time the FAA has authorized the use of a small unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes.
Huerta said the FAA plans to choose and award six test sites for civil unmanned aircraft by the end of the year, which he said will provide invaluable information that will help develop policies and procedures to ensure safe, responsible and transparent integration. Huerta said the FAA has received 25 proposals representing 26 states. Congress passed legislation requiring a plan to integrate UAS into national airspace by 2015.
The FAA also released a privacy policy that will apply to unmanned aircraft test sites, Huerta said, which requires operators to comply with local, state and federal laws concerning privacy and civil liberties. Huerta said the FAA is requiring test site operators to create a privacy policy, make it available to the public and require anyone operating unmanned aircraft at the test sites have a written plan for how they will use and retain any test data that they have acquired.
The roadmap announcement was lauded by several trade groups, including the AIA, whose president and chief executive officer (CEO), Marion Blakey, said in a statement that the group is pleased the FAA is making significant progress toward meeting the congressional mandate of UAS domestic integration by 2015. AIA has been advocating for the beneficial civil uses of unmanned aircraft systems. Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) President and CEO Michael Toscano also applauded the news. Toscano said in a statement the privacy policy for UAS test sites affirms the strength of existing federal and state privacy laws.
One person who did not laud the roadmap was Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who happens to have prominence as a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which oversees the FAA. Markey said in a statement that the FAA’s roadmap disregards the need for federal privacy protections for individuals. Markey said the FAA agreed in the roadmap that it has the authority to regulate privacy of UASs and that it added requirements for test site operators to maintain records of UAS use and data collection. Markey said it did not, however, state how this data will be made available to the public.
“While the FAA is right to require privacy plans for drone operations, a patchwork of plans without a federal law is simply not enough to ensure the strongest safeguards are in place before tens of thousands of drones take to the skies,” Markey said. “A state-by-state plan makes no sense. Protecting Americans’ privacy from drones should not be dependent on the drone’s flight path.”
Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) was also critical. Poe said via a spokeswoman that it is the obligation of the federal government to ensure that Fourth Amendment protections are in line with advances in technology and that Congress must be proactive and establish boundaries for drone use that safeguard constitutional rights. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was also critical, saying in a statement that although the rules say that the state or local agencies overseeing the test sites must have publically available plans for privacy, data use and data retention, and that privacy practices must be annually reviewed and open to public comment, the FAA did not specify what those privacy practices should be.
Victoria Day, a spokeswoman for commercial airline trade group Airlines for America, said in an email the organization has no concerns with the roadmap and that the FAA shares its commitment to maintaining the safest air transportation system in the world.
The Transportation Department (DoT) is also releasing a plan that Huerta said dovetails with FAA’s roadmap. DoT’s plan details the multi-agency approach to the safe and timely integration of both small and larger unmanned aircraft. DoT’s plan also lays groundwork for the United States to foster its leadership in advancing unmanned aircraft technologies.
The timeframes used in the FAA roadmap are defined in the president’s National Aeronautics Research and Development Plan (NARDP), which specifies less than five years as the near term, five to 10 years as the mid-term and greater than 10 years as the long term.
The roadmap was spurred by the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which potentially offers a lucrative new opportunity for the UAS industry and major defense firms, whose market has been mostly limited to the military. UASs could have broad application toward enhancing the capabilities of police, firefighters and other public safety officials, for infrastructure and crop monitoring or assessing areas hit by natural disasters.
The Transportation Department (DoT) also released its UAS comprehensive plan on Nov. 7.