An Ohio congressman who chairs a defense panel is keeping close tabs on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to allow civil unmanned aircraft in a select few areas of the country.
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Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) visited the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference in Washington on Wednesday to tout a proposal from his state to be the location of one of six initial “test ranges” where the non-military drone aircraft will be allowed to fly. The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 requires the agency to develop a plan for integrating civil unmanned aircraft into the national airspace before October 2015. The law calls for the FAA to create an initial pilot program at six test ranges, and dozens of applicants from varied states, including Ohio, have applied.
Turner chairs the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee. He noted to reporters on Wednesday how the proposed Ohio test-range location would be near the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He called the air service “the lead in the world in the application of (unmanned aerial system) UAS technology.”
The congressman said he is trying spur the Air Force, FAA, and NASA to coordinate more on policy matters related to unmanned aerial vehicles.
“We have had the Air Force, through the Department of Defense, in war theater learn applications that allow for the integration of military, civilian, and piloted aircraft,” Turner said at the AUVSI gathering in downtown Washington. “We need to make certain that that resident knowledge of the Air Force is leveraged as the FAA looks to these test sites. And also NASA itself has a tremendous amount of expertise. So our effort on the (House) Armed Services Committee is to make sure this is a joint effort, that it’s not siloed and merely resident within the FAA.”
The version of the fiscal year 2014 national defense authorization bill that the House passed in June calls for the defense secretary to submit to Congress a report “setting forth the resource requirements needed to meet the milestones for unmanned aircraft systems integration described in the five-year roadmap” in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act. The report should be “on behalf of the UAS Executive Committee,” according to the bill, referring to a Pentagon-FAA panel mandated by Congress in the FY ’09 defense authorization act.
The House-passed bill for FY ’14 also says the defense secretary “may” enter into a memorandum of understanding with a non-Pentagon entity engaged in the FAA test-range program “to allow such entity to access non-regulatory special use airspace” if such access does not interfere with military activities.
In terms of military unmanned aircraft, Turner pledged to keep the pressure on the Pentagon to maintain them as a priority.
“There are a number of (drone) programs that they (in the Pentagon) had looked at (with) waning interest,” Turner said. “But we believe that certainly UAS is the future, and we need to continue both our development and research on the programs that we have, because we don’t even know what the programs of tomorrow will be.”