Federal aviation regulators by September expect to develop a foundation for a detailed plan to integrate drones into U.S. airspace, and then enact it in December, congressional investigators said in a new report.
The Government Accountability Office publicly released a report on Aug. 17 that reviewed the Federal Aviation Administration’s progress on drone – or unmanned aerial system, or UAS – integration.
Additionally, the report covered drone challenges as well as the agency’s case-by-case approval of drone operations, use of six designated sites to conduct tests, and drone regulations in other countries.
According to the report, which was actually published a month before, FAA is working with the MITRE Corp. to develop a foundation for the implementation plan that would contain several hundred activities to complete the integration process, which is needed as the government and commercial sectors are increasingly using unmanned aircraft for various purposes.
The GAO noted in a footnote that the implementation plan, however, is not expected to be made public.
A federal law enacted in 2012 required that the FAA integrate drones into the national airspace by Sept. 30, 2015, but the regulatory process in drafting and reviewing the rules has been slow.
In the meantime, the FAA issued proposed rules in February for the operations of small drones weighing less than 55 pounds and received more then 4,500 comments in late April. A final rule may not be developed until 2016 or 2017, the GAO report said, reiterating what has been previously reported.
Regarding the six test sites, which were established in 2014 to conduct research and development on drone operations and safety that the FAA reviews, more than 195 test flights have taken place as of March. The report also listed the challenges that these sites faced and their future use.
The report also compared proposed U.S. regulations to those in other countries such as Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, which all have similar, but well-established rules for commercial operations.
“While the United States has not finalized UAS regulations, the provisions of FAA’s proposed rules are similar to those in the countries GAO examined,” the report said.” However, FAA may not issue a final rule for UASs until late 2016 or early 2017, and rules in some of these countries continue to evolve.”
All countries face similar challenges, too. For example, the report listed technology concerns regarding detection and avoidance of other aircrafts, lack of standards for command and control systems and the lack of a dedicated and secure spectrum.
In comments about the report, the Transportation Department said GAO addressed many of the challenges, but it did not discuss environmental concerns. The watchdog agency said that it was outside the scope of this report.
The department said that FAA is conducting research to understand the environmental impacts of drone integration, the role of such unmanned vehicles in complying with federal law and the how noise standards apply to them.
Source: FierceGovernmentIT
Since the FAA failed to meet their requirement to integrate sUAS into the NAS by Sept. 30, 2015, does this mean that FAA management will not be getting their performance bonus this year? Did this have any bearing on Jim Williams “retirement?”