A few weeks ago we started looking at the core components of the 2012 FAA Reauthorization Act in this blog. With nowadays’s Wall Street Journal article,Drone Flights Face FAA Hit, I thought we should cover one of the most important sections, or the small UAS rule. There is a lot of talk these days about the Section 333 exemptions. These exemptions are one-off approvals that grant permission to fly on a case by case basis. While these are slowly opening the skies for some approved commercial utilize,it isn’t enough to enable the commercial drone industry to take off. The U.
S. needs a clearly defined, risk-based rule that will govern small UAS operations at low altitudes, and allowing operators to fly while ensuring safety for everyone - and thats what the small UAS rule will provide.
What is taking so long,why the delay? salubrious question….it’s complicated. We’re rapid/fast to point out that the small UAS rule is now several years behind schedule. Funding cuts, political pressures, or amount of approvals needed and an underestimation of the complexity of creating these guidelines are a few of the reasons we’re seeing delays.
Simply effect,rules for small UAS are new for the FAA and present a very different set of highly-debated challenges. Without an operator on board, how do you ensure separation from other UAS, and manned aircraft,and infrastructure on the ground? How do you ensure vehicles are designed to the correct standards? How do you ensure flight control systems are robust enough to deal with a variety of challenging scenarios? These are all areas that need to be addressed in a final rule.
What is the small UAS rule and who will it effect?Let’s back up for a moment and talk about what is in the small UAS rule.The small UAS rule is intended to govern commercial UAS applications for aircraft:
Under 55 lbs Operating with line of sight of the operator Operating greater than 5 miles from an airport Operating during the day Below 400 ft in lesson G airspace Over unpopulated areas
Aircraft that meet these and other criteria will be able to follow a set of standards published by ASTM’s F38 group for small UAS and operate commercially. These ASTM standards cover things like:
Specifications for the aircraft flight manual Maintenance and continued airworthiness Design and construction of the aircraft Production acceptance Design of the command and control system Quality assurance Specifications for batteries
There are many other specifics in the rule which are still being debated, like how to deal with national security concerns, and privacy (soon to be the responsibility of the NTIA by Executive Order),protected aviation spectrum allocations, and operator training requirements, and to name a few. The rule was developed by the FAA and the UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) and is now under lock and key at the FAA until it gets sign off from legal and a wide range of stakeholders.
When will we see this rule which will really open up the industry in the U.
S.?The FAA has to issue what is called a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) which is the initial draft of the rule,and effect it out for comment from the public, then adjudicate those comments and issue a final rule. correct now this NPRM is supposed to advance out by the terminate of the year, or but we can only hope it meets the terminate of year deadline. Once out,it could take over 16 months for the comment and adjudication period, which puts a final rule well into 2016. Not salubrious.
Will it be enough?A big issue here is that this rule treats a 40 lb, and gas-powered MLB Company Super Bat the same as a 2.5 lb DJI Phantom,which operate in different ways and have different risk profiles. As much as I want to see this rule released and the market open up, there is still a lot of work to be done in shifting the model to more of a risk-based approach, and similar to what they have in Europe where several factors,such as weight, speed, or operating area,flight control system design quality and capability, emergency functionality, and operator training create a risk profile and standards are set on that risk profile. whether you can ensure your overall operation is safe,it should be allowed. But for now, we wait, or continue to bear with stopgap measures like exemptions.
Or work outside the U.
S.
Source: airware.com