Rules by December for UAS in the NAS?

We don’t share the confidence of many aviation pundits who this week are touting rule changes.

The countdown ticker for the NPRM process that we used to run at the top right of the page had to come down. Changing it to new dates all the time was a pain. It is currently set to happen January 2012.

Mary Grady at Avweb has this to say:-

Facing increasing pressure from both industry and the military to allow greater freedom to unmanned aerial vehicles, the FAA is expected to start integrating small UAVs (generally 55 pounds or less) into the National Airspace System as soon as 2013, the National Defense Industrial Association said this week. The FAA formed a committee in June to create rules that would govern that integration. Rick Prosek, manager of the FAA’s unmanned aircraft program office, told NDIA at a recent conference, “We are plowing through the small-UAS rule to put that on the street.” Under current rules, anyone who wants to fly a UAV of any size freely in the NAS must obtain an FAA waiver. The proposed new rules could be published as soon as December.

The gear change required at the FAA. Whose movement to date could be described as glacial would have to be substantial.

ARC II (not sure what movie sequel title to add) has happened and who knows what was said. ARC I according to Patrick.  He had some thoughts about ARC II here as well.

UAS in the NAS in twelve months that would be quite the thing.