What’s keeping America’s private drone industry grounded?

• Ed Pilkington in Grand Forks, North Dakota

Colonel Robert Becklund knows the exhilaration of flying some of the world’s most powerful, fast and nimble aircraft. For 17 years he was a pilot with the 119th fighter wing of the North Dakota air national guard, and the F-16 Fighting Falcon was his plaything.

He would fly the supersonic jets at Mach-2 speeds, feeling the force of nine Gs bearing down on his chest. On formation flying days, he would hurl the plane almost vertically up into the skies, then roll it in dramatic displays beside other F-16s flying alongside him.

It is a paradox that a pilot who has such extensive experience sitting in the cockpit of one of the most advanced manned aircraft on earth should now find himself at the forefront of its nemesis: the push to take the pilot out of the plane and switch to unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, commonly known as drones. Becklund is executive director of the first official drone test site to function in the US, and as such he has made it his personal business to help find a way to introduce the devices into American civilian life.

As head of the Northern Plains unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) test site, based in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Becklund oversaw the very first federally approved test flight on 5 May. The launch of a Draganflyer X4ES drone – a small quadcopter designed to carry cameras for aerial photography – may have been a relatively small step for Becklund and his team, what with the flight lasting barely 20 minutes. But, given the nature of the test sites, it might one day come to be seen as a giant leap for aviation.

“We have the ability to shape a new age in aviation,” Becklund said. “I have no doubts about this – unmanned aircraft are absolutely going to change the civilian world. It’s already happening, all around us.”

But despite the excitement around drones as the next chapter in aviation history, there is also growing frustration about the ponderous speed at which the new automated technology is being integrated into the national airspace. Under current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations, almost all commercial use of the unmanned planes is strictly prohibited.

On a two-day tour of the Northern Plains test site organised by the North Dakota department of commerce, the coordinator of the site, the Guardian heard aviation experts and UAS pioneers repeatedly express their frustration at the “glacial speeds” at which the FAA is moving towards integrating drones into America’s skies. Becklund said he was so concerned about the slow rate of progress that he feared that the US could jeopardize its technological and commercial leadership in unmanned aerial vehicles.

“I worry that the rest of the world is moving ahead faster than we are,” he said. “We have a lot of interest, the phone is ringing off the hook, companies want to fly their unmanned airplanes, but if a company comes to the test site and wants to know how it can go ahead and commercialise its aircraft, we can’t really tell them. There’s something not quite adding up.”

He added: “It’s going to be a frustratingly long wait for the industry in this country. We are going to have to push to maintain leadership in this area – it’s easy for people to go to Canada.”

Benjamin Trapnell, an expert in unmanned aeronautics at the University of North Dakota, which is a key partner in the UAS test site, said: “The FAA is just rolling its eyes over this – they want to see it all go away. But that’s not going to happen. We’ve got this huge increase in technology, and the question is: can we catch up with it under a bureaucratic system that moves with glacial speeds.”

Congress has set the FAA the task of coming up with rules and standards that would safely allow drone traffic through American skies by September 2015 at the latest. But at the rate things are going, few expect that deadline to be met.

The six drone test sites – the others are in Alaska, Nevada, New York, Texas and Virginia – were set up by the FAA as part of its mission to meet Congress’s mandate. They would act as research arms assisting the FAA to solve a maddeningly difficult riddle: how to unleash the extraordinary potential of drones in US society by allowing them to fly among passenger planes in America’s busy airways, without jeopardizing the country’s unsurpassed record for air safety.

The need for a solution to the riddle appears increasingly urgent with every day that passes, as has been vividly illustrated by a spate of recent incidents. Last week, a Dutch tourist was ordered by a federal judge to pay $3,200 after he crashed his drone into the Grand Prismatic Spring, a famous hot spring in Yellowstone national park, Wyoming. In May, a New York musician was fined for “reckless endangerment” after he crash-landed in a Manhattan sidewalk just feet away from a pedestrian.

As individuals and businesses increasingly embrace drones as they come down in size and cost, the FAA has tried to hold back the tide by sending out cease and desist letters to people caught using the planes without authorization. But such are the attractions of the devices for outlets such as real estate companies, wedding photographers and hobbyists flying drones through fireworks displays that increasingly people are going ahead and using the devices even without FAA approval.

Meanwhile, companies who have done everything they are supposed to do, and are abiding by FAA rules, are hurting because they cannot recoup the investment they have made.

That includes companies like Field of View, an innovative start-up in Grand Forks that has designed a drone package specially geared to the large-scale farmer. It uses state-of-the-art aerial photography to detect plant health, irrigation and development almost to the level of the individual leaf. That could help farmers save thousands of dollars in fertiliser, water and lost crops – as well as helping the environment.

Yet right now Field of View cannot exploit the potential of its product: farmers are not allowed to fly drones over their fields. At least, not in the US. So it does roaring trade instead with Canada, parts of South America, South Africa, the Czech Republic, France, and elsewhere. “A lot of other countries are marching ahead,” said chief executive David Dvorak.

Last week the FAA announced with much fanfare that it was permitting six Hollywood and TV production studios to forge ahead with drones for aerial filming. Though the announcement was warmly welcomed by the movie industry, which has long been chomping at the bit to use drones, the concession has no bearing on the bigger picture of how to integrate UAVs into the national airspace. The film production companies will only be allowed to fly in closed studio spaces where there is no risk of encountering any manned aircraft.

With companies and individuals pushing hard to be allowed to use the technology, and the FAA straining to hold them back, the North Dakota test site finds itself in the middle of the fray. The state was chosen by the FAA as one of the six test sites because it is perfectly suited to its task: it has one of the lowest population densities in the US; its Plains are pancake flat, perfect for take-off and landing; its unencumbered open skies afford maximum visibility; it has a world-class aviation research community at the University of North Dakota; and it also has major military drone installations at Grand Forks air force base.

These advantages combine to make North Dakota a veritable drone Nirvana. But still, the Northern Plains test site is struggling.

Part of the problem is the suffocating nature of FAA paperwork, which is paradoxically even more onerous for the testers than for other drone operators. Every unmanned aircraft that the site flies has to be approved in advance through an FAA-granted “certificate of authorization” that can take weeks or months to obtain, and there must be at least three people present at the exercise including an FAA-certified pilot.

Becklund is clearly deeply frustrated by the constraints put on his team. Asked by reporters whether the rules governing the test site were a little overboard, he replied: “You’re talking to an F-16 pilot – when I’m flying I’m using every finger, talking on two radios, operating weapons, flying in formation. So yes, there could be some changes there, we need to simplify this.”

Another hurdle is the lack of any federal funding, which forces the test site to rely on companies donating their time and equipment. “That’s one of the frustrations I have here: we are completely at the mercy of external sources of research funding that may or may not have any direct connection to actual airspace integration,” Becklund said.

In turn, that skews the type of research the test site can carry out. Instead of focusing on how to merge drones into the national airspace – for instance, by testing sense and avoid technology that stops drones crashing into other aircraft or objects – the researchers must focus on the priorities of its funders, like precision agriculture.

Even if it did have capacity to carry out tests more relevant to the issue of drone integration, North Dakota would be at a loss to know which experiments to concentrate on, as the FAA has so far given no guidance. “Right at this second the FAA hasn’t actually given us clear research areas to work on,” Becklund said. “They say that’s coming.”

In a statement, the FAA said it was working to speed up the process of securing drone flight permits, or COAs, and was “continuously looking for ways to streamline the overall process.” It added that it was also in discussions with all the official drone test sites “to discuss how the test site program is progressing and ways to work out any issues.”

An FAA spokesman stressed that the agency’s overwhelming priority was safety. “Integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace will be done incrementally,” he said.

Becklund’s fear that the US could be left behind in the global drone scramble was underlined this week by news that DHL has begun deliveries in Germany using a “parcelcopter”. The move leaves major US companies, who have all been intensively developing their strategies, standing and watching. Google, Amazon and Fedex are all looking to launch drone delivery services but are stymied under the FAA prohibition.

Brendan Schulman, a New York-based expert on drone law, said that in his view Becklund’s fear that America might lose its edge had already come to pass. “If you are a company with a promising product there’s no way to develop it – you need to take it to Canada or the UK, or Australia where the regulatory environment is not so unfriendly. There’s no way for America to remain competitive.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/drone-testers-faa-aviation-frustration-grows