Senate Bill Could Further Delay UAS Integration

The bill requires Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to submit a detailed report on UAS integration’s privacy impact to lawmakers, prior to allowing FAA to issue final regulations on the integration of UAS into the NAS. The Senate’s privacy provision tasks the agency with yet another hurdle to clear in the already time consuming process of UAS integration, which requires complex technological analysis of how these aircraft will behave within civil airspace and fly in the same airspace as commercially operated passenger aircraft, among other measures.    UAS industry experts, such as Ben Gielow, government relations manager and general counsel for the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI), are concerned that the provision will further delay integration, as most industry advocates already believe FAA will miss its goal of integration by 2015. Integration will allow UAS to be operated across a wide variety of applications, including law enforcement and border control, weather monitoring, oil and gas exploration, disaster management and aerial imaging.  –

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