Above and Beyond

There’s good reason to believe that the FAA will clear the way for a “license plate” for drones, leading to relaxed restrictions.

BY M. ANNE SWANSON

IMAGINE A SCENARIO IN WHICH A TV network’s sports team is covering a surfing competition in Oahu, HI, by flying a drone high above several contenders, some beyond the sight of the drone operator. The competition’s organizers and law enforcers become concerned about who’s operating the drone and their intentions. Is the errant drone operated by a clueless, careless or criminal operator?

Fortunately, authorities are able to utilize a database to read a remote identification, or “license plate,” that pinpoints the drone’s origins. And coverage goes on to wow surfing enthusiasts everywhere.

So far, scenarios like that one are pipe dreams. But license plates for drones, or “unmanned aircraft systems” (UAS), may start to emerge next year. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials say the agency is on track to issue rules this coming December that will implement a remote identification system for drones. The rules will apply to all UAS weighing more than 0.55 pounds and will affect commercial drone operators, hobbyists and manufacturers.

If the regulations are put in place, the new license plates will be liberating for legitimate drone operators. For the last several years, federal security agencies have blocked the FAA’s efforts to adopt rules allowing expanded UAS operations because of the lack of a remote

ID system. Remote ID rules would bring numerous UAS industry benefits.

The FAA would be able to move forward on adopting rules allowing flights “beyond visual line of sight” (BVLOS). In other words, drones could soar beyond the eyesight of the pilot. The FAA would also then allow drone operations over people. Indeed, when the FAA considered rules last year for flight operations over people and at night, the agency said it would condition the implementation of any such rules on adoption of a remote ID system.

New remote ID rules will also lay the groundwork for development of a UAS traffic management system, or air traffic control, for drones.

The media industry will finally be able to explore the true technological potential of drones. Already a number of media outlets around the country have embraced drones, using them to capture video footage that manned aircraft cannot provide at all, or only at a much greater cost.

For instance, drones have been extremely valuable for covering natural disasters – from hurricanes to volcanic eruptions to wildfires – sending back video footage from places where even manned aircraft may not be able to fly. Drones can be used to shed light on newsworthy events in a way, and on a scale, not previously thought possible.

Today, newsrooms that want to fly drones directly over people, at night or BVLOS, have to obtain waivers, due to the FAA’s restrictions adopted in 2016 when it issued the first drone regulations. The waivers can be expensive and time-consuming to obtain. A waiver request needs to include extensive (and costly) testing data to demonstrate operational safety. Once granted, the waivers often include lengthy conditions to ensure operators meet FAA safety standards.

There were signs of progress at the end of last year when the FAA proposed the new remote ID rules and set a comment deadline of March 2, 2020. Over 53,000 parties filed comments, a volume that has inundated the FAA.

Many commercial drone operators, including members of the media industry, supported the general concept of implementing remote identification for drones but suggested changes and qualifications. As discussed later in this article, the media industry proposed adoption of an “accredited news representative” designation to exempt the industry from certain proposals that it argued would otherwise infringe on media’s First Amendment protections.

THE TECHNICAL BASICS

The FAA’s rulemaking notice proposed two categories of remote ID capabilities: standard remote ID and limited remote ID. Standard remote ID would provide information about the UAS and its ground-control station using radiofrequency broadcasting. And it would also transmit information over the internet to a remote ID UAS “service supplier” (USS). Under the FAA’s proposals, UAS equipped with standard remote ID would be allowed to operate BVLOS.

This isn’t an entirely new approach to offering drone services. Over the last several years, the FAA has successfully relied on third parties, commercial USSs, to implement a new system for airspace authorizations called “low altitude authorization and notification capability” (LAANC). USS provision of LAANC has drastically shortened the time for such approvals from several days to several seconds. The FAA is now proposing to utilize a similar third-party approach to effectuate remote ID.

The second form of remote ID – limited remote ID – would provide the remote ID message only to a USS and would not broadcast information using radiofrequencies. UAS with limited remote ID could only be operated within 400 feet of the pilot and within the pilot’s visual line of sight.

UAS not equipped with either form of remote ID would be restricted to flying in specially designated areas, called “FAA-recognized identification areas” (FRIAs). In most cases, the FAA anticipates that FRIAs would be operated by community-based organizations on behalf of recreational drone users.

For both standard and limited remote ID, the remote ID message would include the following information: ■ A UAS ID, which would be a UAS serial number or session number ID; ■ The latitude, longitude and altitude of the control station; ■ A time stamp.

Standard remote ID systems would also be required to provide information on the location of the UAS itself and not just the ground control station.

Under the proposed rules, UAS manufacturers would have to meet four basic requirements: ■ Equip the UAS with remote ID capability using an FAA-approved means of compliance; ■ Provide each UAS with a serial number that meets the ANSI/CTA-2063-A drone serial number standard; ■ Label the UAS to indicate remote ID compliance and the type of remote ID (standard or limited); ■ Submit a declaration of compliance for acceptance by the FAA.

To obtain FAA approval, a manufacturer would need to file test data and validation procedures that indicate the remote ID system will operate as intended and in compliance with FAA rules.

From a technical standpoint, the remote ID rules are performance-based, rather than