FAA 'Confident' in Way Ahead for UAS

Jim Williams addresses the crowd at the Air Traffic Control Association’s UAS Day. AUVSI photo.

By Brett Davis



The Federal Aviation Administration is "confident" it can meet its congressional mandate and demonstrate unmanned aircraft integration by the end of fiscal 2015, Jim Williams of the FAA UAS Integration Office said Friday.



Speaking at the Air Traffic Control Association's UAS Day symposium, Williams pointed to last year's FAA-blessed commercial mission in the Arctic as evidence of how this can work.



In those operations, Insitu flew a ScanEagle to track ice floes and marine mammals for ConocoPhillips.



"It's quite the accomplishment, and something we're very proud of," he said.



The ScanEagle did not have sense-and-avoid capability, something that will be needed for integration, but Williams said the companies were able to perform "operational segregation" to keep it out of the way of any other aircraft.



Williams acknowledged that there is a great "pent-up demand" for more commercial use of UAS and said the bulk of that can be met by new rules for small UAS, although those have been delayed from early this year to November.



Williams said the six designated test sites will also help, primarily by giving the agency information on how UAS behave differently, if they do, from manned aircraft in a variety of environments.



"One of the big things we hope to gain from the test sites is a lot of operational data," he said.



The UAS office is also taking notes from its wing that regulates the commercial space market, he said. They have different aims — commercial space regulation is aimed at creating a new market, while UAS regulation is integrating a new thing into an existing market — but there are some joint lessons to be learned, he said.



Speakers who addressed the topic agreed that 2015 would not be a magic date with full integration. Gerald Dillingham of the Government Accountability Office, which is conducting several UAS-related investigations, said the 2015 date "will be one step along the way ... just to get the small [UAS] rule is going to take us into 2015, and that's the small rule."



Peter Dumont, President and CEO of ATCA, said, "2015? No, we won't be there in 2015 [with full integration]. But we will be well on our way."



Other speakers at the ATCA UAS Day noted other challenges that face UAS integration. For instance, the Victorville, Calif., airport now flies Air National Guard Predators and Reapers alongside commercial traffic, but had to double its airspace to do so safely, said Chris Smith, senior aviation solutions architect at contractor Serco.



NASA Dryden research pilot Mark Pestana, who works with NASA's Predator-based Ikhana, said ground control stations also should be simplified, as they still reflect that they were rushed into production to meet military needs. They are clunky compared to the controls that pilots are used to, he said.



Just identifying an aircraft to air traffic control requires just one button on most manned planes, but can require seven keystrokes for some unmanned aircraft, he said.