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Lifting Off or Stalling the Industry?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, drones have emerged as the ultimate social distancer: delivering medical supplies, helping public safety organizations to support communities, disinfecting workplaces and hospitals, and more. For example, Walmart is now delivering home self-collection and contactless at-home COVID test kits to customers in multiple states. These operations were made possible through forward-leaning regulatory applications. This good news is tempered by proposals that have the potential to stymie some operations. What happens today in drone law and regulation will set the stage for the future of advanced air mobility (AAM; think: flying autonomous taxis). This article will fly over the latest developments at a thirty-thousand-foot view.
Will drone law and policy enable the commercial industry to take off-or will they ground the fleet?
GETTING "RID" OF SECURITY PROBLEMS?
In December 2019, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) promulgated a Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPRM), titled Remote Identification (RID) of Unmanned Aircraft Systems.1 The formal comment period closed on March 2, 2020. The FAA received 53,000 comments. On December 28, 2020, about a year later, the FAA published an advance copy of the final rule, which appeared in the Federal Register officially on January 15, 2021, and created a new Part 89 in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations.2 The rule is effective sixty days from publication; operators have thirty months and manufacturers have eighteen months therefrom to comply.
The stated purpose of the RID rule is to ensure public safety and the safety and efficiency of U.S. national airspace (NAS) airspace by enabling the FAA and security partners to have near real-time situational awareness of small drone flights by way of a "digital license plate." A few significant changes occurred from the original proposal to the final version, the most notable of...