GAO Report Says FAA Progressing Toward Goal of Integrating Drones Into National Airspace

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has progressed toward its goal of seamlessly integrating unmanned aerial system (UAS) flights into the national airspace,” a GAO report published Monday said. FAA has issued its UAS comprehensive plan and UAS integration roadmap, and is working with Mitre to “develop a foundation for an implementation plan,” and expects to enact the plan by December, GAO said. FAA approves UAS operations on a case-by-case basis, but the number of approvals in the U.S. has increased each year since 2010, it said. Commercial UAS operations were approved in the U.S. for the first time in 2014, it said. Canada and France allow more commercial operations than the U.S., it said. The FAA’s six designated test sites have been operational since 2014 and had seen more than 195 test flights as of March, GAO said. The test sites faced some challenges such as a need for additional guidance from the FAA on the type of research they should conduct, it said. FAA said it can’t direct the test sites to do specific research, but provided a list of potential research areas to the sites. Other countries, including Australia, Canada, France and the U.K., with well-established UAS regulations have experienced similar “technology shortfalls,” including “unresolved issues involving limited spectrum that limit the progress toward full integration of UASs into the airspace in these countries,” it said.