More Coordination Needed Between FAA, FCC on Drones, Lockheed Martin Executive Says

Larger, more sophisticated high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles will require a different approach from regulators than smaller UAVs have, said Jennifer Warren, Lockheed Martin vice president-technology policy and regulation, during a Silicon Flatirons spectrum conference late Wednesday. The challenge is which comes first -- the FAA has to set out performance objectives and the FCC needs to make spectrum available for command and control, Warren said. “It’s going to be an interesting timing scenario and the one has to be informed by the other,” she said. “There’s a little bit of collaboration that we’re hoping for between the FCC and the FAA” when we get beyond smaller drones, she said. The FAA and FCC don’t disagree, said Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. The commission allocated 50.30-50.90 MHz for command and control of UAVs, he said. “There are so many different kinds of UAVs used by both federal and nonfederal.” Finding spectrum isn’t easy, Knapp said. “Most of the spectrum is spoken for in one way or another,” he said. “It generally comes down to there’s something there. Either you’re going to share without modifying it or it has got to be moved and that usually costs money.” Tom Hazlett, economics professor at Clemson University, said challenges presented by space-based and aerial communications technologies are “profound.” Hazlett sees a possible solution an Intel/Intelsat proposal for the 3.7-4.2 GHz band (see 1710020047). “They’re talking about incumbent licensees, including especially satellite licensees, being able to make deals with terrestrial in particular,” he said. Incumbents would be protected, but new entrants could “make deals, make bargains,” he said. The companies get it “just right,” he said. “There are rigidities in the system that can be overcome by allowing the rights to go into the marketplace, that allow bargains to be made.” The FCC wouldn’t have to make trade-offs on things that are “completely unknown” like “is a band better used for autonomous vehicles or Wi-Fi-delivery of cat videos,” Hazlett said. The FCC "doesn’t know the answer" to that question and neither does he, he said. “We want the opportunity costs to be visible, transparent,” he said. “We want users to make rational calculations and we don’t resources to go to low-valued uses when there’s something much better.”