{"id":2450,"date":"2015-01-26T15:45:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T15:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/?p=2450"},"modified":"2019-11-18T15:32:28","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T19:32:28","slug":"faa-official-refuses-to-give-date-for-uav-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/2015\/01\/26\/faa-official-refuses-to-give-date-for-uav-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"FAA Official Refuses To Give Date For UAV Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Tom Curry<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Posted at 7 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/blogs.rollcall.com\/the-container\/faa-official-refuses-to-give-date-for-uav-rule\/<\/a><\/p>\n

House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman\u00a0Lamar Smith<\/strong>\u00a0tried hard at\u00a0a hearing Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0to get the Federal Aviation Administration to say when it will issue its rule on commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicle.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0James Williams,<\/strong>\u00a0the FAA official in charge of integrating UAVs into the nation\u2019s airspace, repeatedly refused to commit to a date.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Williams, when might we expect the FAA to propose some rules?\u201d Smith asked at a hearing of the committee on the UAV industry.<\/p>\n

Williams said the FAA is working with its partners in the Obama administration, such as the Office of Management and Budget, and the agency is \u201cdoing everything we can to get that small unmanned aircraft rule out, but our main focus is to get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cWhen do you think you might get that [rule] out?\u201d Smith asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI at this point can\u2019t give you a firm deadline,\u201d Williams replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have a goal in mind? I mean, you\u2019ve got a lot of people across the United States waiting,\u201d Smith said. \u201cDo you have any kind of a working deadline or a working goal?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goals are to get it out as quickly as we can, as long as we get it out right,\u201d Williams answered, which prompted Smith to ask whether a rule is likely to come \u201cthis year or next year?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t speculate,\u201d Williams said. \u201cMy own personal hope is we get it out as soon as possible, but it\u2019s got to go through the regulatory process that has been put in place by Congress and we\u2019re working our way through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to understand this is a very complex rulemaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith tried one more time, but then gave up: \u201cNever mind. I can tell that I\u2019m not going to get the answer that I was hoping for. But we\u2019ll take your word for expediting the process\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another witness at the hearing,\u00a0Brian Wynne,<\/strong>\u00a0head of the\u00a0Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International\u00a0<\/a>(AUVSI), the trade association for drone makers and users, said that \u201cwe understand that a notice of proposed rule-making (NPRM) for small UAS [unmanned aerial systems] from the FAA is now expected any day. It cannot come soon enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Drobac, the head of the\u00a0Small UAV Coalition,<\/a>\u00a0said Tuesday that it would be a 16-month process for comments, reply comments and a final rule once the NPRM is released and noted that the NPRM \u201cwas supposed to be released months and months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said FAA\u2019s final rule on commercial use of drones won\u2019t come until 2016 or 2017.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Colin Guinn, an executive at\u00a03D Robotics<\/a>\u00a0and a member the Small UAV Coalition, told Smith\u2019s committee Wednesday that possibly the FAA should allow the smallest (less than 2 kilograms in weight) UAVs to be used now, so that real-world data could be amassed on how to operate drones safely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is something that could potentially bridge our gap while we\u2019re figuring out how do we integrate the next heavier class?\u201d<\/p>\n

The small UAVs, Guinn\u00a0said, could perform\u00a0tasks such as power line inspections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Tom Curry\u00a0Posted at 7 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2015 https:\/\/blogs.rollcall.com\/the-container\/faa-official-refuses-to-give-date-for-uav-rule\/ House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman\u00a0Lamar Smith\u00a0tried hard at\u00a0a hearing Wednesday\u00a0to get the Federal Aviation Administration to say when it will issue its rule on commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicle. But\u00a0James Williams,\u00a0the FAA official in charge of integrating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-airspace","category-faa","category-suas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4045,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions\/4045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}