Witnesses urged lawmakers at a House Homeland Security joint subcommittee hearing on April 1 to implement legislation that ensures drone aircraft technology evolves within safe and adaptable guidelines that keep pace with growing innovation.
Among government use cases, drones have become indispensable in improving domain awareness for U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, assessing damage in disaster-stricken areas, and supporting emergency management and public safety efforts.
However, as one expert witness emphasized, “agents, first responders, and supporting partners need more leeway and freedom to research, test, and conduct exercises” to fully harness the potential of this drone technology.
“Changing regulations for this support and allocating resources for more research into supporting technology will allow more effective and efficient responses,” Jerry Hendrix, executive director of the Rotorcraft Systems Engineering & Simulation Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville, said at the hearing.
Hendrix further explained that establishing a standardized minimal operational proficiency standards program would help ensure consistent, safe, and effective drone operations tailored to mission objectives, and ultimately benefiting users by streamlining practices and enhancing operational efficiency.
Another witness pointed to a challenge blocking the full potential of drone technology – balancing the availability of new technology and components with the need for independent third-party compliance assessments.
“As the committee is aware, Federal government agencies are restricted from procuring or operating [drones or drone] components manufactured by covered foreign entities. The dilemma however is that there are very few certifying bodies that can assess [drones] and ensure they meet the strict security and compliance standard,” said Mike Ledbetter, executive vice president and chief operating officer at COLSA Corporation.
Ledbetter emphasized that compliance regulations are not keeping pace with the rapid development of new systems and advanced technologies by American drone manufacturers that could better support emergency management and border security use cases.
However, not every witness was as enthusiastic about the potential of drones. Kevin Fetterman, fire division chief for Division 4 of the Orange County Fire Authority in California, acknowledged that drones help first responders “establish and maintain situational awareness.” However, he noted that since drone use extends beyond government and public safety officials, there is still a need for guidelines that cover use by the public.
“[Drone] incursions create an extreme risk factor in situations such as fires, disasters, or at the border,” Fetterman said.
In one instance, Fetterman explained, a California resident used his personal drone to survey damage during an active fire, launching it from a parking garage in Santa Monica.
“After flying the drone more than a mile away, he lost track of its position, and it subsequently crashed into a Canadair CL-145 fixed-wing Canadian Super Scooper involved in fire suppression operations. The Super Scooper was one of two deployed to assist with the fires,” he said.
He explained that to reduce these costly and dangerous mistakes the Federal government must “enact legislation to prevent drone incursions into restricted airspace, develop clear mitigation procedures, enhance Remote ID requirements, and reduce bypasses.”