Obstacle to UAS Operations

In the following sections, you will become familiar with the FAA regulations that restrict the operation of the UAS in the national airspace, especially for commercial use. Whether we all agree with it or not, the reasons behind the FAA restrictions are due to one or more of the following:

1. As was mentioned earlier in the previous lessons, the NAS is already congested with manned aircraft, and adding more traffic caused by the unmanned system may compromise the safety of the NAS. This does not seem to be a valid argument, as the UAS will eventually be integrated into the NAS and rules and procedures need to be in place so the safety of the NAS does not become compromised. The FAA sooner or later needs to deal with integration issues.
2. For a long time, most utilization of UASs was made for military purposes. During combat situations, the military bends the rules surrounding UAS operations. In other words, the military use of UASs is not as strongly restricted by FAA regulations as are civilian uses of UAS. The FAA was not under any pressure from the civil community demanding the necessary measure for the integration of the UAS into the NAS. This was true until 2012, when the FAA was mandated by the White House to do something about such integration by the year 2015. FAA did not issue its first UAS integration rules until June 2016.
3. Most civil applications of UASs are using less expensive models that lack the sophistication that was built into the military version of the UAS. Such fact gave the FAA a reason to be concerned about the reliability and safety of these small UASs. Besides the cost factor, the size and weight of the payload in most civilian UASs is very limited and prohibits carrying onboard sophisticated communications systems such as the one needed to ensure successful detect-and-avoid mechanism. The FAA stated in their road map document of 2013, which you reviewed in the "Sensors Characteristics" section of lesson 4, “To gain full access to the NAS, UAS need to be able to bridge the gap from existing systems requiring accommodations to future systems that are able to obtain a standard airworthiness certificate.” Such a statement reflects how the FAA feels about the current state of UAS technologies.
4. Resistance to change by some FAA employees who are faced with the UAS integration, which is perhaps the most disruptive technology in the history of aviation. This is the case with most of the new technologies introduced to users of conventional technologies.
5. Concerns over privacy issues. The UAS can be flown very low and the high definition imagery from an imaging sensor may raise privacy concerns.

I would like to add here that even though the FAA restricted the use and operation of UASs in U.S. airspace, there are growing feelings, by consumers who have found useful uses for UASs, about breaking the FAA rules and flying UASs without a COA or the special airworthiness certificate. Before the FAA changed its pace in recent years in dealing with UAS issues, people were frustrated with the sluggish pace of progress by the FAA to integrate the UAS into the NAS. To understand such "unlawful" use of the UAS, read the following article:

• FAA Says Commercial Drone Operations Are Illegal… Public Says So What?