FAA Programs

Beyond the Buzz (episode 6) - FAA Programs  

December 11,2024 

Danielle Miller: 

Welcome everybody to Beyond The Buzz, our UAS webinar that focuses and dives in to UAS topics each month this webinar is brought to you by the northern plain UAS test site in collaboration with the Hive, the Hive is our UAS Hub here in Grand Forks North Dakota it's really our business accelerator that really fosters innovation collaboration and growth in the UAS industry so I'm Danielle Miller director of safety of the Northern Plains UAS test site and I'm very excited to introduce to you today our topics as well as our very special guests that are here to speak on these topics. With that we have UAS 300 director Sabrina Saunders-Hodge here to talk with us about the FAA UAS test site program we also have a UAS 400 director Pamela Gomez here to talk to us about the FAA Beyond program as well as UAS traffic management, so before I pass it over to Sabrina I'll just note that for those who are here in person as well as online we're going to hold off questions till the end so as soon as Pamela is done briefing we will happily welcome any questions that folks have. They can be submitted right into the chat so with that I will pass it off to Sabrina  

Sabrina Saunders-Hodge:  

Okay thank you so much Danielle and thank you to the Northern Plains UAS Test Site for giving FAA the opportunity to come share information on some of our key programs that are moving UAS integration forward, so I really appreciate it. Okay so as the director of research engineering and Analysis in the UAS integration office my division is responsible for the program management for the FAA’s UAS test site program, so the form act back 2012 and originally it was to establish six UAS test sites which we did under the Congressional mandate the test sites were originally intended to be an asset to Industry so that industry could queue up and test out their use cases their operational Concepts before queuing up to the FAA for operational approvals and to also help us learn how to move UAS integration forward over the last 12 years and I'll talk about this it certainly evolved the test site program from just being an asset to the industry to very much being an asset to the FAA so in 2014 we did have the test sites up and running and conducting test flights two years later we were asked to add a seventh test site who had already been affiliated with the FAA and that was New Mexico State University so now we are rounded out to seven FAA designated test sites as you can see University of Alaska and Fairbank, North Dakota Department of Commerce of course Northern Plains UAS test site, New Mexico State University state of Nevada New York UAS test site, Texas A&M they just recently kind of uplevel to become the Corpus Christie autonomy Research Institute so and then we have Virginia Polytech Institute and State University our Virginia Tech test site and one of the key things about the selection for these test sites they were to be geographically dispersed so that it would be certainly not a burden for any entity any industry entity wanting to test at one of our test sites to not have to travel too far outside of where they were coming from to be able to access the asset. I said or that the original intent was for industry to really take advantage of these geographically dispersed uas test sites with capabilities that would allow for proving out their use cases and operations for uas integration but over the 12 years I want to talk to you about the intersections that the uas test site program has and has put them on the front line for FAA in so many of our pilot programs our research our partnerships with industry of course Academia our other Federal Partners so you can see from this sort of checklist here that each test site is very much a part of the frontline that we have for moving integration forward and you're going to hear from my peer director about Beyond but beyond I stood up the first uas Center of Excellence for the FAA assure and the test sites are instrumental in the work that assure does my division also manages the uas broad agency announcement program and of course that program requires the intersection between industry and the test sites and that is a really wonderful partnership with FAA our UTM pilot program the test sites were very much involved as well as UTM field tests with FAA NASA industry that was a collaborative effort so you can see how they really support not only industry but they are very supportive in moving our vision for uas integration forward in the FAA thank you thank you. 

Danielle Miller: 

Thank you very much Sabrina all right Pamela we'll pass it off to you for Beyond phase two.  

Pamela Gomez: 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today looking forward to the discussion so as you know the Beyond program will transition to Beyond Phase 2 and continuing to bring existing and new state local and tribal governments together with private sector entities such as uas operators and manufacturers to test and evaluate the integration of civil and public drone operations into their National airspace system drones have been conducting bridge inspections delivering retail items life-saving medications and vaccines under the Beyond program and to date the program has conducted more than 61,000 flights 38,000 flights of which were Beyond visual line of sight to support a diverse set of operations. The data from these flights have provided key insights helping accelerate the approval of operations that require special authorizations they have helped inform National Environmental Policy for drone package deliveries and help the FAA craft the draft notice of proposed rulemaking for normalizing uas Beyond visual line of sight operations rule that's due out of the FAA in early 2025. The program will include additional State local and trouble governments to expand BVLOS operations at scale and inform future policies for the safe integration of uas with increased levels of Automation and focus on new emerging Aviation Technologies with larger drones flying at higher altitudes and operating at longer distances. Beyond Phase 2 seeks to enable routine integrated uas Advanced operations across the NAS and tackle the remaining challenges of drone integration with scalable Beyond visual line of sight operations with the implementation of the nubo rule expected in the Beyond Phase 2 time frame expanding the number of operations significantly in areas of operation including package delivery Public Safety and public health many states are going to be exploring expanding use of drones for public health delivering medical supplies and life-saving medicines exploring initial Healthcare Logistics delivery routes between healthcare clinics and exploring ways to provide medical supplies for home health care and urban environments. It also seeks to enable more complex industry operations to develop and refine policies procedures and Technologies to enable integration of remotely piloted an autonomous aircraft into airport environments such as towered and non-towered airports and different airspace environments exploring uas operations such as critical Air Service cargo deliveries to at risk communities and evaluate more complex Public Safety operations for Emergency Management Services for Disaster Recovery operations, and lastly it will be seeding UTM infrastructure to enable scalable operations integrating traffic management capabilities across multiple States testing detect and avoid Effectiveness integrating UTM utilization for multiple operations in various operational environments and deploying physical and data infrastructure command and control links and detect and avoid Technologies. As the FAA and Lead participants look to the program's future the goal is to focus on developing a performance-based framework and enabling Interstate infrastructure operability that supports a ubiquitous drone operation the Beyond Phase 2 program hopes to build on the accomplishes accomplishments made in Phase One and continue the work and address the challenges of future drone operations we look forward to inviting additional states to participate and that will be on our website shortly. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about UTM uas traffic management enables services that are complementary to the FAA’s air traffic Services UTM helps manage and reduce risk for drone operations we certainly will see UTM becoming more integrated into our environment with scalable uas operations to enable the UTM ecosystem the FAA is developing a uas regulatory and traffic management framework that is compatible with the evolution of the technology that is required to support UTM and we are collaborating with industry to implement UTM services in real world operations through the UTM near-term approvals process called NTAP and the UTM key site operational evaluation as you know uas traffic management is primarily below 400 feet in class G airspace. Industry has identified North Texas area to demonstrate that UTM is safe and effective and we are collaborating with industry on the UTM key site operational evaluation to validate the use of UTM to mitigate drone to drone collision risk for Beyond visual line of sight operations the major difference to current operations is the integration of multiple operators versus segregated operations, this effort will provide the data required to expand implementation to future sites and inform future rulemaking. The key site is an important next step for FAA to evaluate our relevant business rules and to inform our policies necessary to enable more complex drone operations and for BVLOS rulemaking the UTM key site is complementary to our near-term approval process and it will build upon the NTAP process to evaluate and accept the risk mitigation values for strategic coordination and conform monitoring as well as other UTM services in Spring of 2024 Wing drone up zipline and HRA Technologies all requested to begin the NTAP for their UTM strategic coordination Services the FAA has issued letters of acceptance to both zipline and Wing Aviation for their strategic coordination UTM services to mitigate drone to- drone collision risk in July of 2024 and we have issued an LOA to drone up for their strategic coordination services and to honor Technologies for their strategic coordination UTM services to mitigate drone to- drone collision risk for their Champion operators. FAA is working with NASA to ensure the FAA is ready for Industry Safety case via the inner USS test suite and NASA's collaboration with industry helps ensure Equity by linking Public Safety operators to uas service suppliers that's all I have for you today I'll take any questions or back over to you Danielle. 

Danielle Miller: 

Thank you very much Pamela okay I'll check the chat for any questions, we do have one from Michelle Duette  

Sabrina Saunders-Hodge: 

Okay I do see that, is there a path for the test sites to completely fill Sabrina's chart? Well each test site has its own competencies and that's something that I've been really my team and I have been focused on to to really make sure that all of their competencies are known and if you really if you go up to our website we have just refreshed that in partnership with the test sites to make sure that every everyone is aware of their so-called sweet spots I mean each one has become known for doing certain operations having certain you know capabilities based on their infrastructure based on the experience that they have gained over these you know last 12 years and I don't know that they will all fill out this chart but collectively they are available to be on our front line like I indicated to support not only the original Beyond but as Pamela said Beyond Phase 2 our uas Center of Excellence our broad agency announcement program which continues with this current reauthorization and any other pilot programs that come down the line as there will be follow on to the UTM as Pamela alluded to so I would say collectively they can service all of our all of the demos and programmatic needs that we have at this time thank you. 

Danielle Miller: 

Thank you Sabrina and thank you very much Michelle question we have one for you now Pamela, how might the remaining test sites be included in Beyond phase two? 

Pamela Gomez: 

Thank you that's a good question I think we have as you can see here I think the Beyond participants certainly on this chart that's still showing is Alaska, North Dakota, and Nevada, and Virginia Mid-Atlantic are all existing Beyond U partners and we are working to understand the requirements standards how we can look at research that's needed for our policies and our rule making challenges that the that the Beyond partners are dealing with to feed back actually into the test site program and to say we need this additional research in these various areas and that can be part of you know rule making such as you know activities that we're doing around electronic consequences for example and additional research in other areas for command and control for detect and avoid so certainly trying to Leverage The Beyond partners and industry lead participants and Industry Partners to help us understand where those key challenges are collectively and where the priorities are collectively and feed that back into the test site program. 

Danielle Miller:  

Thank you Pamela and thank you very much Michelle for the questions appreciate, for any additional questions in the chat, okay if there are none I think we can wrap it up with that. I just want to extend a huge thank you to Sabrina and Pamela for taking time out of your schedules to join us here today big thank you to everyone who joined online and in person big thanks to the Hive for allowing us to be here today and also thanks for if you're watching the recording I appreciate you watching the recording, so until next time we hope to see you all in the New Year our next episode of Beyond The Buzz is going to be January 14th so we hope to see you then take care.