We Still Have No Idea How the FAA Plans to Use Its New Drone Test Sites

So the FAA has finally selected the six commercial drone test sites that will serve as proving grounds for widespread domestic use of unmanned aerial vehicles. It’s big news for the drone industry, and it’s big news for Texas, Alaska, North Dakota, Nevada, Virginia, and New York, which were all awarded test sites. But just what’s going to happen next isn’t completely clear.

“The announcement of the test sites doesn’t yet tell us all that much about how the sites will be used and how regulation will be done in the future,” Brendan Schulman, head of Kramer Levin’s new commercial drone law group, said.

The FAA was originally supposed to select these sites back in May of 2012. A year-and-a-half later, the selection should finally get the ball rolling on the implementation of commercial drones in American airspace. At first, every model of drone expected to be used for commercial purposes will have to be tested at one of the six new sites.

Let’s try to make some sense of what’s going to happen next, even though the whole process has been hamstrung by a series of legal challenges, foot-dragging, sequestration, a government shutdown, and unexpected hurdles.

The Operators

“I think the FAA was aiming for two things: Serious commitment by state governments and other agencies in these locations that demonstrated not just commitment but sophistication in the technologies, and a diverse set of geographic locations so they could be tested in a variety of climates and situations,” Schulman said.

The FAA selected a mix of university, government, and private operators for its six sites: The University of Alaska, Texas A&M University, and Virginia Tech will helm the project in those states. The North Dakota Department of Commerce will operate one, as will the State of Nevada. In New York, the state’s Griffiss International Airport in Rome—four hours north of New York City and two hours west of Albany—will operate the site.

That New York location is of particular interest. Not only is the Griffiss site the only such site in the northeast—it’s the only one situated smack in the middle of highly-trafficked airspace. Says the FAA: “the applicant plans to focus its research on sense and avoid capabilities for [drones] and its sites will aid in researching the complexities of integrating [drones] into the congested, northeast airspace.”

The others make a lot of sense. In Alaska, the FAA plans to test drones in different types of climates; North Dakota, in general, has been supportive of the drone movement thus far; and Virginia Tech has always been at the forefront of developing drone technology. The Texas A&M site is going to be located on the Corpus Christi “island campus,” and is presumably going to focus on testing drones both over the Gulf of Mexico and in coastal weather environments.

The Sites

Take note that although the FAA has chosen operators for the sites, the exact site locations aren't public, at least not yet. In fact, some of them may not even be in sates you'd presume them to be.

The FAA says that Virginia Tech “includes test site range locations in both Virginia and New Jersey,” which throws a bit of a curveball into the process. And “North Dakota” and “Nevada” are quite large geographical locations—it’s possible that each state will have multiple test sites throughout their states.

The Timeline

Anyone's guess, really. With its announcement, the FAA didn’t say when the sites would become operational, though you’d expect for it to happen sometime in 2014. The only thing we do know for sure is that, by law, each site will be required to operate until at least February 13, 2017.

“They’ve been selected, but it’s not clear when they’ll become operational,” Schulman said. “The test sites were supposed to be selected in August of 2012. We’re already behind. Whether we can now play catch up is an open question.”

The FAA is supposed to open the skies to commercial drones by 2015, which seemed kind of far out when Congress passed the legislation back in 2012. But that marker seems extremely soon now that the calendar is about to flip.

The Economy

Though we don’t know exactly where the sites will be, this will clearly be an economic boon for the states of Nevada, North Dakota, Alaska, Texas, Virginia, and New York.

“States that were chosen as the test sites are going to see enormous benefits in the coming years as the emerging industry sets up their businesses in surrounding areas,” Schulman said. “That’ll bring jobs and technology development to each of those states.”

Others in the industry have said as much in previous interviews and conferences. Earlier this year, when Virginia was mulling (and ultimately passed a much weaker version of) a drone ban, UAV proponents there said the state was only harming itself.

“The proposed law is creating a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace,” Clay Thomas, program chair of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Virginia chapter told me in March while the law was being discussed. “If [they are banned], where do these companies go? We’d like to keep them here in Virginia.”

The selection of the test sites is likely to have the opposite effect, pulling in small companies that can afford to relocate and incentivizing large companies to open new offices near the sites. In Nevada, lawmakers as senior as Harry Reid are already saying the FAA’s decision could save their economy.

“This is wonderful news for Nevada that creates a huge opportunity for our economy,” Reid told a local Fox News affiliate.

Sen. Dean Heller said that the “FAA’s decision is both welcome and well-timed,” given that Nevada leads the country in unemployment.

The Legal Issues

So far, it looks like privacy advocates are slowly losing their fight to keep drones tightly regulated. Drone-specific laws have been considered in many different states but have either been tabled, outright defeated, or passed with highly watered-down language.

On the other side of the coin, the industry thinks that privacy issues have slowed down the process long enough and say that other countries are moving ahead of the US in terms of drone implementation. The announcement of these test sites is the first real indication that things are finally beginning to move forward on the commercial front.

The FAA, for its part, has considered privacy. Kind of: "Among other requirements," the agency writes, "test site operators must comply with federal, state, and other laws protecting an individual’s right to privacy, have publicly available privacy policies and a written plan for data use and retention, and conduct an annual review of privacy practices that allows for public comment.

The locations will seemingly be pretty far from any major cities, based on who is operating them. But organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have raised concerns about test site privacy in the past. It’s unclear if either of those organizations or others will mount any sort of legal challenges to the test sites—neither would comment about next steps—but the ACLU says that having a privacy policy isn’t enough.

Catherine Crump, the ACLU’s staff attorney, told me that the group is “pleased the FAA has acknowledged the importance of safeguarding privacy in the test areas where drone sites will be flying." But she added that requiring test sites to have privacy policies "is no guarantee that every site will put strong protections in place. Someday drones will be commonplace in U.S. skies and, before that happens, it’s imperative that Congress enact strong, nationwide privacy rules.”

The Future

Right now, in order to fly a drone, operators have to get a Certificate of Authorization from the FAA. Getting a COA is essentially impossible at the moment. But companies have still been testing and using drones commercially—just not in the United States. The creation of these sites means those companies can come back to the States if they want.

“These will consist of areas with a defined airspace apart from commercial air traffic," Schulman said, "so they can test their equipment in a controlled environment instead of overseas or in an industrial warehouse."

So there you have them, the first six operators of drone test sites. But they're likely not the last.

That's where this all gets really interesting. The FAA has reserved the right to commission new proving grounds as things progress. It’s something that the industry is looking forward to, as well. In its official statement on the issue, Michael Toscano, president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, said that the group’s “hope is this will lead to the creation of more sites and eventually to full integration of [drones] into our skies.”

As with most other things that have happened on the road to drone integration nationwide, it’s looking like we’ll have to take a wait-and-see approach to things before we know exactly how these sites (and drone licensing) will function.