The FAA can’t keep up with evolving drone technology. Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, testified at a congressional hearing yesterday that the drone model for which the company received FAA approval last week for test flights has been superseded by a more advanced design—which the company is testing abroad.
As reported in Bloomberg, Misener said, “Nowhere outside of the United States have we been required to wait more than one or two months to begin testing. What the FAA needs is impetus, lest the United States fall further behind.”
Amazon wants to test autonomous drones, which is not permitted under proposed FAA rules. According to the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Gilligan, the FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, testified that the FAA won’t approve autonomous flight until software and sensors are proven and standardized, which could take years.
The FAA treats drone test flights much as it treats manned aircraft test flights. In contrast, reports Ben Popper in The Verge, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) treats drones as a new category. Popper quotes Gregory McNeal, an associate professor of law and public policy at Pepperdine, as having written, “Granted, the path to that future is a challenging technical problem, but what EASA has done is removed arbitrary regulatory hurdles, allowing engineers to do what they do best—design and innovate. The new regulatory framework means that these innovators will have a clear path towards flying in Europe. They can plan and design their products to address safety concerns, rather than plan around arbitrary rules based on the last century’s aviation technology.”
