On March 10, 2022, the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Aviation Rulemaking Committee’s (ARC) Final Report was publicly released. This report was the culmination of countless hours of effort by our colleagues in the Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS)/UAS/Drone industry in an effort to grow our industry by unlocking the greater potential value of drones to safely and routinely conduct BVLOS flight operations.
In 2016, the FAA released the current UAS operating rules: 14 CFR Part 107. Under those rules, a pathway was defined to allow UAS operators to seek out approvals to conduct BVLOS operations, but those approvals have been generally limited to relatively short-ranges and to areas where air risks and ground risks are low or absent. Most of the granted BVLOS waivers are using Visual Observers (VOs) to extend the operating range of the drone and as such are not truly BVLOS but rather Extended Visual Line Of Sight (EVLOS) operations. BVLOS/EVLOS waivers (§ 107.31) are very difficult to obtain and there currently only 91 of these waivers active (issued between the past four years; tens of thousands of § 107.31 have been denied over the past six years since Part 107 was established) as indicated on the FAA’s Part 107 Waivers Issued webpage.
Censys Technologies recognizes the value of BVLOS operations and we formed a strategic partnership with Iris Automation to develop our Sentaero BVLOS Vertical Take-Off & Landing (VTOL) fixed-wing UAS to support our customers who have identified the need to conduct BVLOS operations. Those customers also have the patience to navigate the process with the FAA to apply for, wait up to 90 days and then receive a BVLOS waiver. The result is that 12 of the 91 currently published § 107.31 waivers are held by Censys customers operating our Sentaero BVLOS UAS. As an organization, we are exceedingly proud of what our great team has accomplished to grow the adoption of BVLOS UAS operations across a broad spectrum of industries.
Censys Technologies has proven that we are committed to expanding BVLOS capabilities to promote the growth of the drone industry here in the United States and given that, Censys generally supports the recommendations outlined in the BVLOS ARC final report, but we do not concur with the entirety of the those recommendations. The report outlines some changes that are, frankly, radical. In particular, the proposed amendment to give the UA right of way over crewed aircraft that are not equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B) or Traffic Awareness Beacon Systems (TABS) in Non-Shielded Low Altitude Areas is a non-starter at this point. As an industry, we ought to boldly accept the challenge to establish a level of autonomy in which all aviators may trust. From a safety-in-the-NAS perspective, giving UA right of way inherently increases risk to crewed aircraft. An unplanned maneuver to yield right of way increases risk to the aircraft executing that maneuver and higher risk for a UAS flight will always be the safer course over adding risk to a crewed aircraft, and Censys believes that value is created among living humans. It is no secret, nearly 6 years after Part 107 took effect, that human error rates far exceed those of solid automation with UAS; we should bring a new aviation paradigm of enhanced automation to fruition, building on the foundations Censys and others have laid to date. The risk has proven low with UAS, so to continue as a nation of pioneers, we need to accept the risk of innovation among us as a regulator, an industry, and a people.
Finally, Censys Technologies commends the thoughtful proposed concepts to establish a rule for UAS qualification under a notional “Part 108” regulation and the recommendation to establish a new Special Airworthiness Certification for the UAS category under Part 21, but those proposed pathways are not clearly enough defined for us to predict how the FAA will opt to adopt these recommendations. With that lack of clarity on how and when the regulations will evolve, Censys remains committed to expanding BVLOS operational capability under the high level of safety and reliability currently demanded for complex UAS operations in the NAS in order to produce a system with the highest level of reliability and data quality to provide the future BVLOS capabilities that our customers wanted yesterday.