The Aviation Subcommittee at the United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing on counter-uncrewed aerial systems yesterday (February 6).
Opening the hearing, subcommittee chairman Troy Nehls spoke of the myriad benefits of UAS but also cautioned that the wide-scale integration of small drones into US airspace at low altitudes poses unique challenges both in the air and on the ground.
Nehls spoke of the drone sightings in the New Jersey area in December 2024. While the US government has said these drone operations were not nefarious in nature, Nehls said that “the fact of the matter is that authorities received 5,000 reports. 5,000 reports is significant and telling of the fact that the aviation community must better educate the public about lawful drone operations.”
With the increasing rate of drones expected to integrate into our airspace and the potential for their misuse by bad actors, Nehls said it is time to establish a properly scaled, well-balanced, and legally sound framework for counter-UAS authorities and the corresponding technologies.
Witnesses providing expert testimony at the hearing included Dr. Catherine Cahill, Ph.D., Director, the Alaska Center for UAS Integration (ACUASI), University of Alaska Fairbanks; Lisa Ellman, Executive Director, Commercial Drone Alliance (CDA); and Chris McLaughlin, Executive Vice President of Operations, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW).
Mitigation risk
ACUASI’s Dr Cahill said the US needs to develop, test, and implement safe C-UAS technologies that will allow the discrimination between authorised UAS, unauthorised UAS, and manned aircraft, allow the safe removal of rogue UAS from the national airspace by authorised individuals, and provide a sense of safety to the US population. She said the New Jersey drone sightings “highlighted the fact that there is not a consensus on who should have C-UAS authority”.
Commenting on calls to shoot down the New Jersey drones, Dr Cahill said the risk of unintended consequences from a mitigation attempt by a state or local entity is too high. “The primary job of the state or local official will most likely not be C-UAS operations and they may not have all of the information about the operation of the UAS of concern. In Alaska, for example, we have had difficulty getting local and state law enforcement to address rogue UAS because they are overworked, understaffed, feel it is not their responsibility to do it, and do not know what they can legally do to build a case for the misuse of the UAS. I do not want a local or state official to have the ability to take down a UAS without doing a risk/benefit analysis that includes identifying what is under it, whether it is an FAA-approved UAS operation, whether it is a UAS or a plane, what they can legally do to build a case against the operator, etc. A study conducted by the FAA Center of Excellence for UAS Research (ASSURE) shows that even trained observers can have trouble telling how far a manned aircraft is from them. This means it is even more difficult to determine the distance of a small UAS from the observer. Additionally, night complicates the whole situation by making the aircraft and UAS more difficult to see.”
Dr Cahill said she would be “very comfortable” with granting state and local authorities permission to use detect, track and identify (DTI) systems that had been tested to ensure no adverse side effects to their use. She said however that the number of companies able to test C-UAS, and some DTI, technologies is limited because it requires the participation of one of the authorised entities (such as the departments of defence, homeland security and justice). “This is driving companies to test their technologies in other countries,” Dr Cahill noted. “Ukraine, in particular, has been a hotbed of C-UAS testing due to the needs of the soldiers on the battlefield and the quickly evolving UAS environment. The US should be facilitating the availability of testing locations in the US to enable C-UAS and DTI technology providers to test their systems under a wide range of environmental conditions at a much faster pace.”
Dr Cahill also called for agencies to communicate clearly and early with the public during any ‘unauthorised drone’ events to assuage the public’s fear.
Remote ID’s role
Ellman testified the CDA supports establishing a framework for safe and secure drone operations, and expanding existing counter-UAS authorities. She also called for more work to be done to improve compliance with the Remote ID rule, with more resources and information made available to the public and to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments to enhance the understanding of Remote ID technology. In addition, she said that two rules currently in development would “contribute significantly to enhancing airspace transparency and preventing drones from flying where they should not”. The first is the rule to enable beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) and the second is focused on drone security around critical infrastructure and sensitive airspace (commonly referred to as the 2209 rule). Ellman said that the CDA had sent a letter to the new US Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, urging swift action on these rules.
Managing airspace around airports
McLaughlin said DFW supports UAS integration and that drone detection capabilities are an important part of this. The airport has partnered with the US Transportation Security Administration on detection since 2017, has piloted a second system through an FAA-approved process and intends to install a permanent solution with FAA approval. “Our detection system has been effective, identifying more than 5,000 legitimate drone flights in our five-mile radius, annually. Of that, about 150 were operated inappropriately. Telling the difference can be difficult because airports lack independent access to FAA data that identify which drones have the appropriate airspace authorisation to operate near our facilities and which do not. Better data sharing would enhance airport safety.” McLaughlin noted that most airports do not have the same level of situational awareness about drone operations in their airspace or near their airfield. He also said that detection alone is not enough and that mitigation is important for airports with authority currently limited to federal agencies whose physical presence at airports is insufficient.
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