Last October, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Department of Transportation to establish a pilot program to allow state and local governments to apply for the opportunity to experiment with different types of unmanned aircraft operations. After receiving 149 applications for the program, the DOT has selected 10 sites to explore a variety of UAS operations, such as flights over people, flights at night and flight beyond visual line of sight.

The 10 entities selected for the three-year pilot program are:

• The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
• Lee County Mosquito Control District, Fla.
• University of Alaska at Fairbanks
• The city of San Diego, Calif.
• North Carolina Department of Transportation
• Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority, Tenn.
• The city of Reno, Nev.
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Authority, Va.
• North Dakota Department of Transportation
• Kansas Department of Transportation

Each entity’s individual plans still must be approved by the FAA for operational safety. The DOT says the data collected from these sites will make UAV operations safer and more routine. Operations in each of these pilot sites will cease after three years.

NAAA submitted comments to the DOT on the pilot program outlining the concerns this program presents for low-level and other manned aviators. NAAA requested the FAA consider the safety and importance of the agricultural aviation industry when developing UAV policy so as not to jeopardize this key component to agricultural production. NAAA’s comments emphasized operational safety and UAV equipage standards, such as having visible strobe lights, technology to sense and avoid manned aircraft, and equipage with an ADS-B Out like technology for manned aircraft to track and identify UAVs.

According to the description for the Kansas Department of Transportation, its program will focus on leveraging a “statewide unmanned traffic management system to facilitate precision agriculture operations.” The program’s highlights and benefits include using “a range of technologies, such as detect and avoid, ADS-B, satellite communications and geo-fencing. The program will use existing in-state resources such as fiber optic networks and UAS Traffic Management (UTM).”

If conducted properly, the Kansas program has the potential to demonstrate the importance of these technologies for the safety of low flying aviators.