Amazon and Google want to use them deliver packages. Farmers want to use them to inspect their fields. Movie makers want to use them to create spectacular shots. Researchers hope to use them for environmental reporting. The United States has the potential to be a global leader in drone or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, the FAA’s slow pace in laying out regulations for commercial UVA use is putting American companies at a competitive disadvantage. The Wall Street Journal reports,
As unmanned aircraft enter private industry—for purposes as varied as filming movies, inspecting wind farms and herding cattle—many U.S. drone entrepreneurs are finding it hard to get off the ground, even as rivals in Europe, Canada, Australia and China are taking off.
The reason, according to interviews with two-dozen drone makers, sellers and users across the world: regulation. The FAA has banned all but a handful of private-sector drones in the U.S. while it completes rules for them, expected in the next several years. That policy has stifled the U.S. drone market and driven operators underground, where it is difficult to find funding, insurance and customers.
Outside the U.S., relatively accommodating policies have fueled a commercial-drone boom. Foreign drone makers have fed those markets, while U.S. export rules have generally kept many American manufacturers from serving them.
According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation,
American companies interested in pursuing commercial drone research are not allowed to test their experimental aircraft—secret, proprietary technology—until they first get permission from the FAA to test their drones in a FAA-run government testing site. These rules bar Amazon from testing its inventions on private land, even if the company buys land far from any populations or other aircraft. Instead it must use FAA testing facilities, which only exist in six states. By using these public facilities, companies are forced to demonstrate their private technologies, which is like forcing the California-based Tesla to test is prototype cars under government supervision at a public park in Virginia.
These overbearing rules have pushed U.S. companies to move their drone research and development projects to more permissive nations, such as Australia, where Google chose to test its drones. Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority, the agency in charge of commercial drones, offers a great example of unrestrictive regulations. While it has not yet finalized its drone laws, it still allows companies and citizens to test and use these technologies under certain rules. Instead of forcing companies to reveal their technologies at government test sites, it allows them to test outdoors if they receive an operator’s certificate and submit their test area for approval. Australia’s more permissive nature shows how a country can allow innovation to thrive while simultaneously examining it for potential safety concerns.
Outside the United States, commercial drone operators are thriving. A United Kingdom-based company, Hovercam, won an Academy Award earlier this year for developing an advanced drone-based film camera. Japan has used drones in agriculture for decades. Raphael Pirker, a famed drone operator, has set up his drone construction company in Hong Kong.
A recent study by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) predicts that in a matter of years, the drone, or UAV, industry in the U.S. could produce up to 100,000 new jobs and add $82 billion in economic activity between 2015 and 2025.
The opportunity to lead remains with innovators in America eager to discover where this technology can go. However, the slow pace of developing federal UVA regulations is giving other countries a chance to leap ahead of the U.S.
