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The Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International’s (AUVSI) Air Advocacy Committee (AAC) sets the legislative and regulatory priorities in the air domain for the association via input and feedback from its membership. The AAC works intimately with federal regulators in the Executive Branch, lawmakers in the Legislative Branch, and their staffs, as well as state, local, and tribal officials, to help scale Unmanned/Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) integration in a meaningful way. Our goal is to ensure government keeps up with industry and that our regulatory framework fosters innovation rather than stifles it. We aim to spur U.S. competitiveness in this space.

The AAC is comprised of a diverse group of member companies, including UAS operators, UAS manufacturers, software companies, defense contractors, Counter-UAS companies, AAM companies, Drone as First Responder (DFR) companies, public safety experts, and much more. The AAC engages on both authorization and appropriations efforts each year and AUVSI leadership, in addition to several of our members, have testified before Congress. We pride ourselves in our ability to check our parochial interests at the door and come together to enable a unified voice for all stakeholders within the uncrewed systems ecosystem.

Committee Members:

AAC Policy Priorities

1. Establishing the AAC as the preeminent industry voice influencing UAS and AAM regulations and legislation and positioning the AAC, and AUVSI, positively during the 2023-2024 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization bill (more on this below).
2. Establishing a clear pathway for advanced UAS operations Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and ensuring the rulemakings associated with the BVLOS Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) recommendations are issued as quickly as possible.
3. Ensuring domestic UAS and AAM companies have the resources they need to globally compete with companies that are heavily subsidized by their respective governments.
4. Ensuring a favorable National Airspace System (NAS) for key UAS operations, including drone deliveries, routine public safety operations, critical infrastructure inspections, defense operations, counter-UAS operations, and other high-value, low-risk use cases.
5. Fostering an inclusive airspace for AAM, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), and Regional Air Mobility (RAM) aircraft and operations.
6. Creating a new regulatory framework that shifts away from the traditional aviation safety continuum, which does not work well for advanced aviation, and looks forward to establish rules that unlock the full potential of UAS and AAM technologies.
7. Developing next steps for the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) to work alongside the current air traffic management system.
8. Ensuring that the FAA retains exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States in order to maintain safety and operational consistency across all users of the NAS.
9. Providing law enforcement with the proper authority to mitigate errant or potentially malicious UAS and ensuring Preventing Emerging Threats Act compliance and consistent reauthorization.
10. Developing strong public-private partnerships to foster voluntary, risk-based approaches to data security and operations management, the development of industry-driven initiatives on data management best practices and security standards that ensure critical mission information is accessed by authorized parties, and the development of industry-driven security standards.
11. Ensuring UAS have access to spectrum to conduct operations, including the use of command-and-control technologies at higher altitudes, use of detect-and-avoid systems, ability to transmit payload data, and to conduct operations that ultimately strengthen the operation of UAS in the NAS. AUVSI continues to look for regulatory efforts we can comment on, after filing comments to the FCC’s recent C-Band Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.
12. Opening markets, reducing barriers and regulations, and injecting more certainty and predictability into the marketplace, trade, and investment agreements, which are key catalysts for the innovation progress that drive our global economies and markets.
13. Promoting technology transfer and international harmonization of standards to realize the full potential benefits of UAS.

For more information about the specific priorities the AAC is pushing in FAA Reauthorization, click here.

To download the entire AAC overview document, click here.

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