No Technological Silver Bullet for Integration, Speakers Say
There is probably no simple technological fix for the issue of integrating UAS into the national airspace, speakers said at a panel at Xponential.
Jim Williams, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s UAS Integration Office, said even the simple idea of requiring all aircraft to carry ADS-B transponders to show their locations is more complicated than most people realize.
“You could really make a safety case for that,” he said. “But it’s a flawed theory, because all that equipment is not 100 percent reliable, so as soon as you are 100 percent reliant on it, you have lessened the safety of the airspace system.”
Requiring ADS-B on aircraft like balloons and ultralight aircraft means imposing certification rules on aircraft that currently don’t fall under them, he said, and other speakers noted that would be true for hobbyist aircraft as well.
Integration would be faster if the FAA had more money and more people, he said, noting that he tried to find money in 2012 to study the lethality of small falling objects, which would be handy to know as the small UAS rules are put in place.
“We just didn’t get it,” he said of the financial request. “In 2016, if it had been started, the answers would be there, and you’d be able to move forward.”
