The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced two new sites to develop and test Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) — the first UAS test grounds in nearly ten years.
Demonstrating the value of UAS and related drone technologies has been a top priority for the administration since it took office, pursuing innovative programs to achieve air superiority and push the boundaries of technological development. The approved testing grounds are part of the UAS Test program – an initiative centered around developing, testing and evaluating unmanned aircraft and associated technologies to safely and effectively integrate them into the National Airspace System.
The new test sites will be in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Indiana Economic Development Corporation. They will be the eighth and ninth sites dedicated to advancing these technologies, joining seven other locations scattered across Alaska, North Dakota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Texas and Virginia.
The announcement aligns with the Unleashing American Drone Dominance executive order – directing national objectives to embrace drone technologies and invest in their development. Last year, the administration made significant strides in bolstering policy to invest in drone technologies after proposing the Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) rule in August.
The BVLOS drone rule would normalize UAS integration as a part of regular airspace operations and standards. Should it be fully adopted, the rule would establish a series of standards and waive requirements that restricted drone usage outside the typical person’s visual line of sight, dramatically broadening its utility and use cases in new sectors.
The UAS Test Sites have been directed to situate BVLOS operations as a cornerstone of UDOT’s efforts to advance drone innovation. Ongoing efforts to develop, test and scale drone technologies are expected to yield increasingly autonomous operations, advanced air mobility, safe commercialization of drone technologies and other advanced operations.
Photo by Richard Unten, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, from Wikimedia Commons
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