When Government Can’t Keep Up

0

As the U.S. girds for another budget showdown that threatens to shut down the government, aviation, deemed an essential service in most respects, will soldier on. The thousands of FAA, DOT and other government workers who keep it going will go through an annoying and deflatingly disrespectful round of claiming retroactive wages and living without until the politicians wear out this particular set of hot-button issues.

As the arcane system goes through its predictable motions and intrigue through the unending news cycle, the rest of the world is marching on and it begs the question of whether technology has eclipsed government as the fundamental arbiter of how society is shaped.

While the tawdry mess played out in Washington, in Las Vegas, the future of aviation as a viable transit option was on display. At the Consumer Electronics Show, a host of blue chip companies showed they were ready for a world of autonomous drones whisking passengers safely and economically from point to point.

The FAA’s Office of UAS Integration was there but we have to wonder if they were spectators or participants. The sheer number of demos and announcements regarding the airborne use of technology to move people about was staggering.The basic nuts and bolts have been proven and they will be refined as all the smart people who got the technology this far smooth out the inevitable bumps.

But first they have to be able to fly in real-world conditions and if that’s in the FAA’s plans, they’re keeping it to themselves. So far, most of the public announcements coming from the office have to do with inflated nuisance issues regarding conflicts between hobby drones and manned aircraft. Nobody wants to hit a drone but at CES the hardware was so many generations ahead of the two-pound hobby drones that are the subject of that discourse as to be irrelevant to the actual issues surrounding unmanned systems.

To its credit, the FAA has established the UAS Integration Pilot Program. Unfortunately, the term “pilot” is being used in the sense that it’s an experimental or first foray into looking at the topic and has nothing to do with flying, which the tech companies are ready to do.

Nevertheless, the program, which put applicants through a gauntlet of application stages ending a few weeks ago, does seem to have the correct goal to “accelerate safe UAS integration.”

Although the deadlines for the last of the complicated applications passed on Jan. 4, there has been no indication of who will be the Lead Applicants and Interested Parties chosen to influence what will shape what can only be described as a revolution in aviation.

But as the folks who will not only decide who those participants will be but will rule on their recommendations face the coming weeks without paychecks, a half dozen companies are ready to land a pilotless drone on their apartment building roofs to take them wherever they want to go.

Government is supposed to be slow and methodical to make sure its decisions are well founded and deliberate but when government gets too far behind the technology curve it sets up two unsavory scenarios.

One is a steadfast devotion to process and interdepartmental navel-gazing that stifles innovation and inevitably sends cutting-edge companies elsewhere to find the regulatory underpinnings of their businesses.

But perhaps more dangerous is the surrender of regulation in the absence of the infrastructure to create it in the face of mounting public and political pressure to accommodate the next big thing.

The next big thing is here. How the regulators react will fundamentally shape how it integrates not only into the NAS but into society as a whole.

Unfortunately, for a generally positive outcome, the government has to do a couple of things it can have trouble doing. It has to get it right and it has to do it quickly.

LEAVE A REPLY