FAA Pledges $6 Million in Matching Funds for Drone Integration Testing Partnerships

At the FAA UAS Symposium in Baltimore, Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell announced that the FAA would offer new partnerships with the commercial drone industry to help move the integration of drones into the national airspace (NAS) forward.

The $6 million program would provide matching funds to qualified companies who can work at FAA UAS testing sites to forward what the FAA refers to as “essential integration technologies,” such as sense and avoid capabiltites, geofencing, and unmanned traffic management (UTM.)

The following is an FAA press release.

The FAA is offering new partnership opportunities to validate key drone technologies

Is your company up for a challenge? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will partner with qualified commercial companies who can match the agency’s $6 million pledge to perform vital drone integration safety work at the FAA’s UAS test sites.

“The FAA intends to bridge the gap between industry and the test sites to tackle some of our most difficult technical and operational challenges,” said Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell today at the FAA UAS Symposium in Baltimore.

Our June 3 Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) states that applicants must be able to match the federal funds they request through this program. A company has to demonstrate an existing contractual relationship with or show that FAA funding would enable it to enter into a contract with a test site. Companies must have the technical capability to work on these essential integration technologies:

• Develop and enforce geographic and altitude limitations (Geo-fencing);
• Provide for alerts by the manufacturer of an unmanned aircraft system regarding any hazards or limitations on flight, including prohibition on flight as necessary;
• Sense and avoid capabilities (DAA);
• Beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations (BVLOS);
• Night time operations;
• Operations over people;
• Operation of multiple small unmanned aircraft systems;
• Unmanned aircraft systems traffic management (UTM);
• Other critical research priorities; and
• Improve privacy protections through the use of advances in unmanned aircraft systems technology.

The application process has two steps. Step 1 is a white paper package which is due by June 28, 2019. If that package is accepted, a full proposal must be submitted by July 31, 2019. The FAA expects to award contracts by September 30, 2019. The funding for the partnership was mandated and provided by Congress in the FAA’s Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019.