FAA to Require Recreational Drones to be Registered with the Goverment

In a bid to pre­vent dan­ger­ous crashes, fed­er­al reg­u­lat­ors will be­gin re­quir­ing the re­gis­tra­tion of most re­cre­ation­al drones be­fore the end of the year.

The move, an­nounced Monday by Trans­port­a­tion Sec­ret­ary An­thony Foxx, is a sig­ni­fic­ant tight­en­ing of reg­u­la­tions ahead of a hol­i­day sea­son that is ex­pec­ted to see a ma­jor surge in the pop­ular­ity of drones.  

The Fed­er­al Avi­ation Ad­min­is­tra­tion has un­til now avoided put­ting strict re­stric­tions on drone flights by av­er­age con­sumers, in­stead fo­cus­ing its ef­forts on de­vel­op­ing a frame­work for com­mer­cial drone use. While there is a gen­er­al ban on com­mer­cial drones, the FAA has gran­ted thou­sands of ex­emp­tions to a range of in­dus­tries, from ag­ri­cul­ture to news-gath­er­ing.

As soon as this Decem­ber, even re­cre­ation­al drone op­er­at­ors will be re­quired to share in­form­a­tion about them­selves and their drones be­fore tak­ing off. Foxx said Monday that the De­part­ment of Trans­port­a­tion is con­ven­ing a task force, com­prised of gov­ern­ment agen­cies and private-sec­tor groups, to de­term­ine the best pro­cess for re­gis­ter­ing and keep­ing track of a large volume of drones.

“Re­gis­tra­tion will help us en­force the rules against those who op­er­ate un­safely by al­low­ing the FAA to identi­fy the op­er­at­ors of un­manned air­craft,” Foxx said Monday. “There can be no ac­count­ab­il­ity if the per­son break­ing the rules can­not be iden­ti­fied.”

The drone in­dustry, wary of even more oner­ous reg­u­la­tions, largely wel­comed the FAA’s an­nounce­ment Monday. Drone groups will play a cent­ral role in the Trans­port­a­tion De­part­ment’s re­gis­tra­tion task force.

But the praise came along­side calls for the gov­ern­ment not to over-reg­u­late re­cre­ation­al drone use. Gary Sha­piro, CEO of the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ic As­so­ci­ation, warned against cre­at­ing an un­ne­ces­sary bur­eau­cracy around re­cre­ation­al drone use.

“Any pro­pos­al must sens­ibly and re­li­ably dif­fer­en­ti­ate products from toys to equip­ment in­ten­ded for com­mer­cial use,” Sha­piro said in a state­ment. He said the task force should ex­am­ine “if there are bet­ter ways to meet the ob­ject­ives of reg­u­lat­ors and law en­force­ment.”

The task force, which will be made up of 25-30 groups in and out of the gov­ern­ment, will con­sider of­fer­ing ex­emp­tions to the re­gis­tra­tion re­quire­ment for toys or oth­er small drones.

The agency is giv­ing it­self an am­bi­tious mid-Decem­ber dead­line for set­ting up the drone re­gis­tra­tion data­base. The hur­ried timeline is likely spurred by the fast-ap­proach­ing hol­i­day sea­son—by its own es­tim­ates, as many as one mil­lion drones will end up un­der Christ­mas trees this Decem­ber—but an agency known for miss­ing dead­lines may have trouble meet­ing this one.

Con­gress tasked the FAA with re­leas­ing fi­nal rules for com­mer­cial drone use by this Septem­ber, but it cur­rently es­tim­ates the rules will not be ready un­til sum­mer 2016.

“The level of ur­gency here is suf­fi­cient to move as quickly as we pos­sibly can,” Foxx said Monday about the drone re­gis­tra­tion rules—but de­vel­op­ing them quickly would re­quire fast an­swers many out­stand­ing ques­tions.

“It would be the most amaz­ing feat of gov­ernance I’ve seen in my 33 years in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” Jim Dentons, a re­cently re­tired top drone of­fi­cial at the FAA, told the Wall Street Journ­al.

FAA Deputy Ad­min­is­trat­or Mi­chael Whi­taker said earli­er this month that dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing about the “lo­gist­ics” of set­ting up a re­gistry: “What would be the best tool for that, wheth­er it’s at point-of-sale, how you veri­fy ID, things of that nature.”

Whi­taker, speak­ing at hear­ing in front of the House Trans­port­a­tion Com­mit­tee’s Sub­com­mit­tee on Avi­ation earli­er this month, said that the gov­ern­ment needed help from out­side groups to make a re­gistry work.

“We would not be set up to take this level of re­gis­tra­tion data,” Whi­taker said. “We want to make sure it’s as­sess­able if we do that, and also that it can be used for law en­force­ment pur­poses.”

The gov­ern­ment has grown in­creas­ingly con­cerned about rogue drone flights that have the po­ten­tial to dis­rupt crit­ic­al op­er­a­tions in the sky. Com­mer­cial air­line pi­lots have re­por­ted a rap­id in­crease in drone sight­ings and near misses, prompt­ingcalls for geofen­cing tech­no­logy to keep drones away from air­ports. And drones fly­ing near wild­fires have in­terfered with fire­fight­ers nearly two dozen times this year, ac­cord­ing to re­cent testi­mony from a U.S. Forest Ser­vice of­fi­cial.

The FAA is con­sid­er­ing a num­ber of ways to pro­tect lar­ger air­craft from er­rant drones. Most re­cently, the agency an­nounced it began test­ing a mil­it­ary-grade tech­no­logy that could identi­fy drones passing in­to re­stric­ted air­space, even dis­abling or tak­ing con­trol of the vehicle.