Unmanned Aircraft Take First Steps Into Civil Airspace
This post is also available in: 
עברית (Hebrew)
Slowly but surely, unmanned aircraft systems(UAS) are entering the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). For the first time, aircraft have flown commercially into remote Arctic airspace. This comes in spite of a regulatory structure that was considered prohibitive to all but government agencies and research institutions and companies are now considering or have already begun the process of obtaining FAA airworthiness certification for their UAS designs.
From now on, FAA requires that private entities obtain a special airworthiness certificate in the experimental category to operate UASs, a status that prohibits them from being used commercially. Military services and public organizations require a certificate of authorization (COA).
Pushed by Congress, the FAA is gradually lowering the barriers blocking entry of unmanned aircraft into the NAS. In the 2012 FAA reauthorization act, Congress directed the agency to shorten the COA process for public entities. Another provision requires permission to public safety agencies to fly aircraft weighing 4.4 pounds or less under certain restrictions.
IHLS – Israel Homeland Security
To facilitate the mandate, the FAA signed an agreement with the National Institute of Justice, to train police departments in operating UASs and to authorize their use in local jurisdictions. The agreement increases the permissible UAS weight to 25 pounds.
According to AIN Online the FAA has issued an emergency COA “in just a few hours” that allowed the California Air National Guard to fly a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator in support of firefighters battling the Rim Fire in the Sierra Nevada region in late August. The aircraft flew from Victorville, Calif., for up to 22 hours without landing, training its electro-optical/infrared sensor payload with full-motion video camera on remote areas of the wildfire. The imagery was shared with incident commanders on the ground in real-time.
Earlier this year, the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International released a UAS economic impact study that identifies precision agriculture, including remote crop monitoring and precision spraying of pesticides and fertilizer, as the most promising U.S. commercial market for unmanned aircraft.
