Virginia Lawmakers Prepare for a Future Filled With Highly Automated Aircraft

Virginia lawmakers are aiming sky high as they turn their attention to the future of “advanced air mobility.”

On Wednesday, experts in the aviation and drone industries addressed lawmakers from Virginia’s Joint House and Senate Transportation Committees at the governor’s annual transportation conference in Norfolk.

Daniel “Bud” Oakey, president of the Virginia Aviation Business Association, and Tracy Tynan, director of the Virginia Unmanned Systems Center for the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, speak to lawmakers in Norfolk on Oct. 23, 2024. (Nathaniel Cline/Virginia Mercury)

Some of the areas discussed included emphasizing the importance of collaboration and “policy harmonization” across different agencies and programs, supporting workforce development and considering making the state’s supplies and parts tax exemption permanent while addressing the potential concerns of the technology.

“We need the patron saints from inside the body pushing for us and we need you to become industry experts,” said Daniel “Bud” Oakey, president of the Virginia Aviation Business Association. “We’re not going anywhere as an industry, but up and we’re going at speeds that will just increase.”

According to the nonprofit group Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), the advanced air mobility industry, as it is known, could generate $16 billion in new business activity in the commonwealth.

What would Virginia need for a future of electric and automated aircraft?

Advanced air mobility is a term that refers to aircraft that are highly automated, more flexible than large commercial airplanes and typically electric. One example is electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, often called air taxis.

Uncrewed aerial vehicles, which are part of a larger umbrella under advanced air mobility, have proven popular as a way to offer travel and delivery services and, at the same time, promise to reduce greenhouse gases. However, because the technologies are new, regulations and infrastructure are still under development.

“It is incredibly important for us as a legislature to start considering what are some of the regulatory considerations and incentives that we need to think about now, because the future is here,” said House Transportation Committee Chair Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax.

Tracy Tynan, director of Virginia Unmanned Systems Center at VIPC, said AAM is important to the commonwealth because it improves accessibility for rural and urban areas and provides sustainability potential because many of the systems rely on electricity to operate and reduce emissions.

She said AAM can also help with law enforcement and medical responses. In August, Riverside Health System announced it would begin using cargo drones to deliver medication to patients on remote Tangier Island, 16 miles from the mainland of the commonwealth.

Marcy Eisenberg, president of Xelevate, a drone research center and training facility in Leesburg, said there are a number of key industries that can benefit from AAM including advanced materials, aerospace, automotive, controlled environmental, agriculture, cybersecurity, data centers, food and beverage processing, semiconductor conductors, software and supply chain management.

“The possibilities are endless,” Eisenberg said.

Privacy, security concerns

As exciting as uncrewed aerial vehicles have become, they have also raised public concerns about security and privacy.

Del. Bonita Anthony, D-Norfolk, emphasized the need for a comprehensive regulatory framework for the vehicles in Virginia, incorporating both local and federal guidelines. Some of the growing concerns are about data privacy, mass surveillance, and equity, particularly in land use and public safety.

“There are many use cases, and so we need to build a framework that covers the basis of all those use cases,” Anthony said.

In December, VIPC published a report that highlighted the aviation and security concerns for local communities of uncrewed aerial vehicles, specifically drones that can be used for surveillance and can be challenging to detect and identify.

VIPC also reported that the systems could be modified for illicit purposes, such as weaponization or delivering contraband. System operators are also free of autonomy once the drone has left the operator.

The report states that small uncrewed aircrafts flown in unauthorized areas — particularly near airports and heliports— can cause havoc to air traffic and other aviation operations.

As a result, the Federal Aviation Administration began tracking them in 2014.

In Virginia, the FAA found that the commonwealth experienced 320 uncrewed aerial vehicle sightings from 61 locations. Virginia’s sightings make up approximately 2% of the total nationwide reports.

“Small unmanned aircraft systems continue to create problematic safety and security challenges

for state and local agencies,” VIPC wrote in the December report. “As these devices continue to proliferate, state and local governments will be forced to establish policies for detecting, tracking, and responding to problematic sUAS flights.”

What’s next

Lawmakers will return to Richmond in January to discuss proposed legislation and existing laws.

Lawmakers said it’s too early to see if anything related to uncrewed aerial vehicles will be proposed, but said Wednesday’s panel will help to craft legislation.

Senate Transportation Committee Chair Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax said the goal of creating the joint session for their colleagues is to be “forward thinking” and educate members on UAVs and transportation electrification, which a second panel discussed in Wednesday’s meeting.

“Both of them have major economic opportunities for the private sector and we just want to make sure that as we are starting to legislate on those things, that we have the facts in front of us,” Boysko said.

During the last session, Virginia adopted a budget that allocated $1 million from the Commonwealth’s Development Opportunity Fund in fiscal year 2025 to support the development of an advanced air aviation test site in the commonwealth. The agency, in cooperation with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority, is directed to work with the industry to identify the “optimal” location or locations and uses of these funds.

​​On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration published a final rule for the qualifications and training that instructors and pilots must have to fly aircraft in the “powered-lift” category, which have characteristics of both airplanes and helicopters, according to the agency.

The FAA said the new pilot-training and qualifications rule was necessary because the existing regulations did not address this new category of aircraft, which can take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane during cruise flight.

“The FAA will continue to prioritize the safety of our system as we work to seamlessly integrate innovative technology and operations. This final rule provides the necessary framework to allow powered lift aircraft to safely operate in our airspace,” said FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker in a statement on Tuesday.  “Powered lift aircraft are the first new category of aircraft in nearly 80 years and this historic rule will pave the way for accommodating wide-scale Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations in the future.”

by Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury

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