What can drone users and the American People what is a realistic deadline for that integration . I would answer that right now we do have a level of integration. For public aircraft, they are flying every day. Nasa does research. We have Unmanned Aircraft. For civil applications, we are working closely with the faa to verify and validate these Key Technology barriers, the radio communications, the displays for the Ground Control stations to allow the faa to determine minimal operation standards. When can we expect the faa to propose some roles . The faa is working closely with our Administration Partners in the rulemaking process. We are doing everything we can to get that small Unmanned Aircraft rule out. Our main focus is to get it right. The role rulemaking process is deliberative. When you think you can get that out . I can i give you a firm deadline. Do you have a goal in mind . You have a lot of people across the United States waiting. Do you have any kind of working deadline or goal . Our goals are to get it out as quickly as we can as long as we get it out right. Will likely be this your next year . I cant speculate. My own personal hope is that we get it out as soon as possible. It has got to go through the regulatory process that has been put in place by congress. We are working away through that. Im going to push you one more time. You are slipping off my question here. How long does the regulatory process normally take . This is a complex never mind. I can tell im not going to get the answer i was hoping for. We will take your word that you are asked by expediting the process is much as you can. What you need to prioritize before the nas integration question mark . I referred to what some of the other witnesses also mentioned, the need for technology that provides the equivalence of sense and avoid technology. It needs to be an place for a full integration of a wide range of these vehicles into the Aviation System. That would be the highs. Thank you. What is the private sector contributing to this integration process . We have the government on one side as part of the process and the private sector as part of the process as well. What have been the contributions of the private sector to the integration . I believe that the industry will bring the lions share of the technology solutions, as it should. Companies like 3d robotics will they are constructing the devices. They are developing the software. Not just directly in the industry, microprocessing speeds are getting faster, so this was really the spirit of my testimony. Industry should be doing the lions share of this trait we should be the lions share of this. We should be proving the concepts. These companies are integrating and innovating these technologies. 3d robotics is doing if i fly my drone outside, you can login to drone share. Com and watch my flight. Every single time you fly, that log file is uploaded automatically from your smart fries into the cloud to drone share. Com, and we are now able to collect hundreds of thousands of hours of data on the fringe cases. That is what we have to figure out. When you actually start integrating hundreds of thousands of the systems into the airspace. It was a fairly sophisticated devices. What does it cost . Whats its range . With its use . That is more of a hobby grade drone. It is advanced and that it has a full High Definition camera that displays on your smart advice. You can either fly with a smart advice or longrange controller. Its got accelerometers, gyroscopes, and a full computer that is a flake control system on board. It is 499. What is the range . It depends. If you using a smart phone, you are restricted to wifi range. If youre using a controller, you can get up to one kilometer. Thank you. You mentioned during your testimony that your students are working on something in the classroom. I was wondering if we could expect any kind of breakthroughs and you might give some examples of what they are working on is well. You see it from a handson approach. Just to give you a couple of quick examples. One vehicle that our students prototype three years ago is a small uav that can do it one hour surveillance mission, which is launched out of a antimissile canister on an aircraft. This was a concept that nobody in the air force thought would work. The students actually demonstrated it. It is now and the Developmental Program where the vehicles they developed. I hope is not classified information. No. Intriguing. Thank you for your answers. I will recognize the gentleman from oregon. Thank you to our very Accomplished Panel of witnesses. As you heard in the opening remarks, oregon does have three test sites. Weve talked a lot about the benefits of the technology. One of the concerns that i have heard from constituents in oregon who are working in the developing industry is that there are still some problems with advancing the testing of their products especially for Small Companies that dont have a solid revenue stream, test ranges. Test ranges, despite being set up to provide a base where the development can take place may be prohibitively expensive for Small Companies and prevent them with logistical barriers. Can you expand a little bit on how the faa can work with the test ranges to address these concerns. Really quickly there is not a set understanding of how you even schedule the time to go to the range. There is no way to log into a system and say when is the next available date. Its not a matter of them being too busy, because theres not a lot of laces Companies Using a test range. Its more a matter of what is the process. There is a lot of bureaucracy surrounding getting the approval to go to a test range. You dont know if will be 30 days or two months. First i want to ask a question, thanks for your Association Work and what you been doing. I want to accu echo of comments that have been made about the rulemaking. Somebody made a comment about the proposed rulemaking is expected. We are encouraged to hear that news. There was a letter to secretary fox concerned about the timeline. Of course, we want this to be done right. We dont want to jeopardize safety grade were not concerned only with Workforce Development in those challenges of recruiting people into this industry and we dont have that certainty, but also for these new companies attracting private investment. Have you noticed some particular challenges because of the lack of certainty and Venture Capital to the industry . Absolutely. Thank you for your question. If im investing money and a project like this, i want to know what the go to Market Strategy is. I dont know when i can fly them when i can pursue some of the commercial opportunities out there. It is a big barrier. There is tremendous product being developed. It says that this is a great Investment Opportunity and Business Opportunity and job creator, which is something we need to be paying attention to. While we want to get this right we want to do this once for the various levels. We are on a certain trajectory here. We think there are opportunities immediately that require little regulation. Some of the countries have demonstrated this. Thank you. I know he talked about that. You heard him talk about some of the possible ways of moving forward. Of course its not a one size fits all because of the various sizes and capabilities and ranges. But i wanted to ask you first about the testing sites. Some companies have suggested maybe performing initial tests where their safety can be demonstrated and performing additional tests to home can that outline potential changes and can you taub about potential changes that could allow for more flexibility especially for the Small Developers and then i also wanted you to respond to the concern about the Small Companies having access and being able to test. So first, the Small Companies have access to our experimental awareness approval process which goes back to the manned aircraft process. Its the same regulations that are applied. Were in the process to make it more friendly for unmanned operators to get through the process. On the test side front, we have set up a program to enable them with all the test sites to have the opportunity to issue experimental certifies on behalf of the faa thereby stream lining the process so we think thats a significant benefit that the test sites can offer to the industry. Were constantly looking at ways to stream line our processes and work to enable these new companies to test their aircraft in a safe and by the rules way. Thank you. I see my time has expired. I will submit my section 333 exemption question for the record. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thanks. The gentleman from oklahoma, mr. Lucas is recognized. Thank you mr. Chairman. I would direct my question to dr. Wagoner and mr. Gwnyy and mr. Hanson. In recent years, agriculture has been one of the bright spots in our economy. Can you talk about the benefits that these might provide to for both producers and consumers. Whoever. I have a little. What we saw High School Students this year who had the challenge of developing an Unmanned Aircraft to surveille a large farm of corn. These kids, incredible kids from all over the country came up with a number of different solutions. But they showed that there were Viable Solutions that were affordable, usable for the farmer for precision agriculture where they could precisely locate where there were issues either with fertilizer or pesticide where they needed to be applied and could precisely do that. So we saw that as an opportunity that shows that its theres a market out there for that work. That was thats part of what is behind our more midterm work on this uas traffic management. So allowing a farmer or a commercial operation to go into a farm and do that kind of surveillance operations at low altitudes very safely and in a way that would be very cost affective. Ag adpplications are already ongoing in other parts the world. In japan for example where you have very small rice patties were seeing applications there. Its considered one of the number one applications. Theres Significant Interest on the part of agricultural departments to use these vehicles. If they are they are frustrate by the rule like everybody else. Its difficult for them to get exemptions to go do experiments. Its one of the big opportunity spaces. If i can maybe provide maybe a specific example of a way that even one of these very small lightweight systems can provide real benefit to the farmer. So we had one of the top private vineyards in napa valley contact us and say weve been hearing about these drones. What can we do with them . Everybody talks about the high spectral imagery and water damage and pesticide. If you take it to a simple level. Most of these farmers have never done a high yard resolution pictures of their vineyards. So we went out and we did and allowed him to see a High Resolution image of the crop and for the generations of the vineyard and he looked over and said wow, see how this is actually more darker green than this whole area because you cant see that when youre walking the rows the yin of the vineyard. You cant see the minute differences when youre up close. This means that there must be an elevation change and we need to harvest these grapes two to three weeks earlier than the rest of the vineyard. He then walked us out took some grapes from that area and grapes from the rest of the vineyard and you could clearly taste the difference between the two sets. He said before today we never knew that existed and that happened in two hours. Congressman, thank you for the question. The numbers that auv si put together in 2013, the 82 billion in the first ten years we think as high as 80 could be agriculture. Absolutely. Dr. Williams, i come from a state where the chamber of commerce likes for us to use the phrase significant weather events occur on a common place in a common way. My home state is making a lot of investments in weather related research. One of the things that i understand is that challenge is this requirement to obtain a certificate of authorization coa or a section 33 exemption which can be kind of challenging and cumbersome. Whats the faa doing to expedite the approval process for this kind of thing . Were actually working in both areas to approve the processing of the approvals. Most of the understand that section 333 approvals are for the aircraft. The coa process is for the airspace. In order to operate an Unmanned Aircraft, you cant really comply with the see and avoid rules so we have to give you either a waiver or authorization to do that. Thats the coa process. That process is undergoing a revamp inside of the faa. Were in the process of building a new software to interact with the folks using it. We think thats going to be a major step forward. We have achieved tremendous amount of progress with our Public Partners in accelerating their approvals. Weve reduced the amount of overhead for many of the frequent users like nasa. They have a much easier way forward. On the 333 side were also working hard to streamline that process. We put together a team thats in the process of developing a streamlined and more efficient process to move it quickly. It was never intended as an approval mechanism. It was intended to deal with exceptions and special cases. So were trying to make that up as we go to figure out how to accelerate it, but its a regulatory process. There are rules that have to be met as we go through it so we are trying to fine the right balance. Thank you mr. Chairman. The gentlemen from illinois is recognized for his questions. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing. Something were all very interested in. Its critical that we get a handle on this. We dont want to on the one hand, we want innovation to move forward in all the opportunities that are brought out for business purposes and other purposes from uas, but we know theres a lot of issues also that need to be dealt with. So i wanted to ask mr. Williams and anyone else can jump in if they have anything else to have. I want to talk about the concern about the number being reported. My district includes Midway Airport so its especially important to me also Louis University airport in my district. So given the rapid increase in number of small uas in use for hobby and commercial purposes. Whats being done to understand the risk of uas collision and whats being done to track near misses . So were in the process of building a tracking system modeled on the way we track the laser incidents that have been going on. We are also working hard on an Education Campaign to try to we believe that most of the people that are flying these aircraft near airports just dont understand the area they are flying in and the rules about where they can and cant fly. So we have were in partnership with the small uav coalition. The Unmanned AircraftVehicles International uvasi and academy of model aeronautics we have a Campaign Going on called know before you fly. Were working to find any means we can to educate the public about before they fly. Primarily the faa is interested in compliance with our rules. And we believe the best way to achieve that compliance is through education, so were working hard to make that happen. On the Research Side im sorry. You had another question about the research. Whats being done to understand the risks of uas collision. Right. So we actually have started this year a Research Initiative to look into what the potential is for what were really assessing the risk of an Unmanned Aircraft to an aircraft. That project is just getting off the ground and were accelerating and thanks to the additional Funding Congress provided. We should be able to accelerate it more rapidly than we were able to. Anything else that witnesses should be done that are not being done. We just want to emphasize that we thank the faa with their help with this campaign to educate. I think in some instances it is an education challenge. Obviously commercial operations are not allowed at this stage until we get a rolerule, but the Education Campaign is really about keeping the uas under 400 feet, five miles from an heir sport. Within line of site. Stay away from crowds. Its basic common sense. We think in many instances, its just a question of education. Weve had tremendous response from the Aviation Community on it this. Weve got new partners in nbaa, eaa, et cetera, many of the os organizations are stepping in and helping us get that word out. Thank you. One other thing i wanted to onto before my time runs out about test sites. The faa established six test sites to enable research. They are operating an on on an agreement to restrict the faas role on directing research. I wanted to ask mr. Williams, what steps is the f a, aa taking to address the nations Top Research Priorities and are there any barriers that need to be addressed . Back in the fall we released two of the test sites and listed over 100 Research Areas that we believe could benefit from having them look into. I think the theres been a lot of misunderstanding about what they can and cant do at our behest. Our only rule is through the procurement rules, we have to, if were going to direct one of our contractors and the other